Chinese semiconductor industry

tphuang said:

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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I agree, I'm not trying to talk about what might get imposed in future -- but rather trying to convey to people that there are likely still fairly extensive tools the US could use in future to apply pressure, and to not be surprised if or when it happens.

As for the domestic market, I do agree in principle that the ability to capture it would make Chinese firms competitive... eventually.

However, there also is a bit of a clock that they are competing against --- which is that the Chinese domestic industry should aim to be sufficiently competitive (at minimum) with foreign semiconductor companies such that Chinese domestic technology firms, industries, in general (including emerging applications like AI) do not experience too significant a setback such that it results in an overall "technology gap" that is difficult to claw back even when China's domestic semiconductor industry is sufficiently competitive in technology.

That is to say, I think everyone agrees that Chinese semiconductor firms will eventually become competitive -- the question is when that will occur and what that means for their customers in various industries and what that means on a national level in terms of competitiveness and productivity.

(That is also somewhat I am talking about in regards to the Chinese semiconductor industry being in "survival mode" wrt supplying national industries)

Blitzo said:

I agree, I'm not trying to talk about what might get imposed in future -- but rather trying to convey to people that there are likely still fairly extensive tools the US could use in future to apply pressure, and to not be surprised if or when it happens.

As for the domestic market, I do agree in principle that the ability to capture it would make Chinese firms competitive... eventually.

However, there also is a bit of a clock that they are competing against --- which is that the Chinese domestic industry should aim to be sufficiently competitive (at minimum) with foreign semiconductor companies such that Chinese domestic technology firms, industries, in general (including emerging applications like AI) do not experience too significant a setback such that it results in an overall "technology gap" that is difficult to claw back even when China's domestic semiconductor industry is sufficiently competitive in technology.

That is to say, I think everyone agrees that Chinese semiconductor firms will eventually become competitive -- the question is when that will occur and what that means for their customers in various industries and what that means on a national level in terms of competitiveness and productivity.

(That is also somewhat I am talking about in regards to the Chinese semiconductor industry being in "survival mode" wrt supplying national industries)

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If China cannot buy advanced tech from the west, there is no point to trade with the west. Keeping alot toilet paper have no meaning.

PopularScience said:

If China cannot buy advanced tech from the west, there is no point to trade with the west. Keeping alot toilet paper have no meaning.

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Can you stop these unhelpful posts that are essentially just expressing grievances?

No one does anything out of goodwill, it is all a result of interests, and whatever trade China or the US does or doesn't do is an outcome of their interests to maximize advantages and minimize disadvantages for themselves.

Blitzo said:

Can you stop these unhelpful posts that are essentially just expressing grievances?

No one does anything out of goodwill, it is all a result of interests, and whatever trade China or the US does or doesn't do is an outcome of their interests to maximize advantages and minimize disadvantages for themselves.

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No. I am happy. ASML voluntarily give up China market.

tphuang said:

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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Considering the fact the China alone makes 30% of the sales of US companies, by capturing their own home market share will make China SME companies like Naura one of the biggest of the world.

Blitzo said:

I agree, I'm not trying to talk about what might get imposed in future -- but rather trying to convey to people that there are likely still fairly extensive tools the US could use in future to apply pressure, and to not be surprised if or when it happens.

As for the domestic market, I do agree in principle that the ability to capture it would make Chinese firms competitive... eventually.

However, there also is a bit of a clock that they are competing against --- which is that the Chinese domestic industry should aim to be sufficiently competitive (at minimum) with foreign semiconductor companies such that Chinese domestic technology firms, industries, in general (including emerging applications like AI) do not experience too significant a setback such that it results in an overall "technology gap" that is difficult to claw back even when China's domestic semiconductor industry is sufficiently competitive in technology.

That is to say, I think everyone agrees that Chinese semiconductor firms will eventually become competitive -- the question is when that will occur and what that means for their customers in various industries and what that means on a national level in terms of competitiveness and productivity.

