Chinese semiconductor industry

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ansy1968

Brigadier
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So I read this thread on twitter saying that focusing ONLY on smartphone/pc SoC as semiconductor OKR is not a good idea. There are a lot of semiconductor products beyond that and they can be manufactured by indigenously right now.
Hi caudaceus,

Correct, but its an area were the weakness is truly magnified, need to invest now to lessen the huge gap. Right now China is 2 generation behind the leading players, if we follow the twitter advise it will be 3 generation behind by 2022. bridging the gap is a never ending and expensive race.
 

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
Rapprochement is like intellectualizing as China got richer, the more China would reform to the US's liking. It's wishful thinking and they will be just as disappointed. All the sudden the people who accuse China stole everything they have, China doesn't have the blueprints to make it? Rapprochement for what? The trade deficit where their corporations are the ones outsourcing and making all the money? They can't even specify what so it's just a generalization. Rapprochement means unconditional surrender meaning taking over and forcing everyone into Christianity. They literally want Chinese to sign their soul away to the devil.
 

ansy1968

Brigadier
Registered Member
The question why it takes some serious hard hitting by US to wake up China?

Right now China emphasis is complete.domestic made equipments for mature tech.

Well, shouldn't they be prepared even before tech war begin. At least full domestic 45nm tech for military industrial complex, no?

China didn't bother to do that for military industry. What's wrong?
I thought Xi is total self reliant guy.
Hi TD739

The question why it takes some serious hard hitting by US to wake up China?

I'm not a tech expert I can only answer you in a business point of view. The market determine your product, Consumer drive tech,
it doesn't require a national identity, it only demand quality and cheap product. But I'm with you, the gov't is encouraging its domestic drive, it need a good spanking, but it take an outsider to really feel the pain, now everybody is attentive, thanks Trump, you are a verrryyy gooood teacher. But the bottom line is quality, the domestic industry must produce an equivalent or a better one.


China didn't bother to do that for military industry. What's wrong?
I thought Xi is total self reliant guy.


I think China military industrial complex is safe, most of their activity is state secret but rest assure they are well prepared having been sanction decades ago until now. Its state policy to be self sufficient in the matter of state security.
 

caudaceus

Senior Member
Registered Member
Hi caudaceus,

Correct, but its an area were the weakness is truly magnified, need to invest now to lessen the huge gap. Right now China is 2 generation behind the leading players, if we follow the twitter advise it will be 3 generation behind by 2022. bridging the gap is a never ending and expensive race.
There will be only one company (not even one country) that will have the most state of the art semi that is TSMC.
Besides a few challenge ahead
1. Fabrication will meet 1 atom limit. You can't fabricate something smaller than an atom.
2. State of the art chips are too expensive for most chips.
 

TD739

Junior Member
Registered Member
Hi TD739

The question why it takes some serious hard hitting by US to wake up China?

I'm not a tech expert I can only answer you in a business point of view. The market determine your product, Consumer drive tech,
it doesn't require a national identity, it only demand quality and cheap product. But I'm with you, the gov't is encouraging its domestic drive, it need a good spanking, but it take an outsider to really feel the pain, now everybody is attentive, thanks Trump, you are a verrryyy gooood teacher. But the bottom line is quality, the domestic industry must produce an equivalent or a better one.


China didn't bother to do that for military industry. What's wrong?
I thought Xi is total self reliant guy.


I think China military industrial complex is safe, most of their activity is state secret but rest assure they are well prepared having been sanction decades ago until now. Its state policy to be self sufficient in the matter of state security.
Military side is by no means safe. Its beidou chip is based 28nm and using US equipments for production currently. It didn't proactively go the deamerican tech route. I can understand the regular industry didn't do it before the current tech war but the military side also didn't so it is mind boggling

Chinese thought its own chip design is sufficient to be qualified as self independent. Never in million year they anticipate US goes to extreme to enforce foreign companies using US equipments
 
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ansy1968

Brigadier
Registered Member
There will be only one company (not even one country) that will have the most state of the art semi that is TSMC.
Besides a few challenge ahead
1. Fabrication will meet 1 atom limit. You can't fabricate something smaller than an atom.
2. State of the art chips are too expensive for most chips.
Hi caudaceus,

Yes TSMC, I dream that they serve the Han race rather than their Western master. But I really admire them, they are pushing the envelop and its driving SMIC and China tech to up their game. It's up to us to determined to stay in the race to win it or just finishing second as long as we participate.
 

