Chinese semiconductor industry

Skywatcher said:

Given that China has a $14-15 trillion real GDP, $5 billion or so in American IC fab gear is less than a rounding error (and SMIC could just unload the equipment to someone else).

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The potential there, but it needs time, and the relationship between the time decrease and required resources is quadratic, means cut back the development time from ten years to one require hundred times more resources now.

Hendrik_2000 said:

That is BS US has to pay interest on those treasury bill it is not free money and support US consumer to buy more chinese product!. You rumbling about getting product for nothing is just not supported by reality . In 1975 Chinese GDP/capita is only $200 now is more like $10000 See what export economy does. The same thing with Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore all of them follow the same prescription export their product!

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USA Treasuries carry a -2% (MINUS) inflation corrected interest. If in the future the inflation go up then it will be even higher.
Yes, Japan, Korea examples showing how clever the USA to exploit other countries.

gadgetcool5 said:

Cutting Off Our Nose to Spite Our Face: US Policy towards Huawei and China in Key Semiconductor Industry Inputs, Capital Equipment and Electronic Design Automation Tools

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Odd, since it states on page 12 (27 of PDF) that it would be hard to replace American inspection, process control and etching tools.

But TEL (testing equipment), Hitachi, Toray (inspection and process control) and AMEC (etching) have global industrial leadership in those fields.

Anlsvrthng said:

USA Treasuries carry a -2% (MINUS) inflation corrected interest. If in the future the inflation go up then it will be even higher.
Yes, Japan, Korea examples showing how clever the USA to exploit other countries.

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Minus interest is only recent phenomena and the bulk of Chinese own treasury carry positive interest and they have been reducing their holding slowly over the year . Listen you can always sell dollar denominated Treasury It is not like worthless. Japan and Korea has the highest living standard in the Asia exploited or not and export play large part of their economy

gadgetcool5 said:

Cutting Off Our Nose to Spite Our Face: US Policy towards Huawei and China in Key Semiconductor Industry Inputs, Capital Equipment and Electronic Design Automation Tools

This chapter evaluates the US government's expanding export controls on Huawei.This chapter has four major findings. First, over the next five years even substantial Chinese efforts to replace American capital equipment and EDA tools with homegrown alternatives are very unlikely to succeed. Second, the severity of constraints on Huawei will depend more on the availability of international alternatives to American technology than on the availability of Chinese products. For chip design, the lack of suitable legal alternatives to American EDA tools globally will severely challenge Huawei’s ability to design chips. In contrast, for manufacturing chips, there are alternatives to American capital equipment within a relatively short timeframe so manufacturing firms could relatively quickly produce Huawei’s chips if they chose to eschew American technology to do so. Third, these constraints will most likely knock down Huawei but will not knock Huawei out of the telecommunications industry. Finally, the longer-term costs for American capital equipment and EDA tool vendors could loom large as foreign customers perceive American-made or -designed products as carrying significant political risk and strive to develop alternative sources.

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China will not succeed in getting their semiconductor industry off the ground is opinion and not a fact . EDA is probably the easier to achieve self sufficiency since it is mostly software and most of the engineer working for Cadence and Ansys, are chinese and they are jumping ship by the drove sensing once in lifetime opportunity backed by vast venture money they will succeed in no time

Hendrik_2000 said:

China will not succeed in getting their semiconductor industry off the ground is opinion and not a fact . EDA is probably the easier to achieve self sufficiency since it is mostly software and most of the engineer working for Cadence and Ansys, are chinese and they are jumping ship by the drove sensing once in lifetime opportunity backed by vast venture money they will succeed in no time

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Yup, agreed.

That report was not bad. The conclusions seem to be all wrong.

He discussed the potential of the Chinese IC by looking exclusively at the state of American IC.

It was a good report. But there is no direct connection to the future in this report, other than USA #1, repeated ad infinitum.

It is not realistic. It is like the other team does not exist. When they do not win, then there is no Plan B.

Anlsvrthng said:

That is the problem.

The semi business extremely capital intensive, means if half of a company assets become useless then the give company immediately goes into bankruptcy.

Of course other side it questioning the benefit to give free loan to the USA in the form of trade surplus.

If there is nothing interesting to buy with the freshly printed money then what is the purpose of the trade surplus ? Makes it possible to send the children of Chinese government officials to the USA ?

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China use the trade surplus to buy oil from the Middle East. The Arabs want payment in U.S. dollars.

coolieno99 said:

China use the trade surplus to buy oil from the Middle East

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that doesn't make any sense. "buy oil" is trade.

Hendrik_2000 said:

China will not succeed in getting their semiconductor industry off the ground is opinion and not a fact . EDA is probably the easier to achieve self sufficiency since it is mostly software and most of the engineer working for Cadence and Ansys, are chinese and they are jumping ship by the drove sensing once in lifetime opportunity backed by vast venture money they will succeed in no time

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The

horse said:

Yup, agreed.

That report was not bad. The conclusions seem to be all wrong.

He discussed the potential of the Chinese IC by looking exclusively at the state of American IC.

It was a good report. But there is no direct connection to the future in this report, other than USA #1, repeated ad infinitum.

It is not realistic. It is like the other team does not exist. When they do not win, then there is no Plan B.

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The person who wrote the article is not working in a semi foundry but he is just writing from a business point of view, i.e. he is not qualified to tell if it is possible to build a modern semi fab without US technology.
I have read contrasting articles in the past few months and usually the most qualified people don't give a definitive answer on this matter.
My taking is that since US companies have a large share in some segments of semi equpment almost all modern Fabs contain some equpment from US vendors. That is why Huawei is finding hard to find a Fab for its chip designs. Nevertheless by looking at the web it seems that there are non US alternatives in each segment even where US companies have 70/80 share. I think that it just takes time to redesign a process without US equpments and build a fab. So it is a battle against time especially for Huawei smartphone business where volumes are very high.

I have found this interesting article on a Korean website (translated with Google) it is about Jinhua, the first Chinese semi company to be blacklisted in 2018 by the US. They were about to mass produce DRAM, they have kept a low profile but it pooks like they are still active. Does anyone know if tbey have managed to go into mass production as this would demonstrate that it is possible to break a US blockade?


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JHICC resumes ordering DRAM equipment in two years...Can it go to mass production?
Reporter Ahn Seok-hyun Approval 2020.06.23 16:24 Comments 0



Fujian Jinhua Semiconductor (JHICC), whose DRAM production line investment has been all-stopped after the US Department of Commerce's sanctions, resumed ordering equipment. The possibility of abandoning DRAM production and converting to a foundry (consignment production) plant or selling it to Micron Technology in the US was also discussed, but JHICC decided to maintain the project. The core process equipment, such as exposure, ion implanter and etching, is expected to challenge mass production by ordering additional equipment in that some quantities are in stock. JHICC resumes equipment orders after two years JHICC was sanctioned by the US Department of Commerce in October 2018

I have found this article about a Korean alternative to KLA from the US: