Chinese semiconductor industry
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
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TSMC reached 80 yield at 5nm without issues and are going 3nm this year
Some in the US suggest that the US bomb the TSMC fabs in Taiwan in the event of a war on Taiwan. This Economist article is more subtle: "... chip-users such as Apple should press TSMC and Samsung to diversify where factories are. America must urge Taiwan and South Korea to cut their soft subsidies for chip plants, so their firms have more incentive to build factories around the world. "
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WHEN MICROCHIPS were invented in 1958, the first significant market for them was inside nuclear missiles. Today about a trillion chips are made a year, or 128 for every person on the planet. Ever more devices and machines contain ever more semiconductors: an electric car can have over 3,000 of them. New types of computation are booming, including artificial intelligence and data-crunching. Demand will soar further as more industrial machines are connected and fitted with sensors.
For decades a vast network of chip firms has co-operated and competed to meet this growing demand; today they crank out $450bn of annual sales. No other industry has the same mix of hard science, brutal capital intensity and complexity. Its broader impact is huge, too. When the supply chain misfires, economic activity can grind to a halt. This month a temporary shortage of chips has stopped car production-lines around the world.
And no other industry is as explosive. For several years America has enforced an intensifying embargo on China, which imports over $300bn-worth of chips a year because it lacks the manufacturing capability to meet its own needs. Fresh strains in the chip industry are forcing the geopolitical fault-lines further apart. America is falling behind in manufacturing, production is being concentrated in East Asia, and China is seeking self-sufficiency (see ). In the 20th century the world’s biggest economic choke-point involved oil being shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. Soon it will be silicon etched in a few technology parks in South Korea and Taiwan.
Start with the shifts in the industry. A surge in demand and those novel kinds of computation have led to a golden age in chip design. Nvidia, which creates chips for gaming and artificial intelligence, is now America’s most valuable chip firm, worth over $320bn. The quest to create bespoke chips in order to eke out more performance—think less heat, or more speed or battery life—is also drawing outsiders into the design game. In November Apple unveiled Mac computers powered by its own chip (it already uses its own in the iPhone), and Amazon is developing chips for its data centres. The design boom has also fired up dealmaking. Nvidia, for instance, is bidding $40bn for Arm, which makes design blueprints. In the future a new open-source approach to designing chips, called RISC-V, could lead to more innovation.
Contrast this effervescence with the consolidation in chipmaking. A gruelling 60-year struggle for supremacy is nearing its end. Moore’s law, which holds that the cost of computer power will fall by half every 18 months to two years, is beginning to fail. Each generation of chips is technically harder to make than the last and, owing to the surging cost of building factories, the stakes have got bigger. The number of manufacturers at the industry’s cutting-edge has fallen from over 25 in 2000 to three.
The most famous of that trio, Intel, is in trouble. It has fired its boss, an admission that it has fallen behind. It may retreat from making the most advanced chips, known as the three-nanometre generation, and outsource more production, like almost everyone else. That would leave two firms with the stomach for it: Samsung in South Korea and TSMC in Taiwan. TSMC has just announced one of the largest investment budgets of any private firm on the planet. An array of corporate A-listers from Apple and Amazon to Toyota and Tesla rely on this duo of chipmakers.
The other big industry rupture is taking place in China. As America has lost ground in making chips, it has sought to ensure that China lags behind, too. The American tech embargo began as a narrow effort against Huawei over national security, but bans and restrictions now affect at least 60 firms, including many involved in chips. SMIC, China’s chip champion, has just been put on a blacklist, as has Xiaomi, a smartphone firm. The cumulative effect of these measures is starting to bite. In the last quarter of 2020 TSMC’s sales to Chinese clients dropped by 72%.
In response, China is shifting its state-capitalist machine into its highest gear in order to become self-sufficient in chips faster. Although chips have featured in government plans since the 1950s it is still five to ten years behind. A $100bn-plus subsidy kitty is being spent freely: last year over 50,000 firms registered that their business was related to chips—and thus eligible. Top universities have beefed up their chip programmes. If the era of advanced chips being made in America may be drawing to a close, the age of their manufacture in China could be beginning.
How worried should you be? It is hard to ignore the dangers. If America withdraws from cutting-edge manufacturing and China continues to hurl resources at it, the White House will be tempted to tighten the embargo further in order to stymie China’s development. That could have explosive consequences. And the inexorable logic of scale is set to lead to an alarming concentration of production. The manufacturing duopoly could start to use their pricing power. Already a fifth of all chip manufacturing, and perhaps half of cutting-edge capacity, is in Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory and threatens to invade. The chip industry is poised for mutually assured disruption, in which America and China each have the ability to short-circuit the other’s economy.
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Technology and geopolitics
The age of their manufacture in China could be beginning
WHEN MICROCHIPS were invented in 1958, the first significant market for them was inside nuclear missiles. Today about a trillion chips are made a year, or 128 for every person on the planet. Ever more devices and machines contain ever more semiconductors: an electric car can have over 3,000 of them. New types of computation are booming, including artificial intelligence and data-crunching. Demand will soar further as more industrial machines are connected and fitted with sensors.
