US can dictate what TSMC can sell to china whether there is an Arizona FAB or not. I wont be surprised if US will exercise this option soon.
Chinese semiconductor industry
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
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Then TSMC will dream of a day when the Chinese EUVL emerged. It's funny the Taiwanese are waiting for the Chinese to liberate them from the Americans...lol
they should not get into stuff like that until their core national security demand can be addressed first.
Huawei should use the 14 nm and then the 7 nm fabs to first produce the server chips, the AI chips and the smartphone CPUs. Until they can get enough fabs into production, they need to focus on ramping production for the chips they really need. At a very minimum, they should get Kirin/Kunpeng chips back into production.
And once they can first restore their previous chip production that got cut off by TSMC sanction, then they need to get into the computer/laptop CPU market.
If TSMC is having trouble even building a 5 nm fab in Arizona, what makes you think they can do a 3nm fab there when the demand is down? They are not going to allow TSMC to sell 5/7 nm chips to China for a long long time. American politicians don't move that quickly. They will still be fighting to block ASML DUVs from China long after Chinese DUVs are in mass production.
No they won't. If even the presence of mainland 7 nm/7 nm+ process is going to take a large chunk of the market from them, what do you think will happen when SMIC also has access to EUVs?
As I said before, Taiwanese economy has become a single industry economy. There are significant risk to that when your main employer suddenly loses 25% of its revenue. That means a lot of empty fabs and machines sitting around with no orders.
Give another 3 years and we will see the full effect of this sanction. US government has now just pushed all the tech companies in China to seek for domestic only solutions.
Indeed Taiwanese people could be a little bit bolder already now considering that they get the super-top-elite US semiconductor firms by the balls (including Apple) and that US needs them for their geopolitical games with China.
The official narrative is that Taiwan needs US protection, but is very true the opposite: if Taiwan goes against US it would be a total disaster for US in the Indo-Pacific geopolitical theater. So US cannot afford to arm-twist Taiwan too much, making ineffective their main bred-and-butter policy tool.
The real question is what is the real independence of current Taiwan administration?
It baffles me, China is reluctant to Tit for Tat policy. NVidia and AMD makes most of their money from China. If they don’t sell high end chips, then simply ban their low end chips too. China is basically funding Western chips development by procuring low end chips while their own domestic chips industries suffer. When money dries up, western companies need to shed workforce/high end research to keep cost down and make shareholders happy.
Technological diversion is also another potential gamble if you want to catch up to the front runner. Just hope western tech ecosystem plateau and your alternative path is the most sensible path forward. Just like Huwaei did with 5G while most western nation were stuck with 4G. Technological decoupling is a good alternative and Chinese economy is more than enough to sustain/support these endevour. I was really cheering for Huwawei when they talked about harmony OS, IOT etc but they end up forking android.
Technological diversion is also another potential gamble if you want to catch up to the front runner. Just hope western tech ecosystem plateau and your alternative path is the most sensible path forward. Just like Huwaei did with 5G while most western nation were stuck with 4G. Technological decoupling is a good alternative and Chinese economy is more than enough to sustain/support these endevour. I was really cheering for Huwawei when they talked about harmony OS, IOT etc but they end up forking android.
This is because China does not want decoupling.
I doubt console gaming will still be relevant by the end of the decade.
Handheld, tablet, and cloud gaming will devour their market share.
Its understandable not to decouple in broader economic sense but Tech sector is different. Tech sector is like climbling a ladder. West constructed the ladder and they are way up while China is climbing the same ladder 3/4 steps behind. Ladder is narrow and two people can’t climb together at some point. Not only this west is destroying the steps below so that China can’t climb at all. So china has 2 choice either make your own ladder, i.e Tech decoupling or China can push/throw the person infront of him, which is war with western world. Just my 2cent.
Is the core issue really about decoupling? Seems like to me that the main issue is production. Domestic firms are in the process of ramping up production and it takes time to scale up the necessary materials, equipment, etc.
Going tit for tat retaliation right now or a couple years ago would have harmed the economy. It also would likely do a better job than the US ever could at slowing down the development of China semi industry.
Going tit for tat retaliation right now or a couple years ago would have harmed the economy. It also would likely do a better job than the US ever could at slowing down the development of China semi industry.
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