Chinese semiconductor industry

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Blitzo

Blitzo

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tphuang said:
btw guys, I understand this is an emotional topic for a lot of people, but let's keep this to technical stuff and facts as much as we can.

I had to delete a post earlier because it was posted without a source. I just deleted a post now because I don't want this to thread to degrade to discussions on what kind of drastic retaliations China can take.

Let's keep this to factual comments on what possible sanctions look like and how long it will take for things to be implemented. And go from there.

From what I can see, ASML has stated that it expects no change to its 2023 forecast from China. And I believe that SMIC has some 2050i on order, so whether all or most of them get delivered is a big question. Beyond that, it would be very surprising to me if ASML isn't given some idea of what might get sanctioned. And their comments are pretty telling, I think. Regardless, I think the shorter term impact is pretty minimal

To me, the Dutch gov't is just trying to drag this out as long as possible and give ASML some loop holes to work through. The fact that they are going through proper government procedure is a good thing for China, because that will take time. Summer is still a long time away.

On the other hand, this Japanese move to just stop supplier of KRF photoresist to YMTC is a more serious issue. That just came out of nowhere.

There needs to be support from Chinese gov't to massively support the expansion of domestic photoresist production. All the tools in the world won't matter if you don't have materials needed.
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Overall, I think the Chinese government probably knows where the conclusion for things needs to be, but there are limitations of technology, industry ability to scale up and so on.

Personally, I am surprised that some people can still be surprised at the idea that foreign suppliers and subsuppliers for China's semiconductor industry will not aim to all be cut off in as fast a manner as the US can bring pressure to bear, and this ranges from equipment, tools or materials, but also going forwards I wouldn't be surprised if China's semiconductor industry is wholesale attempted to be barred from the world's financial system as well by the US, with applications of sanctions and secondary sanctions for individuals or entities including Chinese ones, that cooperate or support the Chinese semiconductor industry.


I think people here should generally be aware of how much scope there is left for China's semiconductor industry to have pressure applied.
 
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paiemon

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To be honest, if the Netherlands intends to draft its export controls to only focus on the "latest and greatest" it sounds like they are trying to split the difference between ASML's interests and the US. Unlike the US, which basically set hard quantitative thresholds, "latest and greatest" is a moving target, because product versions and models get iterated on and improved constantly, so what was the "latest and greatest" becomes superseded although it is still useful and serviceable. Would that constitute a loophole? Until it gets written into legislation and regulations it is all speculation at this point as to what is allowed/isn't, and whether splitting the difference would have any meaningful impact on ASML's market in China going forward given the unreliability it introduces.
 
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ansy1968

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paiemon said:
To be honest, if the Netherlands intends to draft its export controls to only focus on the "latest and greatest" it sounds like they are trying to split the difference between ASML's interests and the US. Unlike the US, which basically set hard quantitative thresholds, "latest and greatest" is a moving target, because product versions and models get iterated on and improved constantly, so what was the "latest and greatest" becomes superseded although it is still useful and serviceable. Would that constitute a loophole? Until it gets written into legislation and regulations it is all speculation at this point as to what is allowed/isn't, and whether splitting the difference would have any meaningful impact on ASML's market in China going forward given the unreliability it introduces.
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Bro my 2 cents, we know that SMEE will officially announce the debut of SSA800 DUVL this year, from the technical spec we know it matches that of NXT 1980i, So why would the Chinese buy an equivalent machine with uncertainty due to geopolitics? only NXT 2050i and NXT 2100i will do because that is what needed and that opportunity window will close in 2025 with an improved SSA900 22NM variant or even an EUVL. I think there is a realization in Netherlands and ASML in particular that they have 5-6 years to profit from China BUT the timeline will fasten to 2 years if they stupid enough to follow the American advise.
 
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tamsen_ikard

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Blitzo said:
Overall, I think the Chinese government probably knows where the conclusion for things needs to be, but there are limitations of technology, industry ability to scale up and so on.

