Opinionated - China Chipping Away to Semiconductor Dominance

[Bussard Ramjet]

SMIC looking good

SMIC 2016 Annual Results Announcement

PR Newswire March 27, 2017

SHANGHAI, March 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (NYSE: SMI; SEHK: 981) ("SMIC" or the "Company"), one of the leading semiconductor foundries in the world, today announces the audited consolidated results of the Company for the year ended December 31, 2016.

FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS

• Revenue was a record high of US$2,914.2 million in 2016, compared to US$2,236.4 million in 2015, representing an increase of 30.3%.
• Gross profit was a record high of US$849.7 million in 2016, compared to US$682.6 million in 2015, representing an increase of 24.5%.
• Profit for the period attributable to owners of the Company was also a record high of US$376.6 million in 2016, compared to US$253.4 million in 2015, representing an increase of 48.6%.
• Revenue from China-region customers grew to an all-time high of 49.7% of total revenue in 2016, compared to 47.7% in 2015, representing a revenue increase of 35.7%.
• Net cash generated from operating activities was a record high of US$977.2 million in 2016, compared to US$669.2 million in 2015, representing an increase of 46.0%.
• Cash and cash equivalents and other financial assets totaled US$2,157.6 million as of December 31, 2016, compared to US$1,288.1 million as of December 31, 2015, representing an increase of 67.5%.
• The net debt to equity ratio remained low at 16.1% as of December 31, 2016.

The real test will be if it can be a leader in technologies.

It's 28 nm hardly contributes to any revenues, and I have heard a lot about various problems with its 28 nm, the reason why people aren't placing massive orders.

I have heard a lot about lower nodes. Let's hope that is correct.

TSMC plans to reach 3 nm by 2021.

Whta it needs to do is simply brute force, hire more engineers, more capex spending.

But if I correctly remember TSMC has a research budget that is 5 times that of smic. (don't quote me yet, let me find the source)

Instead of giving free cash to zombie companies, and other SOEs in different stages of decay, it should be given to smic, because they have shown good administration, and working.

In fact Tsinghua uni group is totally he'll bent on capex. It owns literally no IP. And doesn't even have a plan to own one.

 

[cirr]

China's Tsinghua Unigroup signs deals for up to 150 bln in financing

March 28, 2017, 03:04:00 AM EDT

By Reuters

Hong Kong, March 28 (Reuters) - Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd, China's top state chip manufacturer, said on Tuesday it had signed deals that would provide it with financing of up to 150 billion yuan ($21.8 billion). In a statement on its website, Tsinghua Unigroup said China Development Bank had agreed to provide financing of up to 100 billion yuan for the five-year period of 2016-2020, while China'sIntegrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund would invest up to 50 billion in the semiconductor giant.

China's Largest Chipmaker Secures $22 Billion to Expand Globally

 

[Bussard Ramjet]

It's always a two-pronged approach: organic expansion, as well as M&A. The later purpose was one mandate assigned to China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Co., Ltd.

Talents are key to the business, from Richard Chang (張汝京, founder-SMIC), Dr. Tzu-Yin Chiu (CEO-SMIC) to Chiang Shang-yi (independent director), Mainland's foundation has been built on poaching critical talents, plus huge capital funding, it will continue.

No significant M&A would happen because no one is going to sell you any significant technology.

Let's start case by case:

Fabs: TSMC, Samsung, Intel, global foundries, UMC, none of these are gonna be sold. Period. They are proved national assets.

IC design: Intel, Qualcomm, Nvidia, amd, mediatek, no one is going to be sold.
Not event the Singaporean ones, because most of their operations are in US, which would just block asset sales like aixtron.

Memory: even a dying firm like micron was blocked. No Chance with Samsung, sk hynix, Toshiba.
Incidentally Toshiba has already been told to sell to some non Chinese or Taiwanese firms.

Screen: Samsung, LG not being sold.

Glass: corning or Asahi not being sold

I can keep going on and on.

In fact China has done some noticeable blunders with acquisitions

That Singaporean company, handling back end assembly, that was bought at a premium to its market value, is now on the verge of collapse.