For decades a vast network of chip firms has co-operated and competed to meet this growing demand; today they crank out $450bn of annual sales. No other industry has the same mix of hard science, brutal capital intensity and complexity. Its broader impact is huge, too. When the supply chain misfires, economic activity can grind to a halt. This month a temporary shortage of chips has stopped car production-lines around the world.
And no other industry is as explosive. For several years America has enforced an intensifying embargo on China, which imports over $300bn-worth of chips a year because it lacks the manufacturing capability to meet its own needs. Fresh strains in the chip industry are forcing the geopolitical fault-lines further apart. America is falling behind in manufacturing, production is being concentrated in East Asia, and China is seeking self-sufficiency (see ). In the 20th century the world’s biggest economic choke-point involved oil being shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. Soon it will be silicon etched in a few technology parks in South Korea and Taiwan.
Start with the shifts in the industry. A surge in demand and those novel kinds of computation have led to a golden age in chip design. Nvidia, which creates chips for gaming and artificial intelligence, is now America’s most valuable chip firm, worth over $320bn. The quest to create bespoke chips in order to eke out more performance—think less heat, or more speed or battery life—is also drawing outsiders into the design game. In November Apple unveiled Mac computers powered by its own chip (it already uses its own in the iPhone), and Amazon is developing chips for its data centres. The design boom has also fired up dealmaking. Nvidia, for instance, is bidding $40bn for Arm, which makes design blueprints. In the future a new open-source approach to designing chips, called RISC-V, could lead to more innovation.
Contrast this effervescence with the consolidation in chipmaking. A gruelling 60-year struggle for supremacy is nearing its end. Moore’s law, which holds that the cost of computer power will fall by half every 18 months to two years, is beginning to fail. Each generation of chips is technically harder to make than the last and, owing to the surging cost of building factories, the stakes have got bigger. The number of manufacturers at the industry’s cutting-edge has fallen from over 25 in 2000 to three.
The most famous of that trio, Intel, is in trouble. It has fired its boss, an admission that it has fallen behind. It may retreat from making the most advanced chips, known as the three-nanometre generation, and outsource more production, like almost everyone else. That would leave two firms with the stomach for it: Samsung in South Korea and TSMC in Taiwan. TSMC has just announced one of the largest investment budgets of any private firm on the planet. An array of corporate A-listers from Apple and Amazon to Toyota and Tesla rely on this duo of chipmakers.
The other big industry rupture is taking place in China. As America has lost ground in making chips, it has sought to ensure that China lags behind, too. The American tech embargo began as a narrow effort against Huawei over national security, but bans and restrictions now affect at least 60 firms, including many involved in chips. SMIC, China’s chip champion, has just been put on a blacklist, as has Xiaomi, a smartphone firm. The cumulative effect of these measures is starting to bite. In the last quarter of 2020 TSMC’s sales to Chinese clients dropped by 72%.
In response, China is shifting its state-capitalist machine into its highest gear in order to become self-sufficient in chips faster. Although chips have featured in government plans since the 1950s it is still five to ten years behind. A $100bn-plus subsidy kitty is being spent freely: last year over 50,000 firms registered that their business was related to chips—and thus eligible. Top universities have beefed up their chip programmes. If the era of advanced chips being made in America may be drawing to a close, the age of their manufacture in China could be beginning.
How worried should you be? It is hard to ignore the dangers. If America withdraws from cutting-edge manufacturing and China continues to hurl resources at it, the White House will be tempted to tighten the embargo further in order to stymie China’s development. That could have explosive consequences. And the inexorable logic of scale is set to lead to an alarming concentration of production. The manufacturing duopoly could start to use their pricing power. Already a fifth of all chip manufacturing, and perhaps half of cutting-edge capacity, is in Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory and threatens to invade. The chip industry is poised for mutually assured disruption, in which America and China each have the ability to short-circuit the other’s economy.
Chips and old blocs
Some hawks in America and Europe want to respond with a subsidy bonanza of their own: socialism for semiconductors. But that would dampen the free-market renaissance in chip design and is, anyway, likely to fail. Instead, chip-users such as Apple should press TSMC and Samsung to diversify where factories are. America must urge Taiwan and South Korea to cut their soft subsidies for chip plants, so their firms have more incentive to build factories around the world. Last, President Joe Biden needs to create a predictable framework for trade with China in sensitive sectors, including chips, that allows it to participate in global supply chains while safeguarding Western interests. His predecessor oversaw a chaotic array of controls aimed at impeding China’s development, in chips as well as finance. These gave it an incentive to develop its own alternatives faster. The first chips may have been used in missiles, but it would be wise to avoid them becoming a flashpoint in a 21st-century cold war.Interesting how the above article talks about TSMC and Samsung but not ASML, Applied Materials, Cadence, Synopsys, etc.