antiterror13

Brigadier
Hi caudaceus,

Correct, but its an area were the weakness is truly magnified, need to invest now to lessen the huge gap. Right now China is 2 generation behind the leading players, if we follow the twitter advise it will be 3 generation behind by 2022. bridging the gap is a never ending and expensive race.

well, 2 generations behind TSMC and maybe Samsung and Intel .. but not behind any other companies in the world, including GloFo
 

antonius123

Junior Member
Registered Member
well, 2 generations behind TSMC and maybe Samsung and Intel .. but not behind any other companies in the world, including GloFo

But Intel has not successfully yet to arrive at 7nm, so now SMIC should be in the third position behind TSMC and Samsung; that is still a good achievement.
 

gelgoog

Brigadier
Registered Member
There are just too many areas for the government to focus on. It is as simple as that. Also China initially had neither the capital nor demand for such products so it did not make large inroads into it. I still remember the talk about Grace Semiconductor and other efforts from way back in Jiang Zemin's time. What a huge flop. But SMIC basically cloned the TSMC business model and has had a lot of success with it.
The military has little demand for semiconductors compared with the civilian market so it is easier for them to acquire what they need on the gray market or even the black market. Also, they do not need to respect patents and other commercial shenanigans. Nor do they need the latest process technology and the smallest transistors. Typically processors like that are not radiation hardened. Remember when the US blocked Intel Xeon CPU sales for Chinese supercomputers? China quickly developed its own CPU designs in response based on the MIPS architecture. Then the US started harassing Chinese commercial companies which made MIPS architecture derived processors like Longsoon. Later Chinese investors purchased Imagination Technologies which held the MIPS patents. Now, I do think it will take way more than 2 years for China to dominate most of the cycle, but quite simply they might not need to do it all.

Already we have heard that Samsung allegedly has built a production line devoid of US equipment just because they expected this after the ZTE and Huawei bans. I don't know if this is true or not but it would go a long way to help existing Chinese designs get to manufacture until China can produce the chips with its own equipment or have its own production lines devoid of US equipment. As for why China spent the money on US equipment in the first place? Well, they had to recycle those dollars somehow, so might as well get something useful out of it. That was the thinking behind it I think. Plus the expectation was this made them less liable to be sanctioned in the first place. But it backfired.

It is important that China invests in equipment from foreign companies which challenge the US sanctions regime as this will make the global semi market spin out of the US's orbit even faster. China needs to manufacture the process inputs by itself as quickly as possible. I think this is even more important than having the machine tools ready first.

China needs to convince the rest of the Asian semiconductor powers that it isn't in their best interest to follow the US into their path to mercantilism. Taiwan basically threw down the towel and sold its memory industry to Micron (US) for peanuts a couple of years back. Probably sour from that. In Japan, Toshiba could have been acquired for peanuts by Western Digital (US), had it not been for Japanese government intervention.

But, like I said way back, the US sanctions and Trump came way too late. China already has most of the technology it needs to develop its own cycle and even if they need to reverse engineer the rest they have the resources to do it. In a decade I doubt we will be talking about this. China has the manpower, the capital, and the will to continue on this path and the US has long since stopped being the leading semiconductor manufacturer. While they still dominate some key technologies I think it is a matter of time until they don't. The fact they dominate EDA software tools is simply driven by the fact most of the advanced chip design is still made in the US. When it isn't the main EDA software tool vendors will change as well. Of course, it isn't enough that China manufactures immersion lithography tools, or even the EUV tools as an example, China needs to have research efforts not only to reach the current state of the art but to get to the step beyond that.

But no, I don't think the step beyond that will be quantum computing, that is a bridge too far still. I expect some other computing architecture to be dominant before that.
 
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ansy1968

Brigadier
Registered Member
But Intel has not successfully yet to arrive at 7nm, so now SMIC should be in the third position behind TSMC and Samsung; that is still a good achievement.
Hi antonius123,antiterror13

Yes, its a great achievement, the problem is if your 2 generation behind and your being sanction, your tech product especially in the high end will be uneconomical. Its a good marketing ploy to introduce your flagship product with all the bell and whistle money can buy, it permeates down your product line and it boost your brand image, That what Huawei had done. like I said before being a generation behind is the target now just to stay in the game. Samsung is behind TSMC especially in 5nm , at least she can use its 7nm tech for its high end spec phone, Huawei doesn't have that luxury.
 
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