Chinese semiconductor industry

gadgetcool5 said:

"In a few years, yes. China will certainly make 5 nm chips sooner than US companies can build entire ecosystems in other countries."

LOL no. Have you learned nothing from this thread? Right now all nodes require US parts for copper wiring and low-k materials. Even for 90 nm it will take five years to build a production line completely from scratch without US parts. Fortunately the US is so far ahead it is not even worried about China manufacturing at 90 nm so that likely won't be sanctioned.

For packaging and assembly at 28 nm, it will likely be this year or next year. But for the core component of 28 nm, it will likely not be for 3-5 years. This is according to the Global Times.

"An 8-core CPU will be more than good enough for 95% of the global PC market."

So you are telling me that global consumers will buy a laptop with a CPU with worse performance when there are better ones on the market? Why? Remember most consumers do not live in the US *or* China. They don't care about politics, they just want the best product. Simply being "good enough" does not mean consumers will buy your product.

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foofy said:

Cxmt memory has reached 40,000 wafers per month. Started construction another 60,000 wafers per month.

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根据这篇文章，截至2020年底，合肥长鑫12吋存储器晶圆制造基地项目提前达到4万片/月产能，开始启动6万片/月产能建设，实现了从投产到量产再到批量销售的关键跨越。

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quantumlight said:

US/West had decades to help develop Africa but the true reason why they never bothered wasn't because they didn't get around to it (they always managed to get around to wars just fine) but rather it was by design. By keeping Africa poor they were saving Africa up as a cheap resource that they can mine and strip for materials later on... by opening up with China the intent was to become America's cheap labor pool... so low cost resources from Africa, coupled with cheap labor from China, meant US companies made off like a bandit and then sold these products to the rest of the world at high profit margins whilst turning around and doing quantitative easing on the petrodollar to double dip by taxing everyone once more post-transaction for the privelege of using the US dollar... this arrangement was going to last forever and it was "the end of history", as it were...

Until it didn't, and then it wasn't...

They didn't count on China no longer being content on just middle income, and China wanting to ascend the tech ladder and jump up in the value chain... They didn't count on China doing BRI and connecting the Eurasia landmass and helping Africa develop and raise their living standards thereby spoiling US plans to preserve Africa as their cheap resource pool... so now they were about to lose both their cheap resource pool and their cheap labor and to make things worse China was going to directly compete with the US on the world stage and eat into what had traditionally been strictly US dominance and US hegemony...

As a thought experiment, I tried to play out what America's Plan Z would be, the ultimately play, so to speak. I still think it will be a complete blanket ban of all chips and all semiconductor equipment and their supply chains to all of China, basically a 100% embargo across the board... This will have many ramifications, for one it will mean instantly it will disrupt and bring to a standstill almost the entire Chinese manufacturing and supply chain overnight especially as it relates to exports to West. You cannot make any product these days without a computer chip and almost all products these days have a chip inside them or more.... By this one action alone, if it can be strictly enforced, America will be able to grind the Chinese economy to a halt... a lot more so than say kicking China out of SWIFT. There are workarounds to the US dollar, money is just a social construct, but there are no workarounds to lack of computer chips in the 21st century, you either can fab chips or you cannot. There is no middle ground. China simply won't be able to make anything, certaintly not anything the West needs. For example Apple will be forced to shutdown, Telsa shutdown, Dell shutdown, Lenovo shutdown, almost all companies in China would grind to a halt... This one action effectively forces not only US but indeed much of the entire world to forcibly do a full decoupling with China....

This will cause severe disruption to the entire global economy no doubt. This is not a question. But, I believe when it comes to survival of US hegemony, this is the price America is willing to inflict to ensure that China goes down for good and never comes back up again...

As for enforcement, it is quite easy... Intel, AMD, Nvidia, QualComm, etc these are all bona fide US companies. America has full control over them and one EO is all it takes for full compliance, these companies don't have a choice. Tiawan would be onboard, so would Dutch/netherlands and ASML etc and Cymer is US company so ASML is just an intgreater like Lenovo is a systems integrator so ASLM don't havae a choice even if they wanted to help out China which they dont

Samsung is majority US owned, plus US has military bases in Korea, Japan, and is building a missile defence system on the first island China to surrounded China...

The point is, in the past the US used its military might to hold the worlds oil hostage ("protection" of OPEC) in order to sustain the petrodollar arrangement, well semiconductors/chips are the new digital OPEC in this 21st century and in the 4th industrial revolution being without chips is as bad as being without oil... and America controls the sanctions power and the critical chokeholds to this technology. Frankly, the US will leverage its military might to invade/ attack/overthrow any nation that doesn't play along... it doesn't have to go around every 150+ countries in the world to force them to stop all trade with China, all it has to do is completely cut China off from high end semiconductors/chips and without this the world will have no choice but to look beyond China and to other alternatives... just like TSMC cutting Huawei off meant people have no choice but to buy Apple and Samsung phones now... likewise, by US cutting China off chips it will as a natural consequence have the same effect as if US forced all countries to stop all trade with China.. the only difference is this is more surgical and asymettric, there are only a handful of countries and companies that have semiconductor fabrication abilities, so the US only has to focus on enforcenment of these countries and these companies, which makes the job much easier and much more doable...

This is America's best chance to end China, of all the scenarios this seems most strategic and most asymettric and the strategy that seems most able to succeed. Which is why I believe the US will do this within the next year or two at the most.