Western outlets are only worried when an Asian country occupies one part of the production chain, even when the real story of the US tech embargo is that the true chokepoint is in the West.
Western outlets are only worried when an Asian country occupies one part of the production chain, even when the real story of the US tech embargo is that the true chokepoint is in the West.
@gadgetcool5
For once bro we finally agree
, both of them are target for acquisition cause they're too successful and also they're Asian cannot be trust.So after Honor spins off, it's no longer subject to the entity list sanctions? Basically Huawei's phone division is back in a different name?
Yeh that’s the idea.
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Via Vincent
Not sure about the wording. Sounds like the light source production facility came online in 2019
Production and aftersale service facilities for lithography equipment light source came online. Fix investment worth 300 millions and the equipment costed 200 millions.
The expected revenue in the first two years is 100 million and reach 300 millions after three years.
The light source is expected to be integrated with 28nm node domestic lithography equipment in 2020.
时间：2019-11-13 9:32:14 来源：江苏省开发区协会
日前，总投资5亿元的集成电路光刻光源制造及服务基地项目签约进区。
该项目由北京科益虹源光电技术有限公司投资建设，其中，固定资产投资3亿元，设备投资2亿元。投产两年内实现销售1亿元，税收1000万元。三年后年销售额达3亿元，税收3000万元。
北京科益虹源光电技术有限公司承担国家“02重大专项浸没光刻光源研发”、“02重大专项核心零部件国产化能力建设”、“02重大专项集成电路晶圆缺陷检测光源”等国家专项，到2020年产品将与整机单位共同完成28nm国产光刻机的集成，是中国唯一、世界第三家具备高端准分子激光技术研究和产品化的公司。
（徐州经济技术开发区党政办公室）
Google translation
Time: 2019-11-13 9:32:14 Source: Jiangsu Development Zone Association A few days ago, the integrated circuit lithography light source manufacturing and service base project with a total investment of 500 million yuan was signed into the zone.
The project is invested and constructed by Beijing Keyi Hongyuan Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd., including 300 million yuan in fixed assets and 200 million yuan in equipment. Within two years of operation, it will achieve sales of 100 million yuan and tax of 10 million yuan. Three years later, the annual sales will reach 300 million yuan and the tax will be 30 million yuan.
Beijing Keyi Hongyuan Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. undertakes national special projects such as "02 major special project immersion lithography light source research and development", "02 major special project core component localization capacity building", "02 major special project integrated circuit wafer defect detection light source" and other national special projects , By 2020, the product will complete the integration of the 28nm domestic lithography machine with the complete unit. It is the only company in China and the third in the world that has high-end excimer laser technology research and productization. (Party and Government Office of Xuzhou Economic and Technological Development Zone)
Not sure about the wording. Sounds like the light source production facility came online in 2019
Production and aftersale service facilities for lithography equipment light source came online. Fix investment worth 300 millions and the equipment costed 200 millions.
The expected revenue in the first two years is 100 million and reach 300 millions after three years.
The light source is expected to be integrated with 28nm node domestic lithography equipment in 2020.
时间：2019-11-13 9:32:14 来源：江苏省开发区协会
日前，总投资5亿元的集成电路光刻光源制造及服务基地项目签约进区。
该项目由北京科益虹源光电技术有限公司投资建设，其中，固定资产投资3亿元，设备投资2亿元。投产两年内实现销售1亿元，税收1000万元。三年后年销售额达3亿元，税收3000万元。
北京科益虹源光电技术有限公司承担国家“02重大专项浸没光刻光源研发”、“02重大专项核心零部件国产化能力建设”、“02重大专项集成电路晶圆缺陷检测光源”等国家专项，到2020年产品将与整机单位共同完成28nm国产光刻机的集成，是中国唯一、世界第三家具备高端准分子激光技术研究和产品化的公司。
（徐州经济技术开发区党政办公室）
Google translation
Time: 2019-11-13 9:32:14 Source: Jiangsu Development Zone Association A few days ago, the integrated circuit lithography light source manufacturing and service base project with a total investment of 500 million yuan was signed into the zone.
The project is invested and constructed by Beijing Keyi Hongyuan Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd., including 300 million yuan in fixed assets and 200 million yuan in equipment. Within two years of operation, it will achieve sales of 100 million yuan and tax of 10 million yuan. Three years later, the annual sales will reach 300 million yuan and the tax will be 30 million yuan.
Beijing Keyi Hongyuan Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. undertakes national special projects such as "02 major special project immersion lithography light source research and development", "02 major special project core component localization capacity building", "02 major special project integrated circuit wafer defect detection light source" and other national special projects , By 2020, the product will complete the integration of the 28nm domestic lithography machine with the complete unit. It is the only company in China and the third in the world that has high-end excimer laser technology research and productization. (Party and Government Office of Xuzhou Economic and Technological Development Zone)
This article is from 2019, but basically confirms that the first Prototype of the SMEE 28nm Immersion DUVL will be assembled by the end of 2020.
Well, its 2021. Is it finished yet?
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