YMTC did a supply chain audit and has worked to remove as many risky suppliers as possible. As to how well that worked it depends on what they found, what they could do, and what is missing.
Chinese semiconductor industry
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
- Start date
- Status
Question is, Does China have complete capability to sustain semiconductor industry end-2-end? Assuming that nothing can be imported at all.
I think YMTC is far better shielded from sanctions than Huawei because NAND does not require EUV.
I agree YMTC is in a far better situation than Huawei for 2 reasons:
1) Huawei without chips cannot make hardware products, and cannot make revenues on them. A banning of equipment on YMTC instead would impact its expansion capacity but not its current revenues. It is like to block someone from fueling his car, he will stop shortly after. Or block someone to buy a new car. He will still go with the old one.
2) To stop advanced foundries from supplying Huawei it has been a KO punch: there is nothing in the short term that Huawei, not a IC manufacturer, can do to workaround this. In the case of banning equipment sell to YMTC, it is far from clear if local manufacturers are not able to replace AMAT and Lam research. Maybe they are not market leaders, but they could provide some viable alternative, considering also that, as I said before, time frames are longer in this case.
It means US will not ban YMTC?
Well, I would not hold my breath. If I would be US administrator I would probably ban anyhow, but with a second objective: to force Chinese equipment manufacturers out of the international arena (I think this is a much more improtant target in the long term). The logic is this: US prohibits to supply YMTC, local manufacturers very probably supply YMTC anyhow, US bans local manufacturers from selling in international markets, for instance by treating their international customers not to buy Chinese equipment.
Half of that "consumed by China" is exported in finished electronics
China can always import from its ecosystem of relatively safe suppliers, like Russia, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, etc. Raising the scientific and technical capability of these countries would be good for China.
I don't think it's a problem to reveal the Chinese supply chain. In the short term, they don't have enough capacity to cover the domestic need. If Chinese market is really that large, then it really doesn't matter if they don't have access to the US market. And more importantly, banning Chinese suppliers would be a great moment of advertising for these firms. It would legitimize their technology.
China will be using it's technological leadership to promote power around the world in the future. There will be plenty of countries that would love to get help from Chinese companies to set up local production of chips.
Xinhuazhang Research Institute was established, and over 100 million yuan was invested to build the next-generation EDA 2.0 research highland.
EDA (integrated circuit design tool) intelligent software and system leading company Xinhuazhang Technology announced the establishment of the Xinhuazhang Research Institute. Shen Changxiang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, was appointed as the honorary president, and Mao Junfa, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was invited to serve as the chief expert consultant. In the next three years, Xinhuazhang plans to invest more than 100 million yuan to build a strategic advantage in talent and technological innovation. The institute will aim to study the next-generation EDA 2.0 methodologies and technologies.
- Status