Chinese semiconductor industry
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
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I have a feeling that new laws will come out soon to stop allowing Nvidia from tweaking its best GPUs and get under threshold.
It's a huge shame that some of China's largest companies would sooner use an American export-version chip that is 50% as effective rather than support more indigenized options. Chinese regulators need to audit the decision-making process within the companies that led to this and issue fines and even arrests where appropriate.
This is a US government shakedown basically. TSMC simply have no choice in the matter. Unfortunately, unlike what happened when the US tried this with the space sector in the 1990s, the Japanese and the Europeans folded. Had they shown even a hint of a spine this would have been impossible in the first place. They are being idiots since they are basically conceding the sector to the US as an act of vassalage with basically nothing in return.
Morris already said more recently that 50% ended up being an underestimation error on his part, that it is more like 100%. 100% more expenses in the US vs Asia. He said there is less staff retention in the US, and that workers are not willing to work longer hours to keep the factory operational 24hr/7d.
The US timed this really well by pushing for the sanctions after the Russo-Ukrainian war which they themselves setup in the first place with the coups in 2014 and 2004. They are playing on ancestral fears of both the EU and Japan vs Russia to convince them to do their bidding. In the 1990s they tried doing the same in the space sector vs China using ITAR and it was a massive failure, they couldn't convince anyone, with the US losing majority of space launch and satellite market which they only recovered after SpaceX fully came online nearly two decades afterwards. Europe got spooked the US would do the same to them and massively increased spending on their own space programs. At the same time, China got massive tech transfers from Ukraine and Russia and lept into a massive lead in space launch.
At that point, Europe was basically spooked the US would cut them out from access to GPS signals for example, they decided to make their own Galileo satellite network, the satellites were launched on the Russian Soyuz 2 rocket at Guiana, and the Europeans collaborated with the Chinese on making atomic clocks for positioning satellites for example.
Right now, Russia stopped providing Soyuz 2 launches at Guiana, and the European rocket that will be able to launch Galileo satellites, the Ariane 6, is delayed and isn't in service yet.
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Yeah it makes sense and it is about time. Now that China has enough of an industry the right call is to ask the industry what needs to be done and fund it, instead of just making a competition to produce tools for process X and never bother getting them properly qualified for production. That gives you the basic technology and a working prototype but is clearly not enough for industrial demand. I disagree with the idea that China only can make lab grade lithography tools as said in the article however. SMEE clearly produces lithography tools for semiconductor packaging which are quite successful, so if they had the proper demand, I am pretty sure they would refine the front-end lithography tools to be production ready. Like I said here before I think the government needs to break this deadlock by forcing the whole industry to cooperate together. Focusing funding on just a couple of players that you know can deliver is probably the best bet right now.
That is basically what Japan did with the VLSI Project in 1976 and it was pretty successful.
That is basically what Japan did with the VLSI Project in 1976 and it was pretty successful.
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