China's Tsinghua Unigroup signs deals for up to 150 bln in financing

March 28, 2017, 03:04:00 AM EDT

By Reuters

Hong Kong, March 28 (Reuters) - Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd, China's top state chip manufacturer, said on Tuesday it had signed deals that would provide it with financing of up to 150 billion yuan ($21.8 billion). In a statement on its website, Tsinghua Unigroup said China Development Bank had agreed to provide financing of up to 100 billion yuan for the five-year period of 2016-2020, while China'sIntegrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund would invest up to 50 billion in the semiconductor giant.

China's Largest Chipmaker Secures $22 Billion to Expand Globally

This is not a good thing.

This money should have gone to smic, sunny opticals, hisilicon, and others.

But since they don't have too much contacts inside government the cash load has been given to a company who has nothing to show for as of today.

And the biggest problem is that I track ip filings, and Tsinghua uni group, or any of its subsidiaries like Yangtze storage, spreadtrum, and others don't even appear on the list.

 

[cirr]

27th March 2017

China recruitment drive boosting semi salaries

China is aggressively recruiting semiconductor engineers and execs, reports headhunters TrendForce, leading to a boost in salaries across the entire semiconductor industry.

With a number of new fabs set to start production in H2 2018, China is looking for veteran semiconductor people, particularly memory specialists, to run them.



Memory specialists are particularly required because Yangtze River Storage Technology (YRST), Fujian Jin Hua Integrated Circuit (JHICC), Hefei Chang Xin and Tsinghua Unigroup’s Nanjing fab are all targeting DRAM and 3D-NAND.

TrendForce estimates that China’s semiconductor sector will have a deficit of 100,000 high-level technical personnel by 2020 unless it can recruit enough people from outside China or train enough people locally.

According to TrendForce, the focus of the headhunting is process development engineers and IC designers.

With eleven fabs under construction in China, TrendForce reckons that they will collectively add 900k wpm when fully loaded.

China companies are offering high salaries which is, says TrendForce, leading to a a boost in compensation and benefits for semiconductor professionals across the entire industry.

China’s chip strategy is already doing rather well.

Based on UN trade data, China chip imports have been flattish for the last three years while the output of the domestic chip industry has tripled.

So China is increasingly serving its own IC needs.

China’s IC imports went up 47% from $157 billion in 2010 to $231 billion in 2013 but, since 2013, they have stayed between $218 – $231 billion.

China’s domestic IC industry has tripled from $21 billion in 2010 to $62 billion in 2016 with IC design increasing 5x in those six years from $5 – $25 billion.

China’s IC exports are less remarkable. After tripling from $29 billion in 2010 to $88 billion in 2013, they have dropped back to $61 – $70 billion for the last three years.

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/ne...uitment-drive-boosting-semi-salaries-2017-03/

 

[武成王]

To Bussard Ramjet:
The issue here is not about 'significant', the keyword is 'scale'. China is the largest IC consuming market, we need domestic IC industry to grow to a scale which can reduce cost of electronic products significantly, train a huge talent pool of IC professionals, we will gradually climb the value-added chain up to the high end. We of course know that WESTERN ENEMY won't sell any 'significant' technology to us, isn't it a common sense?

 

[cirr]

The real test will be if it can be a leader in technologies.

It's 28 nm hardly contributes to any revenues, and I have heard a lot about various problems with its 28 nm, the reason why people aren't placing massive orders.

I have heard a lot about lower nodes. Let's hope that is correct.

TSMC plans to reach 3 nm by 2021.

Whta it needs to do is simply brute force, hire more engineers, more capex spending.

But if I correctly remember TSMC has a research budget that is 5 times that of smic. (don't quote me yet, let me find the source)

Instead of giving free cash to zombie companies, and other SOEs in different stages of decay, it should be given to smic, because they have shown good administration, and working.

In fact Tsinghua uni group is totally he'll bent on capex. It owns literally no IP. And doesn't even have a plan to own one.

Cut the crap

A clear road ahead for SMIC: 28nm > 14nm(2018) > 7nm(2020-2021) > 3nm(2023)

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Chinese SMIC to Start 7nm R&D This Year

China-based pure-play foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) will start R&D for 7nm process technology later in 2017, according to company CEO Tzu-Yin Chiu.



