Chinese semiconductor industry

[broadsword]

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I don't know what you are trying to tell me with that site. FTC's mission:

Protecting consumers and competition by preventing anticompetitive, deceptive, and unfair business practices through law enforcement, advocacy, and education without unduly burdening legitimate business activity.

So you think they have been acting fairly to China with their trade practices?

 

[krautmeister]

If the EDA nich is so small, how can Synopsys support 5000 programmers?

Besides, an EDA tool doesn't need all the features right away. If it only does the most important things, that will be good enough for now. The revenue from doing these jobs will fund development of the remaining non-essential features.

When I say the EDA niche, I was referring to the EDA programming sector within China who work for China based EDA companies. They are basically competing with a global triopoly (Cadence, Synopsys, Mentor Graphics) who each have thousands of programmers while the entire EDA software industry in China numbers around 300 technical staff. The situation with EDA in China is similar to the situation in the aerospace sector where there are only 11000 employees at COMAC of which a few thousand are researchers while Boeing and Airbus have over 130000+ employees each with tens of thousands of researchers, not assembly line or maintenance workers. Alot of China pundits often claim China will quickly catch up in this or that technology sector just by brute force investment because they look at how big China is as a nation while forgetting that in certain specific sectors of China, there remain alot of chokehold bottlenecks where China is still at the infancy / juvenile stage of those industries.

This is a major reason why China has struggled mightily in certain industries despite pouring many billions into certain areas because they haven't reached critical mass in those areas. China just so happened to reach critical mass in a tonne of industries during 2005-2020 which coincides perfectly from when Jiang Zemin/Zhu Rongji tenure began the dramatic ramp up of China's university enrollment from the late 1990s.

 

[latenlazy]

When I say the EDA niche, I was referring to the EDA programming sector within China who work for China based EDA companies. They are basically competing with a global triopoly (Cadence, Synopsys, Mentor Graphics) who each have thousands of programmers while the entire EDA software industry in China numbers around 300 technical staff. The situation with EDA in China is similar to the situation in the aerospace sector where there are only 11000 employees at COMAC of which a few thousand are researchers while Boeing and Airbus have over 130000+ employees each with tens of thousands of researchers, not assembly line or maintenance workers. Alot of China pundits often claim China will quickly catch up in this or that technology sector just by brute force investment because they look at how big China is as a nation while forgetting that in certain specific sectors of China, there remain alot of chokehold bottlenecks where China is still at the infancy / juvenile stage of those industries.

This is a major reason why China has struggled mightily in certain industries despite pouring many billions into certain areas because they haven't reached critical mass in those areas. China just so happened to reach critical mass in a tonne of industries during 2005-2020 which coincides perfectly from when Jiang Zemin/Zhu Rongji tenure began the dramatic ramp up of China's university enrollment from the late 1990s.

China’s employment for certain high tech sectors is small not because the talent or money isn’t there, but because the businesses aren’t there. You have to secure the business first before you recruit the talent. Otherwise you’re just throwing money for people to do things that don’t make money and can’t sustain themselves. And as it so happens establishing a business is more than just reaching a certain level of technical performance.

 

[krautmeister]

If you train on one EDA software you’re training on all of them. If anything, you want your Chinese students to use American EDA so they know what features they need to inform your domestic EDA developments.

You don't need the entire cadre of computer science graduating class of 2021 being force fed American software that is being sanctioned for China usage. All that is needed are the technical staff at China's EDA software companies to study those leading edge global EDA softwares.

The primary reason why the leading global EDA providers of full design flow software can do what they do is because they work closely with the leading fabs and equipment makers. This is why they have literal monopolies in leading edge processes <=7nm and why they will always be the leaders. China now has the opportunity to break that triopoly (Cadence, Synopsis, Mentor Graphics) because they will soon have their own end-to-end semiconductor equipment solutions that their own EDA companies can work directly with. It helps alot that American legislators are so stupid as to harm their own monopolies by incentivizing and dare I say, FORCING China to create their own alternatives. LOL

 

[Tyler]

China’s employment for certain high tech sectors is small not because the talent or money isn’t there, but because the businesses aren’t there. You have to secure the business first before you recruit the talent. Otherwise you’re just throwing money for people to do things that don’t make money and can’t sustain themselves. And as it so happens establishing a business is more than just reaching a certain level of technical performance.

