Chinese semiconductor industry

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tonyget

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dingyibvs said:
I wouldn't underestimate the value of trailing edge nodes. While value-based marketshare and thus the leading edge nodes is what matters in peace time, trailing edge nodes is what matters when crap hits in the fan. As the Russian sanctions have shown, while their commodity based economy may not be valued much in dollar terms, when the world can't function without your commodity your economy matters a heck a lot more than can be measured in dollars.

The world can function fairly well without <10nm chips, but it can't without the commodity chips. Every electronic item needs them, from your $10 Casio watches to $100 microwaves to $1000 refrigerators to $50k EVs. Also like oil/gas production, even when other countries have the capability to step up production, they won't be able to do it quickly and it's a sector with diminishing returns so people are less willing to invest in them. If China can capture as much of the commodity chip market as Russia did the fossil fuel/agricultural sector in the world, it would be a very potent insurance against blanket sanctions that Russia is facing.
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The defination of "trailing edge" evolves from time to time。Ten years ago 28nm was considered "advanced node"，now it is classified as mature node by industry。What was the most powerful computer 30 years ago is obsolete now and is much weaker than your smartphone processor, In the world of semiconductors nothing is constant，so don't expect you can survive without evolving。

You say “The world can function fairly well without <10nm chips”。Well，it depends on the degree of "fairly well"。Mankind has been living without semiconductor chips for thousands of years already，so yes chips are not necessary for human survival。But Todays world can not function as it is with old chips like those from 1970s， as I said above，chips are constantly evolving including trailing edge nodes。
 
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tokenanalyst

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tonyget said:
The defination of "trailing edge" evolves from time to time。Ten years ago 28nm was considered "advanced node"，now it is classified as mature node by industry。What was the most powerful computer 30 years ago is obsolete now and is much weaker than your smartphone processor, In the world of semiconductors nothing is constant，so don't expect you can survive without evolving。

You say “The world can function fairly well without <10nm chips”。Well，it depends on the degree of "fairly well"。Mankind has been living without semiconductor chips for thousands of years already，so yes chips are not necessary for human survival。But Todays world can not function as it is with old chips like those from 1970s， as I said above，chips are constantly evolving including trailing edge nodes。
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Is more about competitiveness rather than survival. Can a country survive without the leading edge? of course it can. Would that country be competitive? It will affect its power status? That depends in a lot of factors. Only two places in the planet can fab as now the leading edge, SK and Taiwan, neither of those place is a major global power meanwhile continental China was able to innovate their way into exascale computing using a relative older manufacturing process but with a smarter computing architecture. Some industries need the leading edge to lure consumers and stay competitive while other industries no so much. In the case of Russia their power come from their military because most weapons don't need leading edge chips to be effective and the vast amount of resources the that country produce. And in the case of the U.S., they lost the ability to produce the leading edge long time ago but they are still a competitive superpower.

tonyget said:
so don't expect you can survive without evolving。
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Yes you are correct but evolving not necessary means to follow the trend, sometimes evolving could mean innovating out of necessity.
 
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hvpc

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tokenanalyst said:
Yes you are correct but evolving not necessary means to follow the trend, sometimes evolving could mean innovating out of necessity.
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So while we have to buck the trend, this is the general trend that the industry will be working towards. Logic roadmap mapped out 2036ish.
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tokenanalyst

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pbd456 said:
isnt the cost per 100M transistors is going up after 28nm? when they pack more transistors into a chip, who will be able to afford it?
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wafer fabrication and design costs are skyrocketing, the cost per transistors has been decreasing but at a slowing pace as the industry enter the post Moore era. So it looks like geometrical scaling either by vertical scaling and advanced 3d packaging will be the main trend that will drive the industry forward. Although sadly vertical stacked transistors technologies like GAAFET will increase the design costs even more, so using as much AI tools as possible in design could be a requirement to keep cost from reaching stratosphere highs.
 
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