Chinese semiconductor industry

european_guy said:

Sorry to send another post on the same topic, I won't insist further.

I agree Chinese equipment manufacturers should focus on 28nm, that would already be a huge success. The last one to have all the supply chain in house was US in the '70-'80, so it is at least 40 years that nobody is able to do that.

But I'd just would like to highlight that there is a whole emerging semiconductor design industry in China that currently (not in the future) already requires better nodes. For instance China is at the forefront of AI and especially AI devoted to autonomous driving. China is at the forefront of cloud computing, China is at the forefront of smartphone's base-band processing (CPU + MODEM chip).

If for some reason someone (the usual one) decides that TSMC and Samsung cannot produce 7nm nodes or better for Chinese customers, this means that China suddenly, from one day to the other, is cut out from the most important technology of our near-mid future. This would be a devastating blow, considering that in these technology, like autonomous driving and EV vehicles, China is currently already leader or among the leaders. This is not a remote possibility, US is already actively working on it:

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Please note, these are not fields in which China is catching up like in semiconductor manufacturing. These are fields in which China is at the forefront now (although at the design level, not at manufacturer level). To be stopped for 5 years it means to start again from behind and loose all the first-mover big advantage that China has today.

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european_guy said:

Sorry to send another post on the same topic, I won't insist further.

I agree Chinese equipment manufacturers should focus on 28nm, that would already be a huge success. The last one to have all the supply chain in house was US in the '70-'80, so it is at least 40 years that nobody is able to do that.

But I'd just would like to highlight that there is a whole emerging semiconductor design industry in China that currently (not in the future) already requires better nodes. For instance China is at the forefront of AI and especially AI devoted to autonomous driving. China is at the forefront of cloud computing, China is at the forefront of smartphone's base-band processing (CPU + MODEM chip).

If for some reason someone (the usual one) decides that TSMC and Samsung cannot produce 7nm nodes or better for Chinese customers, this means that China suddenly, from one day to the other, is cut out from the most important technology of our near-mid future. This would be a devastating blow, considering that in these technology, like autonomous driving and EV vehicles, China is currently already leader or among the leaders. This is not a remote possibility, US is already actively working on it:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Please note, these are not fields in which China is catching up like in semiconductor manufacturing. These are fields in which China is at the forefront now (although at the design level, not at manufacturer level). To be stopped for 5 years it means to start again from behind and loose all the first-mover big advantage that China has today.

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FairAndUnbiased said:

None of those requires 7 nm chips though as the big advantage of 7 nm or less is their power consumption. The peak performance regardless of energy spend has not improved much since about 14-28 nm. This is understandable as in 7 nm chips quite a bit of the chip is actually dead "dark silicon" that can't be turned on. But for automotive, server, etc. you don't care too much about power efficiency, since the power is negligible compared to actually driving or you're plugged into the grid. It matters most for mobile.

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tokenanalyst said:

Worldwide IC wafer capacity at the end of 2021 was 21.6 million 200mm-equivalent wafers per month, with fabs in China having the capacity to process 3.5 million.

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China’s share of capacity has increased one percentage point in each of the last two years and a total of seven points since 2011, when the country accounted for just 9% of all IC wafer capacity.
A report published by the SIA and Boston Consulting Group in 2021 showed that the cost of building and operating a fab in China is lower than in any other nation. As a result, fab capacity is expanding faster in China than anywhere else.

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Hyper said:

The bad thing is that half of the capacity belongs to foreign companies.

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BlackWindMnt said:

This year should be really interesting regarding apple and Intel both having access to TSMC 3nm if im not mistaken. It will really show if apple is really such a good designer or just had first movers advantage.

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huemens said:

Recently there was news of Intel hiring the engineer who designed Apple's M1 chip.

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