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quantumlight said:

Let me give you one example, Apple A5 chip fab by Tsmc then shipped to China to assemble by Foxxconn. So in an all out blanket chip embargo scenario, Apple is barred by US gov from sending its A5 chips to China... without this critical component, Apple cannot make its ipad and iphone inside of China. Foxxconn will have to pull out and assemble elsewhere... As a consequence of that, when Apple pulls out it also kills off the entire ecosystem that it supported in China and all the supply chain around that.

Repeat this for Dell, Hp, Lenovo etc , for example Dell cant make a laptop in China if its not allowed to ship the intel processors into China...

Are you telling me China can fab 5nm, 7nm? or that China can produce Intel chips on its own?

So what Dell will redisegn its laptops to use SMIC 45nm? I think not, it will just move its factory to India or Vietnam or whatever.

Overnight this will destroy China's export economy, and how long do you think it will take Xi Dual Circulation to ramp up? By that time China economy will have already crashed and there will be nothing left to bootstrap to circulation in the first place.

In a postPeak world the rate limiting factor is resource extraction/consumption, if US can take out China from the global economy picture then resource inputs become a lot cheaper, it can offset for the pain of uprooting and rerouting global supply chains around China and to cheaper places like India, Vietnam all the while AI automation ramp up means there will be much fewer sweatshops needed to be ramped up to begin with since its all robots now...

This saves US hegemony and puts the ball in China's court where the only recourse is for China to initiate a hot war (retake TW, etc etc) which would once more play to US advantage since China cannot defeat US kinetically if its China offense vs US defence in any hot war situation.. If China cant go to war, and it cant fab the chips, what are its options really? By the time it figured out 5nm the world would have moved on and China would have permanently lose vast majority of its export business as foreign companies would have nearly all pulled out by then

Short of nuclear war, this IS the worst case for China... America CAN try this scorched earth strategy. China MUST be prepared.

I am mainland not Tiawan... Im voicing my concerns because I grew up in US I know how US gov thinks, if I was US gov this would be what I would do

One fallback model of U.S. supremacy is to plunge the rest of the world back into the dark ages through hybrid warfare—while the U.S. controls the key systems of communication, information, surveillance, finance, rent extraction, along with the corridors of maritime transport. Chips are the new oil and semiconductor supply chain the digital OPEC.

This chip embargo is the best hail mary they got and the US will not pass up thd chance to use this ultimate card

China should never depend on its enemy showing mercy, this is the most severe move US can make to collapse China

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Senior Chinese leaders pushing the industry to be more innovative realize that China cannot realistically recreate, at home, the multiple and complex value chains that would be needed to achieve something like “self-reliance” in semiconductors. A leading Chinese semiconductor industry advisor, Professor Wei Shaojun, made this point in a speech at an industry conference in late 2020, cautioning that “the idea of ‘All Made in China’ is very hot, and is getting too hot.”

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In the related semiconductor design segment, China has made huge strides over the past fifteen years. In 2019, China’s design sector reached a level that surpassed Taiwan, making China the second-largest design industry cluster after the United States globally. China’s share of semiconductor design went from 3.6 percent in 2004 to nearly 43 percent in 2019.

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In the memory sector, Chinese firms are just starting to make significant inroads into the global market, after massive investment via the National IC Fund and local versions of the fund, and the failure of a number of ventures. Domestic firm GigaDevice, for example, accounted for nearly 20 percent of global market share for NOR flash memory in the first half of 2020 according to industry sources. Major Chinese memory players YMTC, a maker of 3-D NAND, and Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT)—formerly called Innotron—a DRAM company, are both poised to break into global markets in 2021 using fairly advanced manufacturing processes.

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Many have argued that U.S. pressure on China in the semiconductor arena will ultimately mean that domestic companies step up and overcome the many challenges noted in this paper. But progress in reducing dependence will remain uneven over the many sectors involved in semiconductor value chains. Chinese companies could make relatively rapid gains in some areas, such as design and OSAT, while facing slower progress in areas such as manufacturing and materials. This process will play out over a long time frame, at least a decade or more, with major consequences for the sector, particularly if China succeeds in duplicating major portions of global value and supply chains.

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Oldschool said:

@quantumlight
China is close to 95% self sufficiency at 28nm. Don't believe in gadgetcool5 BS.

US knows it that's why it won't even bother to sanction Huawei at 28nm and above. It even let TSMC do foundry for Huawei at 28nm or above. Otherwise it will sanction Huawei completely. US is very calculating. It will sanction up to the limit of your capability.

Complete embargo by US and all its allies , worst case would not cripple China. It will hit cellphone, and competitive western standard computer system.


But the low end laptop, PC, The aircond, refrigerator, EV,. Microwave, LCD display, TV, home router , high-speed rail, electric bus, construction equipments
and many many others still keep on rolling..

No need to worry about complete tech embargo. It will empty out the space for domestic players to fill in.
Also spur China tech development.

What needs to worry is disruption of sea lanes.

Fast construction of carrier strike group that can go out to protect is what's needed

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AndrewS said:

My gut tells me 95% self-sufficiency for 28nm semiconductors is a bit too high.
But I do expect to see 99%-100% soon.
And nodes at 28nm+ should cover 80% of total semiconductor demand.

Also, there's no such thing as fast construction of Chinese carrier strike groups.
Even if China started today with a crash naval buildup, it would still be at least 5 years before a sizeable aircraft carrier fleet could be operational.

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bajingan said:

I would think that pouring more money into naval build up is wasteful at this stage, money is better spent on crash nuclear build up, the us and allies will pressure China to join start treaty, its better to achieve parity then negotiate as equal in arms control agreement, build up to build down

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