How competitive is it?
Chinese semiconductor industry
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
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Looks like they are trying to compete against AMAT.
Localization in China is also becoming a marketing strategy to take market share from US companies that even some non US companies are probably going to use. I remember that after the Jinhua debacle Tokyo Electron was knocking fab to fab telling executives how unreliable American equipment was and how much better TEL equipment was. LOL.
Your point is noted but I don't think this is an apples to apples comparison. American policy makers have a point. The semiconductor supply chain covers so many STEM fields of expertise that in theory, no individual country should be able to take it all on alone while still being at the cutting edge. I don't think anybody assumes Russia is capable of creating a competitive semiconductor industry, supply chain and all, but everybody assumes it would have no problems with autos, petrochemicals, nuclear plants, military hardware, etc. Building a complete semiconductor supply chain, near the leading edge, is on a different level.
That's what American policy makers are counting on. They believe their tech accomplishments cannot be surpassed without their cooperation. They're gambling that if they can withhold their most advanced technologies and all of their geniuses, that they will be able to stop China dead in its tracks because China alone would never be able to completely catch up, let alone surpass them. I think they're totally focused on China's relatively backward laser interferometers, TEM, O/CD-SEM and other extreme precision machinery to limit their semiconductor advances. This would in turn restrict China's AI, CPU, GPU and Cloud advances, which in turn would restrict their scientific/technological advances in general. That is the only logic that would explain these otherwise self-defeating tech sanctions.
Why do so many here think the tech sanctions will fail? Imo, I think the West are suffering some sort of psychosis that gradually built up through generations of mass brainwashing to the point the bulk of their populations and leadership can no longer accept reality. You see glimmers of rationality here and there, but the at the end of the day, the mass brainwashing works even though everybody knows about fake news. This is my thesis and would explain why their policy makers keep kicking themselves in the balls despite the pain.
The ultimate victory, Intel using Chinese made equipment...lol and I'm seeing it with Leadyo among the first of many.
Jul 8, 2022 — Chinese semiconductor company Leadyo chip today in response to investor questions, said: the current 3nm advanced process process chip test ...
@Jianguo What makes you think semiconductors will be harder to crack than space launch? Or even worse manned space flight.
The reason other countries fell behind in the semiconductor race was lack of critical mass and capital. China has the largest market for semiconductors in the world.
Even the supposed lagging behind of the Soviets in the semi sector, the Soviets were like 5 years behind the US in the sector. The main issue the Soviet block had was lack of investment into consumer products in general. This is certainly not the case for modern China.
The Soviets could make chips which were basically 5 years behind the US. That was good enough for the military sector so they never bothered improving more than that. Because the main focus was on the military, they also never focused on improving manufacturing yields, so their industry was not cost competitive. The main consumer electronics producer in the Soviet block nations was East Germany. East Germany only had 17 million people but because of intense focus on the electronics industry at the state level they had the most competitive consumer electronics industry in the block. They even made their own equipment since they had Zeiss and other companies.
The reason other countries fell behind in the semiconductor race was lack of critical mass and capital. China has the largest market for semiconductors in the world.
Even the supposed lagging behind of the Soviets in the semi sector, the Soviets were like 5 years behind the US in the sector. The main issue the Soviet block had was lack of investment into consumer products in general. This is certainly not the case for modern China.
The Soviets could make chips which were basically 5 years behind the US. That was good enough for the military sector so they never bothered improving more than that. Because the main focus was on the military, they also never focused on improving manufacturing yields, so their industry was not cost competitive. The main consumer electronics producer in the Soviet block nations was East Germany. East Germany only had 17 million people but because of intense focus on the electronics industry at the state level they had the most competitive consumer electronics industry in the block. They even made their own equipment since they had Zeiss and other companies.
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Off Topic but guys… We could have disproved both his comment in less then 10 secs.
“The US is against Putin (
@gelgoog
There's a particularly illustrative example of X-Fab. X-Fab, to my surprise, was located in East Germany and was operational during the Cold War as Kombinat Mikroelektronik Erfurt . It's an old analog fab that's been neglected with little investment, as is typical for old East German companies, but they're still around.
Back when it was still East German, the fab was state of the art. They were producing 1.5 um process on 5 inch (125 mm) wafers in 1990, which was typical of mid 1980's level processes. 200 mm was only introduced in 1992. 1.5 um was introduced in 1982. That is to say, they were maybe 6-8 years behind the leading edge. Or, their relative tech level vs. Intel was just a small bit bigger than SMIC vs. TSMC.
As you might imagine, they did not have access to leading edge western equipment either. This was East Germany, not even the full USSR.
If East Germany could achieve within 6-8 years of the west without their support, what can China do?
The East Germany history is interesting.
In theory you could make your own semiconductor devices or even simple IC devices (if you find a way to get access to photoresist) in your garage with basically stuff that you could buy from Alibaba or Ebay, even a modular cleanroom you could find there. In the same way you could send a balloon to space. But the difficulty increase exponentially with volume and with the shrinking of components. back in the day almost every IC company use to have a leading edge fab, now days is not that common. The Soviet Union was not great making chips in volume, they didn't have the capital intensity for high volume production and most of the good stuff was made for the military that not need a lot of volume. Not the same situation that we have today.
This is true in general but that plot is laughably wrong when it comes to SMIC. They still have AMD on there along with GloFo when GloFo was AMD's entire fab business.
SMIC taped out 28 nm for Qualcomm in 2014.
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