Chiu said that the China-based foundry has in recent years put increased focus on advance-node technologies with annual R&D expenses accounting for as high as 12-13% of revenues. SMIC spent nearly US$2.7 billion in 2016 capex which was relatively high compared to previous years levels, Chiu indicated.

SMIC is developing advanced-node technologies with Huawei and nano-electronics research institute Imec, Chiu noted. The foundry is also working with many IC design service providers including Brite Semiconductor, Cadence Design Systems, Synopsys, ARM and Mentor Graphics, and is partnering with equipment and materials suppliers such as Applied Materials, Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC), ASML, Shin-Etsu Handotai and Sumco.

As for the backend, SMIC is teaming up with Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology (JCET), and the pair has set up a joint venture to provide a more complete supply chain for advanced-node manufacturing, Chiu said. Besides, SMIC is looking to further expand its 12-inch lines.

SMIC also plans to roll out 40ULP process technology (IoT devices) later in 2017.

No significant M&A would happen because no one is going to sell you any significant technology.

Let's start case by case:

Fabs: TSMC, Samsung, Intel, global foundries, UMC, none of these are gonna be sold. Period. They are proved national assets.

IC design: Intel, Qualcomm, Nvidia, amd, mediatek, no one is going to be sold.
Not event the Singaporean ones, because most of their operations are in US, which would just block asset sales like aixtron.

Memory: even a dying firm like micron was blocked. No Chance with Samsung, sk hynix, Toshiba.
Incidentally Toshiba has already been told to sell to some non Chinese or Taiwanese firms.

Screen: Samsung, LG not being sold.

Glass: corning or Asahi not being sold

I can keep going on and on.

In fact China has done some noticeable blunders with acquisitions

That Singaporean company, handling back end assembly, that was bought at a premium to its market value, is now on the verge of collapse.




This is not a good thing.

This money should have gone to smic, sunny opticals, hisilicon, and others.

But since they don't have too much contacts inside government the cash load has been given to a company who has nothing to show for as of today.

And the biggest problem is that I track ip filings, and Tsinghua uni group, or any of its subsidiaries like Yangtze storage, spreadtrum, and others don't even appear on the list.

Stop babbling

Yangtze River Storage 3D NAND flash development on track

Claire Sung, Taipei; Jessie Shen, DIGITIMES [Wednesday 15 March 2017]

Yangtze River Storage Technology's (YMTC) development of 3D NAND flash technology is well on track, and equipment for the production of 3D NAND chips will be installed at its fab in the first quarter of 2018, said company CEO Simon Yang.

YMTC is engaged in the development of 32-layer 3D NAND flash chips, which will be in full production in 2019, according to Yang. The company aims to catch up with the world's leading memory vendors, in terms of technology(READ 64/128 layer NAND flash chip), by 2020, Yang noted.

NAND flash demand is set to grow robustly driven by cloud computing and smart terminals, Yang said. Meanwhile, the China market has huge potential for growth, Yang indicated.

Both the DRAM or NAND flash market sectors are being dominated by a few key players, Yang identified. YMTC is looking to break the market dominance held by these few companies, said Yang, adding that the company's entry is to bring healthy competition within the industry.

China consumes as high as 55% of the total memory capacity. With the strong domestic demand, and financial support from China's central government, YMTC should be able to enhance its competitiveness against the current major memory players, Yang said.

YMTC is committed to developing its own technology which is critical to its long-term success, Yang noted. Making acquisitions or strategic investments is another approach for the company to grow its business, Yang said.

 

[Bussard Ramjet]

To Bussard Ramjet:
The issue here is not about 'significant', the keyword is 'scale'. China is the largest IC consuming market, we need domestic IC industry to grow to a scale which can reduce cost of electronic products significantly, train a huge talent pool of IC professionals, we will gradually climb the value-added chain up to the high end. We of course know that WESTERN ENEMY won't sell any 'significant' technology to us, isn't it a common sense?

Enemy is a strong word. You can call adversary.

The other thing is that China's IC sales are high, because China manufactures for the world.

In the coming years, there is a chance that China's factories will go downstream to other countries. This could lead to shift in the whole supply chain downstream.

