China builds its first GPU on 6nm process – NVIDIA RTX 4060 performance

As it turned out, something interesting is happening in the world of video cards not only in the laboratories of Nvidia, AMD, or Intel. Chinese startup Lisuan Technology reported announced the successful launch of its first in-house GPU, the G100, based on the TrueGPU architecture. This graphics card is the first in China to be produced on a 6-nanometer process technology. Although it is still a long way from the store shelves, the event is of great significance — not only for the company itself, but also for the entire Chinese industry.

Lisuan Technology

Lisuan Technology is a young Chinese company founded in 2021 by industry veterans with over 25 years of experience in Silicon Valley. It has become part of a new wave of players in China’s GPU sector, along with Moore Threads (2020) and Biren (2019). These companies emerged as a response to China’s need for technological independence — especially after restrictions on access to modern chips.

The G100 GPU is based on a proprietary TrueGPU architecture. Unlike some other Chinese companies, Lisuan does not license other people’s designs, but creates everything from scratch. This is a serious statement, given the complexity of modern GPUs.

What you need to know about the G100

Lisuan Technology claims that the G100 is manufactured using a 6-nanometer process, although it does not say who the actual manufacturer is. Due to US export restrictions, it is definitely not Samsung or TSMC. Most likely, it is a Chinese SMIC fab, which already produces 6nm chips for Huawei (in particular, for their Ascend 920 AI processor).

There is no official specification yet, but there are rumors that the G100 can show performance at the level of GeForce RTX 4060. This sounds very ambitious, given that the RTX 4060 —, although not the top of the line, is a very strong representative of the previous generation of Nvidia.

The G100 is expected to have enough video memory, moderate power consumption, and support for all key APIs: DirectX 12, Vulkan 1.3, OpenGL 4.6, and OpenGL 3.0. If this is true, we can talk about a potentially decent gaming GPU.

The development of G100 started back in 2021. Lisuan planned to bring the chip to the market in 2023, but financial difficulties almost drove the company into bankruptcy. It was only thanks to an emergency injection of $27.7 million from the parent company Dongxin Semiconductor that the company managed to continue working.

In early 2024, the fab started producing the first G100 chips and successfully passed the launch. Lisuan is now focusing on hardware and software verification, as well as driver optimization.

What’s next?

The G100 chip is currently in test production, a major technical and financial milestone. Lisuan hopes to release the first limited batches in the third quarter of this year. However, mass production is likely to start only in 2026.

Competing with Nvidia or AMD at the very first step is unrealistic. But if the G100 shows stable performance, even at the RTX 4060 level, it will be a huge achievement for China.

Recently, China has been trying to reduce its technological dependence on the West. Recently, Xiaomi introduced own powerful mobile chip XRING O1, as well as plans release more affordable versions and proprietary modems.