Not sure how accurate this is, but this is apparently a Q&A with a Lam employee that served YMTC and CXMT
There are a few important things he talked about:
- No support from Lam is available for Chinese fabs after October 12th
- All staff have to withdraw and cannot further assist local Chinese fabs. They can't offer replacement or servicing. Which brings up the point that employees from Lam and others are likely to be let go and join local companies. For example, Lam has several hundreds employees helping YMTC.
- So even though Lam can't service YMTC/CXMT anymore, their ex-employees can be hired to do that job. However, updates and spared will not be possible.
- Seems like even for equipment that does not hit the threshold, you'd need to sign an agreement that those equipment will not be used to assist military or other strategic areas. There is no way SMIC/YMTC/CXMT would sign those agreement. Seems to me that Lam is completely finished in China
- I think this guy is a little inconsistent. They asked him if SMSC (basically the SN1/SN2 fab) had Lam employees even though they couldn't get any 14nm or below technology before. He said even though it products 7 nm and 14 nm chips, SMSC fab somehow still had a few Lam employees. well, I guess that confirms people in the industry knows that SMIC is producing 7 nm chips and that it doesn't use American tools (for the most part)
- Really pessimistic about US citizens. Green card holders are not effected, but citizens are. They have to either give up their citizenship or their career. I think this is an important one. I don't think the heads of these companies will give up their company, but maybe a few of the lower level people will.
- Said no Americans can help Chinese firms from anywhere. lol, okay, i think this guy is a little more emotional here, but I'm sure some of these guys are calling their lawyers right now for advice.
- Asked about how Fujian Jinhua started production again. He just said they got some machines before the ban and some second hand tools after. Refuses to admit that Fujian Jinhua just bought Chinese made tools.
- Said that Fujian Jinhua was able to get parts and spares from Korea and Taiwan, not everything for those machines are produced in America. Again, this guy is intentionally been difficult imo. First he says that YMTC/CXMT might have trouble with spares/parts for their existing production line down the road, but then he says Fujian Jinhua was able to get them.
- Then he says CXMT's biggest trouble is that expansion might be hard in the short term. First, he said that it is hard to replace all the American parts. Then, he said ICRD Jiading was able to be all domestic, but then says ICRD line hasn't reached mass production.
- Says that ICRD has 2 production lines: 1 fully Chinese and the other is western.
- Then he thinks ASML is a problem, but then admits that if a non-American machine contains only 10 to 20% American parts, then it cannot be prevented from being sold to China.
So, it seems to me that he was overall quite defensive about the entire thing and thinks it will hit Chinese fab expansion (not existing production). He freely admits that China can replace a lot of the Lam products, but refuses to admit that AMEC can replace everything Lam produces.
It seems to me there are a few obvious outcomes here:
1) Chinese tools makers need to expand their production quickly. There is so much demand
2) Lam/KLA/AMAT are done in the Chinese market. They will be letting go of many people and that will help their Chinese competitors. At minimum, there are skilled technicians that have worked in this industry that can service NAURA/AMEC machines. I'm sure there are engineering talents too.
3) US passport holders will have a hard decision to make. This is where Chinese gov't really needs to step up. They need to grant these people expedient citizenship and allow dual citizenship I think. A lot of these guys want to have their family in Western countries. Even if they give up their US citizenship, they will still want to have their family in Canada, Australia or Singapore or somewhere else.
4) Looks like the precious SMIC and HLMC have found a way to expand their production without American tools. I see no reason why China cannot further ramp up their advanced node production.