Chinese semiconductor industry

sndef888 said:

Someone on reddit claimed very confidently that China won't be able to create an EUV machine this decade, and will have to spend hundreds of billions and decades to catch up, that semiconductors isn't like building normal factories blah blah

Looking at the facts I'd be inclined to agree with him. 28nm DUV is only coming out next year, not to mention all the other aspects dominated by the US like EDA software.

Realistically, when can China catch up to the west in semiconductor tech? Heck, is it possible it never catches up at all?

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Calm down. No one spent hundreds of billions of dollars on EUV and catch-up growth is faster and easier than pushing the frontier. 28nm DUV coming out this year (substantial circumstantial evidence) means that all you have to do is keep iterating optics and light sources. The aspects are dominated by the US because of first-mover advantages, not because the US has magic physics no one else has. The US has changed the political circumstances and thus the macro expectations from which tech development happens. And finally, a transistor can only get so small. 1 atom thick at least (though obviously more since you need a gate, source AND drain). The frontier is probably hit sometime in the early 2020s, China reaches it in the late 2020s

If China manage to build 28nm DUV, just give heavy subside to foundary company. Even 28nm DUV not competitive can offsets with subsidy. China can make new Law that's only affected by US sanctions eligible to get subsidy. It will give incentive to defy US order.

Kazuo Ken said:

Ah, Of course I know him. I even have made a comments toward that answer. Under the name Lim Abdullah. That's me in Quora. Check it out.

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@Kazuo Ken bro welcome to SDF, I'm glad more of you had join this forum.

From what I know domestic 28nm DUV equipment is coming to few(3?) customers on Q4 for risk-production and debugging. And in next year (Q2?) it is going to enter full production

@WTAN Can you confirm if this schedule is correct?

SleepyStudent said:

Calm down. No one spent hundreds of billions of dollars on EUV and catch-up growth is faster and easier than pushing the frontier. 28nm DUV coming out this year (substantial circumstantial evidence) means that all you have to do is keep iterating optics and light sources. The aspects are dominated by the US because of first-mover advantages, not because the US has magic physics no one else has. The US has changed the political circumstances and thus the macro expectations from which tech development happens. And finally, a transistor can only get so small. 1 atom thick at least (though obviously more since you need a gate, source AND drain). The frontier is probably hit sometime in the early 2020s, China reaches it in the late 2020s

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I would like make correction here, current 5nm tech isn't actual node. Its marketing gimmicks. Current 5nm transistor gate pitch TSMC is 48nm and interconnect pitch is 28nm.. is long way from 3nm limit.

Current chip making change their standard just to keep on moore law alive.

As we know 28nm DUV mostly using 193nm wave lengths. That tools manage to bring down to 7nm(brand) tech. So we can sure EUV tools (13.5nm) can bring chip to picometer (brand) in the future because in theory EUV light is smaller more than 10 times smaller than DUV.

gadgetcool5 said:

Maybe a link to the post and the arguments contain therein would be useful @sndef888

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Kazuo Ken said:

What is the sub reddit that post came from?

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https://www.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/mmc83k/_/gtunmir
It's this one if I remember correctly. Basically he's saying China is so far behind in every aspect that achieving chip independence is impossible, that there are systemic issues in the tech industry that make it impossible to catch up etc.

mderfox said:

I would like make correction here, current 5nm tech isn't actual node. Its marketing gimmicks. Current 5nm transistor gate pitch TSMC is 48nm and interconnect pitch is 28nm.. is long way from 3nm limit.

Current chip making change their standard just to keep on moore law alive.

As we know 28nm DUV mostly using 193nm wave lengths. That tools manage to bring down to 7nm(brand) tech. So we can sure EUV tools (13.5nm) can bring chip to picometer (brand) in the future because in theory EUV light is smaller more than 10 times smaller than DUV.

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I'm aware that it's really just how to manipulate MTr/mm^2. A lower NA optics though means that even with a 193i laser, you have lower resolution

sndef888 said:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/mmc83k/_/gtunmir
It's this one if I remember correctly. Basically he's saying China is so far behind in every aspect that achieving chip independence is impossible, that there are systemic issues in the tech industry that make it impossible to catch up etc.

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Of course, and China was not ready for the pandemic, and it was impossible for them to develop a successful vaccine fast, and their military equipment is outdated, and they copy everything, etc. You are believing some random Westerner that can't speak Chinese, has Western brain worms, and gets all its information about China from Western propaganda. What did you expect?

sndef888 said:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/mmc83k/_/gtunmir
It's this one if I remember correctly. Basically he's saying China is so far behind in every aspect that achieving chip independence is impossible, that there are systemic issues in the tech industry that make it impossible to catch up etc.

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Yes mate. Reddit is obviously a good source. Just check the World News subreddit China posts for quality China content....

Maybe you are also following Gordon Chang?

I can tell you that 2021 is 100% the year that China will finally collapse

The US banned 5-Axis machine tools from being sold to China for the same reason you hear for semiconductors today thinking China couldn't make them themselves. China then made their own 5-Axis machine tools and killed the international market for US 5-Axis machine tools. That's how chips are going to turn out. There was an earlier discussion in this thread pointing to technologies the US tried to stop China from acquiring and then China developed them soon after. Remember how China was going to get its first AWACS type aircraft from Israel and the US stopped it from happening and literally within a couple years China made their own. Or how about Galileo? China invested money into it but the Europeans barred Chinese access to some aspects that they freely gave access to countries that didn't invest any money. Then China came out with their own GPS system and launched it before Galileo. How about apps? Remember how they said the future was apps and China was just hardware. Now the US is so afraid, they have to ban Chinese apps because they've become so popular. But somehow semi-conductors are going to be different. I'm sure they said that for everything else before too.