Cut the crap

A clear road ahead for SMIC: 28nm > 14nm(2018) > 7nm(2020-2021) > 3nm(2023)

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Chinese SMIC to Start 7nm R&D This Year

China-based pure-play foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) will start R&D for 7nm process technology later in 2017, according to company CEO Tzu-Yin Chiu.



Chiu said that the China-based foundry has in recent years put increased focus on advance-node technologies with annual R&D expenses accounting for as high as 12-13% of revenues. SMIC spent nearly US$2.7 billion in 2016 capex which was relatively high compared to previous years levels, Chiu indicated.

SMIC is developing advanced-node technologies with Huawei and nano-electronics research institute Imec, Chiu noted. The foundry is also working with many IC design service providers including Brite Semiconductor, Cadence Design Systems, Synopsys, ARM and Mentor Graphics, and is partnering with equipment and materials suppliers such as Applied Materials, Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC), ASML, Shin-Etsu Handotai and Sumco.

As for the backend, SMIC is teaming up with Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology (JCET), and the pair has set up a joint venture to provide a more complete supply chain for advanced-node manufacturing, Chiu said. Besides, SMIC is looking to further expand its 12-inch lines.

SMIC also plans to roll out 40ULP process technology (IoT devices) later in 2017.



Stop babbling

Yangtze River Storage 3D NAND flash development on track

Claire Sung, Taipei; Jessie Shen, DIGITIMES [Wednesday 15 March 2017]

Yangtze River Storage Technology's (YMTC) development of 3D NAND flash technology is well on track, and equipment for the production of 3D NAND chips will be installed at its fab in the first quarter of 2018, said company CEO Simon Yang.

YMTC is engaged in the development of 32-layer 3D NAND flash chips, which will be in full production in 2019, according to Yang. The company aims to catch up with the world's leading memory vendors, in terms of technology(READ 64/128 layer NAND flash chip), by 2020, Yang noted.

NAND flash demand is set to grow robustly driven by cloud computing and smart terminals, Yang said. Meanwhile, the China market has huge potential for growth, Yang indicated.

Both the DRAM or NAND flash market sectors are being dominated by a few key players, Yang identified. YMTC is looking to break the market dominance held by these few companies, said Yang, adding that the company's entry is to bring healthy competition within the industry.

China consumes as high as 55% of the total memory capacity. With the strong domestic demand, and financial support from China's central government, YMTC should be able to enhance its competitiveness against the current major memory players, Yang said.

YMTC is committed to developing its own technology which is critical to its long-term success, Yang noted. Making acquisitions or strategic investments is another approach for the company to grow its business, Yang said.

My friend I wish China the best, and will celebrate China's successes.

But the only religion that I follow is of facts, rationality.

Many previous Chinese efforts have promised a lot, and delivered a lot less.

SMIC is already itself an example. SMIC is a public company whose finances are open. 28 nm contributes a miniscule amount to their revenues. And there are regular rumours and reports that there 28 nm isn't working well.

The other thing is that I have seen no technological expertise of YMTC till now. Not even any significant patent filings, when its peers have literally thousands of patents filed in the international arena.

Finally, only the bottom line specs are not all.

I am not an electronic engineer, but from the best I know, there are thousands of other specs needed for good mass reliable production of chips.

One more thing I would like to say is that, very few state sponsored enterprises have actually taken wings in terms of having a research base.

A prime example is Sinopec, a behemoth in petrochemicals, yet sorely dependant on foreign companies for technology.

 

[Shotgunner51]

No significant M&A would happen because no one is going to sell you any significant technology.

Let's start case by case:

Fabs: TSMC, Samsung, Intel, global foundries, UMC, none of these are gonna be sold. Period. They are proved national assets.

IC design: Intel, Qualcomm, Nvidia, amd, mediatek, no one is going to be sold.
Not event the Singaporean ones, because most of their operations are in US, which would just block asset sales like aixtron.

Memory: even a dying firm like micron was blocked. No Chance with Samsung, sk hynix, Toshiba.
Incidentally Toshiba has already been told to sell to some non Chinese or Taiwanese firms.

Screen: Samsung, LG not being sold.

Glass: corning or Asahi not being sold

I can keep going on and on.