Some of these industries should be classified as essential as national security. Funding from government should be provided, much like military technology, which is not profitable, but needs the funding for national security reasons.

 

[krautmeister]

China’s employment for certain high tech sectors is small not because the talent or money isn’t there, but because the businesses aren’t there. You have to secure the business first before you recruit the talent. Otherwise you’re just throwing money for people to do things that don’t make money and can’t sustain themselves. And as it so happens establishing a business is more than just reaching a certain level of technical performance.

Touche, and that's why China's industrial policy is so scary to American free-market liberalism. The chicken-and-egg situation is how American policy keeps countries down. Competition is all fair and good only when it is actually fair. When it is used in the name of free markets, it's basically suppression of competition. Companies like Airbus were only able to compete against Boeing after decades of government subsidy and now they are surpassing Boeing. If we're talking about non-essential, non-strategic industries, there is that point, but when we're talking about actual national security, things like EDA software, semicon equipment, aerospace, anything military related, etc. have to be protected and subsidized.

 

[caudaceus]

You don't need the entire cadre of computer science graduating class of 2021 being force fed American software that is being sanctioned for China usage. All that is needed are the technical staff at China's EDA software companies to study those leading edge global EDA softwares.

The primary reason why the leading global EDA providers of full design flow software can do what they do is because they work closely with the leading fabs and equipment makers. This is why they have literal monopolies in leading edge processes <=7nm and why they will always be the leaders. China now has the opportunity to break that triopoly (Cadence, Synopsis, Mentor Graphics) because they will soon have their own end-to-end semiconductor equipment solutions that their own EDA companies can work directly with. It helps alot that American legislators are so stupid as to harm their own monopolies by incentivizing and dare I say, FORCING China to create their own alternatives. LOL

Even Cadence invests a Chinese EDA startup founded by a Chinese Cadance employee.

 

[Deleted member 15949]

I don't know what you are trying to tell me with that site. FTC's mission:


So you think they have been acting fairly to China with their trade practices?

No, just that with US anti-trust regulation, "economic competition is good, actually" is part of US macro regulation

 

[latenlazy]

Some of these industries should be classified as essential as national security. Funding from government should be provided, much like military technology, which is not profitable, but needs the funding for national security reasons.

They are being funded, but you’re not going to grow employment share from government support alone. Only commercialization can support the scale for expansive employment share.

You don't need the entire cadre of computer science graduating class of 2021 being force fed American software that is being sanctioned for China usage. All that is needed are the technical staff at China's EDA software companies to study those leading edge global EDA softwares.

The primary reason why the leading global EDA providers of full design flow software can do what they do is because they work closely with the leading fabs and equipment makers. This is why they have literal monopolies in leading edge processes <=7nm and why they will always be the leaders. China now has the opportunity to break that triopoly (Cadence, Synopsis, Mentor Graphics) because they will soon have their own end-to-end semiconductor equipment solutions that their own EDA companies can work directly with. It helps alot that American legislators are so stupid as to harm their own monopolies by incentivizing and dare I say, FORCING China to create their own alternatives. LOL

I didn’t know that if you used foreign software in school you’re going to be locked down to just that one software for the rest of your life. Shocking discovery.

Trying to police what software people use for indigenous support purposes is counterproductive. Chinese students should use whatever software is available to them to let them be most productive, because that’s the best way for them to hone their skills and build their knowledge for what the best practices and features are. The way good software development works is that you need to maintain good feedback loops from your users. The smarter and more skilled your users and the more you collect feedback from them the better your software development is.


If you want to support indigenous efforts support the best way to facilitate overall knowledge building, not jealous exclusions.

 

[krautmeister]

Even Cadence invests a Chinese EDA startup founded by a Chinese Cadance employee.

An interesting factoid is that the majority of recent China EDA startups are former employees of Cadence, Synopsis, Mentor Graphics.