Chinese semiconductor industry

daifo said:

Dirty little secret is that companies like bytedance, tencent, alibaba, lenovo etc are heavely invested by western companies/banks/funds, the likely hood of them being ban is less in ordinary circumstance than pure Chinese companies like huawei or companies with lower western investments.

Part of the ban besides knocking Chinas tech and economic ambition , it to also prevent a Chinese attempt to invade Taiwan. As long as there is no war, China will get the consumer chips. China just needs to hide and bide for more time at this point to be self sufficent. IMO, there may have been some miscalulation with "coming out" too soon especially with Huawei then seeing their entire supply chain wrecked.

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bzhong05 said:

He also said in the article that the BIS knows "a hundred times more" than what we know on the internet and that all of China's technological progress is widely known to the US so there is really need to keep China's backwards technology secret - again, why bother sanctioning SMEE or ICRD then?

I don't think anyone has the absolute, full picture of the industry because the supply chain is so sophisticated and there are a lot of communication barriers between fabs, fabless, equipment companies, and even material suppliers. I would be extremely suspicious of anyone who claims they know the whole picture. In an article he previously wrote (link here -

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), he claimed that no one on the internet knows more about the industry than he is, which raises some eyebrows as his Zhihu account not only covers semiconductors but from economics and geopolitics and in almost all of his answers he likes to claim to be an expert in said realm and look down on other answers, calling them unprofessional or lacking insight (

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).

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bzhong05 said:

But he definitely made good points on investment semiconductor tools - but again, these are points largely based on hindsight. Calls for indigenous production would be considered heretical in 2014 because it was all about good ol' globalization and comparative advantage.

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FairAndUnbiased said:

If he's actually such a great expert with so much experience, would he care about the opinions of nobodies? So you can tell that this is a hit piece.

An actual SME like @tinrobert doesn't give a shit about the opinions of random nobodies. He has his opinion, take it or leave it.

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tonyget said:

What I’m trying to say is，semiconductor industry is complex. Even people who work in the industry don't know the full picture，let alone outsiders.

That gives space to all kind of people to exploit the situiation by spreading all kind of rumour. Because semiconductor is such a hot topic now，semiconductor related topic can attract huge traffic. So people are incentivized to do so

My take on this is: Take all non-official semiconductor news/rumour with a grain of salt，especially articles from those self-proclaimed veteran/expert/industry insider as they can be more deceptive than others

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bzhong05 said:

Looking at his Zhihu history of articles and comments, he has a long streak of posting very negative views of China all around under the disguise of being an "objective" observer and providing "constructive" criticism and he has a tendency of proclaiming expertise in not just semiconductors but just about everything, even biotech and social issues.

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bzhong05 said:

Looking at his Zhihu history of articles and comments, he has a long streak of posting very negative views of China all around under the disguise of being an "objective" observer and providing "constructive" criticism and he has a tendency of proclaiming expertise in not just semiconductors but just about everything, even biotech and social issues.

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FairAndUnbiased said:

Link to his zhihu? I'm interested in the replies to him.

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tokenanalyst said:

IMHO. tools, tools, tools nothing but tools. Between Chinese liberals and gradualist like this author is why Chinese companies are in this situation. semiconductor manufacturing equipment, EDA and semiconductor materials do not develop in vacuum, they need a virtuous cycle to grow and develop, is necessary for local companies to adopt local tools. The government could had forced the use of SMEE frontend machines to spur their development, at least their I-line and Krf line, at least in certain nodes, regardless the opinion of ASML, but they decided for fabs to select their tools on their own or use the bidding system to do that.
I agree that a lot of money went to sectors of the industry like chip design and others companies that then used that money to enrich foreign and especially US companies instead of fostering a domestic semiconductor ecosystem.
I disagree on that academic part, yes in the past was difficult for Chinese academic institutions collaborate with the industry and monetize their inventions. But on the years I have been following this I have never seen so much collaboration between research institutions and the industry as since 2018, they getting more patents, collaborating with establish domestic companies and they are setting more companies on their own to support the industry.
For SMIC maybe is 25% but the localization rate of the overall China semiconductor industry to this day is closer to 35% but whatever, in 2020 china localization rate was just 7%, for SMIC probably even lower.
So the glass is half full or half empty?

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Oldschool​

Junior Member​

ansy1968 said:
Sir can you give me your insight regarding SMEE and the progress of its 28nm duvl machine, there is a lot of misinformation regarding it's progress, thanks

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