In fact China has done some noticeable blunders with acquisitions

That Singaporean company, handling back end assembly, that was bought at a premium to its market value, is now on the verge of collapse.

So far no significant outbound M&A on IC (not counting Hua Capital's acquisition of Omnivision) has happened yet however as I have mentioned, Mainland funds are actively seeking targets. Check the word "seeking". Will they get any deals? That's an unknown.

Among targets, there is blatantly nothing called "national assets", 100% in private sector. Highly competitive firms with strong shareholder backing are excluded from top priorities e.g. TSMC, UMC, Samsung, SK Hynix, LG, Mediateck, Qualcomm, Intel. Why Tohshiba IC business is possible? Because parent company needs liquidity by selling assets. Why Globalfoundries is possible? It's owned by a financial institution (Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Investment, ATIC) who trade assets for a living. Sources already said ATIC may sell the firm to Hua Capital though no deal confirmed yet, try quote sources saying otherwise.
http://wccftech.com/globalfoundries-rumored-to-be-acquired-by-the-chinese/

 

[Bussard Ramjet]

So far no significant outbound M&A on IC (not counting Hua Capital's acquisition of Omnivision) has happened yet however as I have mentioned, Mainland funds are actively seeking targets. Check the word "seeking". Will they get any deals? That's an unknown.

Among targets, there is blatantly nothing called "national assets", 100% in private sector. Highly competitive firms with strong shareholder backing are excluded from top priorities e.g. TSMC, UMC, Samsung, SK Hynix, LG, Mediateck, Qualcomm, Intel. Why Tohshiba IC business is possible? Because parent company needs liquidity by selling assets. Why Globalfoundries is possible? It's owned by a financial institution (Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Investment, ATIC) who trade assets for a living. Sources already said ATIC may sell the firm to Hua Capital though no deal confirmed yet, try quote sources saying otherwise.
http://wccftech.com/globalfoundries-rumored-to-be-acquired-by-the-chinese/

My friend.

I have no doubt that the shareholders will be willing to sell.
Not only for troubled assets like Toshiba's IC business and Global Foundries as you so rightly pointed out, but I would argue that given the right money, even companies like TSMC, MediaTek, and other competitive firms.

In fact, MediaTek CEO is on record saying that Mainland investment in IC should be allowed. In fact he is even enthusiastic about merging Speadtrum and Mediatek, because the combined entity can take on Qualcomm.

Similarly, at one point Marvell Technologies was in talk with Datang to sell, but seeing so many deals stopped, they stopped negotiations.

So the regulatory authorities would stop any sales.

They have stopped sales of Micron, Western Digital, Aixtron, Philips LED business.

And these above are actually very small companies if you look at them in their own fields, and compared to massive assets like Toshiba Memory.

 

[Shotgunner51]

So the regulatory authorities would stop any sales.

They have stopped sales of Micron, Western Digital, Aixtron, Philips LED business.

And these above are actually very small companies if you look at them in their own fields, and compared to massive assets like Toshiba Memory.

M&A of these smaller targets were blocked by regulatory authorities, which was exactly what I mentioned about Globalfoundries in post #3 on top of objection from Samsung:

 

[zeronet]

Many previous Chinese efforts have promised a lot, and delivered a lot less.

sounds like u r talking about 'make in ixxxa'

SMIC is a company making money, big money actually. that means it is healthy, rather sustainable. it is the No 5 to announce 7nm roadmap in this money burning game, after Intel tsmc samsung globalfoundries. fewer and fewer players will be in this game. next collapsed one will be globalfoundries I believe, with its more than $2 billion loss in 2016. technology is always not the most important factor. the market is.

 

[Shotgunner51]

And the biggest problem is that I track ip filings, and Tsinghua uni group, or any of its subsidiaries like Yangtze storage, spreadtrum, and others don't even appear on the list.

Tsinghua University owns the IP, Tsinghua Uni commercially operates, heard of IUR structure?

A prime example is Sinopec, a behemoth in petrochemicals, yet sorely dependant on foreign companies for technology.