Personally, I am surprised that some people can still be surprised at the idea that foreign suppliers and subsuppliers for China's semiconductor industry will not aim to all be cut off in as fast a manner as the US can bring pressure to bear, and this ranges from equipment, tools or materials, but also going forwards I wouldn't be surprised if China's semiconductor industry is wholesale attempted to be barred from the world's financial system as well by the US, with applications of sanctions and secondary sanctions for individuals or entities including Chinese ones, that cooperate or support the Chinese semiconductor industry.


I think people here should generally be aware of how much scope there is left for China's semiconductor industry to have pressure applied.
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This is a good point you just brought. People think China is under extreme pressure, but the truth is the pressure could be 100 times bigger. In addition to applying sanctions and pressures on companies, like what you mentioned, US could also pressure companies with sanctions if they put Chinese chips into their products, essentially cutting off alot of potential market for Chinese made semiconductors. Chinese chips could be only used by Chinese brands and only in China and other poorer countries that does not ban Chinese products in the future. If things like Tiktok, Cranes, subway train cars could be accused as spy tools and potentially banned (train cars already banned), then you can imagine they will pretty much ban anything that has Chinese chips in the future.

China needs to plan the worst case scenario which is total ban and sanctions on all transactions and trade with China by US and its loyal allies. China needs to basically grow without trade and connection with 50% of world nominal GDP that is currently held by the west.
 
PopularScience

PopularScience

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Blitzo said:
Overall, I think the Chinese government probably knows where the conclusion for things needs to be, but there are limitations of technology, industry ability to scale up and so on.

Personally, I am surprised that some people can still be surprised at the idea that foreign suppliers and subsuppliers for China's semiconductor industry will not aim to all be cut off in as fast a manner as the US can bring pressure to bear, and this ranges from equipment, tools or materials, but also going forwards I wouldn't be surprised if China's semiconductor industry is wholesale attempted to be barred from the world's financial system as well by the US, with applications of sanctions and secondary sanctions for individuals or entities including Chinese ones, that cooperate or support the Chinese semiconductor industry.


I think people here should generally be aware of how much scope there is left for China's semiconductor industry to have pressure applied.
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China can retaliate with rare earth, especially the heavy one.
 
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tokenanalyst

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Blitzo said:
I wouldn't be surprised if China's semiconductor industry is wholesale attempted to be barred from the world's financial system as well by the US
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You mean doing transactions in dollars?? Could be. But they would have to convince the Europeans to barred transactions in Euros too with the bad economic situation that they have the Europeans are dragging their feet with this thing.

Iran and Russia are "barred" from the world financial system and they still manage to trade with other countries. The only way I could see that to work is in cold war scenario were Russia and China are allies against US and other nations but at that point I would be buying a a nuclear bunker and fill it with food and a filtration system.

I haven't been a lot of enforcement with this sanctions like just two cases Seagate and a 3D printed company, that fact that US companies are still able to sell tools from South East Asia means there is a enforcement gap and the scope is just too wide for the US to even manage effectively, export control violation cases could take months or even years of investigations to get a verdict, this people are still lawyers. I think the US is relaying on intimidation rather the enforcement for this export controls. Internacional enforcement is just too outside of the scope of this American agencies.

Another thing is that most of the financing in the Chinese semiconductor industry is done in Yuans rather than dollars and is done internally in the Chinese financial system only minimal is done in Dollars as you can see in my post on startup financing.
 
tphuang

tphuang

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Blitzo said:
Overall, I think the Chinese government probably knows where the conclusion for things needs to be, but there are limitations of technology, industry ability to scale up and so on.

Personally, I am surprised that some people can still be surprised at the idea that foreign suppliers and subsuppliers for China's semiconductor industry will not aim to all be cut off in as fast a manner as the US can bring pressure to bear, and this ranges from equipment, tools or materials, but also going forwards I wouldn't be surprised if China's semiconductor industry is wholesale attempted to be barred from the world's financial system as well by the US, with applications of sanctions and secondary sanctions for individuals or entities including Chinese ones, that cooperate or support the Chinese semiconductor industry.


I think people here should generally be aware of how much scope there is left for China's semiconductor industry to have pressure applied.
Click to expand...
I honestly think that speculating about what might get imposed isn't really helpful when they are so far away.

Frankly, Chinese semiconductor market is so large that just capturing domestic market is sufficient to make any Chinese firms competitive.
 
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