(That is also somewhat I am talking about in regards to the Chinese semiconductor industry being in "survival mode" wrt supplying national industries)

Click to expand...

Actually AI does not rely on specialized hardware. Its mainly software. Yes you could have dedicated AI chips, but those can be easily replaced by general purpose FPGA or GPUs. General purpose GPUs and FPGA are sold on the open market all over the world and cannot be banned. If they were banned from China for example, people could start a lucrative business of buying them in a third country and selling them to China. Could they be more expensive in such a scenario? Sure. But slight increase in expenses will not deter companies with large budgets from using such chips in their servers.

AI is still mostly just research in many cases. And where they are used in consumer facing applications, they are usually trained in dedicated servers first before the trained model is used in actual consumer devices, and trained models are very simple to run and do not require powerful chips.

So, even if China falls completely behind in semiconductors I doubt there will be any AI "Gap".

PopularScience said:

No. I am happy. ASML voluntarily give up China market.

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They didn't give up China market, they will still sell the scanners that could compete with the potential SMEE immersion scanner while at the same time not selling their most advance ones including EUV.
I still think the Chinese goverment need to enforce the use of SMEE scanners, at least their dry ones, the I-line, their KrF and ArF dry scanners to create a virtuous cycle.

tokenanalyst said:

They didn't give up China market, they will still sell the scanners that could compete with the potential SMEE immersion scanner while at the same time not selling their most advance ones including EUV.
I still think the Chinese goverment need to enforce the use of SMEE scanners, at least their dry ones, the I-line, their KrF and ArF dry scanners to create a virtuous cycle.

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Time for Chinese government to enforce anti-sanction law.

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.

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This move, to get someone else to do a ban, because the Americans ran out of bans, seems rather anti-climatic.

A little comical too.

So ... what is next after this?

China, will get back to work.

America, more bans!

tamsen_ikard said:

Actually AI does not rely on specialized hardware. Its mainly software. Yes you could have dedicated AI chips, but those can be easily replaced by general purpose FPGA or GPUs. General purpose GPUs and FPGA are sold on the open market all over the world and cannot be banned. If they were banned from China for example, people could start a lucrative business of buying them in a third country and selling them to China. Could they be more expensive in such a scenario? Sure. But slight increase in expenses will not deter companies with large budgets from using such chips in their servers.

AI is still mostly just research in many cases. And where they are used in consumer facing applications, they are usually trained in dedicated servers first before the trained model is used in actual consumer devices, and trained models are very simple to run and do not require powerful chips.

So, even if China falls completely behind in semiconductors I doubt there will be any AI "Gap".

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As an addendum to my previous post, where I think China will be hurt if they do not develop their own semi-conductor industry will be dedicated chips like 5G chips that Huawei used to make with TSMC or Hisilicon chips Huawei made for its phones.

Huawei is the perfect illustration of the problem China faces. Without the Chip industry US can easily ban Chinese companies from buying chips in bulk from companies like Qualcomm or TSMC. So, they cannot make their own branded products like Xiaomi branded phones for example. Huawei's phone business died because of this, but their 5g business survived by simply using older chip nodes. US can easily kill off the business of Chinese phone and laptop makers. But that does not stop China from buying foreign branded laptops and phones from the open market. So, China can keep up with the rest of the world in terms of tech development happening in the consumer space

Phone, Laptop and Servers are pretty much the only place where you need the cutting edge of chips. Everything else like chips in Cars, TVs and military missiles, you can still survive with older chips. For now, atleast. But ofcourse if China fails to develop chips then maybe it will also fall behind even for chips in cars and TVs where the tech will also slowly improve and newer chips will be required. But again that will only hobble Chinese companies making those products but not foreign brands which China could buy from another country and resell domestically.

So the biggest threat of Chip ban will be for Chinese brands of electronics makers and specialized hardware companies like Huawei but not the software side of tech development which rely on hardware that can be bought from third party countries.