Talking about IP filings, Sinopec (China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation) ranked #19 in global Top 100 of IP filings. Other than SGCC (State Grid), which energy company is above that?

https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/un-w...global-ranking-of-171-countries.462744/page-2

 

[Bussard Ramjet]

M&A of these smaller targets were blocked by regulatory authorities, which was exactly what I mentioned about Globalfoundries in post #3 on top of objection from Samsung:

View attachment 387204​

Exactly. Agreed.

sounds like u r talking about 'make in ixxxa'

SMIC is a company making money, big money actually. that means it is healthy, rather sustainable. it is the No 5 to announce 7nm roadmap in this money burning game, after Intel tsmc samsung globalfoundries. fewer and fewer players will be in this game. next collapsed one will be globalfoundries I believe, with its more than $2 billion loss in 2016. technology is always not the most important factor. the market is.

No my friend technology is the most important factor, at least in foundry business, apart from efficiency etc.

Global Foundries actually runs more on a form of transistors called FD-SOI, unlike Samsung/Intel/TSMC which use FINFET.

FINFET is more in demand compared to FD-SOI.

Also, let's see, @cirr has quoted text saying that SMIC will commercialize 14/16nm next year. We'll see.

What I will agree with you is that SMIC is run by some extremely capable people, and is a good company.

The other good thing is that it is a public company, hence it releases all stats. These released stats reveal that its 28 nm process has not found many takers.

Tsinghua University owns the IP, Tsinghua Uni commercially operates, heard of IUR structure?


Talking about IP filings, Sinopec (China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation) ranked #19 in global Top 100 of IP filings. Other than SGCC (State Grid), which energy company is above that?

View attachment 387208
https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/un-w...global-ranking-of-171-countries.462744/page-2

Point 1

Tsinghua University has pretty much nothing to do with this memory and semiconductor foray, apart from providing skilled engineers, which it could have anyways provided.
Tsinghua University owns no patents regarding these processes.

Point 2

I know man that you are big on domestic filings. But I don't really consider domestic filings to be legit, specially in China. I know we disagree on this, we have talked before.

If you look at filings with WIPO via PCT, Sinopec is nowhere to be seen. Similarly, if you look at patents filed in US and Europe and Japan and China; which is the gold standard for filing patents apart from PCT, even there Sinopec is not visible.

I know you consider domestic filings to be equally valid a proof of innovation, but I'm sorry, I don't. And I must say, that I sincerely believe that I am right.

According to China's patent filings, it files more than 2-3 times compared to US, when no other indicator actually points to a Chinese lead in innovation, be it in R&D expenditure, Science Publications and Citations, etc.

 

[zeronet]

Exactly. Agreed.



No my friend technology is the most important factor, at least in foundry business, apart from efficiency etc.

Global Foundries actually runs more on a form of transistors called FD-SOI, unlike Samsung/Intel/TSMC which use FINFET.

FINFET is more in demand compared to FD-SOI.

Also, let's see, @cirr has quoted text saying that SMIC will commercialize 14/16nm next year. We'll see.

What I will agree with you is that SMIC is run by some extremely capable people, and is a good company.

The other good thing is that it is a public company, hence it releases all stats. These released stats reveal that its 28 nm process has not found many takers.

no. globalfoundries keeps pouring money in finfet, not only in soi, which they inherited from ibm.
as I said, technology is man created, and can be obtained by many ways, but market resource is the really scarce one, cannot be man-made. you have a strong market, u have solid financial funding, you have smart heads crazy for the success, sooner or later, you will be in good shape finally. all is driven by a strong market.

 

[Shotgunner51]

no other indicator actually points to a Chinese lead in innovation

Because there is no other raw stats indicator that's credible.

R&D expenditure

The terms expenditure literally means expenditure, not output, not results.

Science Publications and Citations

You mean publications in English.
In fact the main obstacle of PCT is also language, most patents before entering PCT are written in Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Patent applications in those languages accounted for some 55% of worldwide filings in 2014. To facilitate translation, WIPO has developed a translation machine based on artificial intelligence that outperforms any other technology for translating the complex language used in patents, handing innovators around the world the highest-quality service yet available for accessing information on new technologies. WIPO has initially “trained” the new technology to translate Chinese, Japanese and Korean patent documents into English.
http://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2016/article_0014.html
http://www.ag-ip-news.com/news.aspx?id=41081&lang=en