Chinese semiconductor industry

krautmeister said:

The bottom line is, when you have already dominant companies with better and more complete features than your own offerings, you cannot compete and will be perpetually left behind the technology and adoption curve until some sort of protection is granted to such weaker companies.

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US EDA companies can gain on China's competition only if there is a lot of room for improvement. If there's not much room left, China will catch up, in spite of the lead that American firms now enjoy.

The EDA situation may be similar to semiconductor lithography: TSMC is now ahead of China's fabs, but how much further can the Taiwanese firm go? Perhaps to 3 nm, maybe to 2 nm, and then what? They will likely be stuck, and that would allow the Chinese fabs to catch up.

The EDA market is about 40 years old, and is probably maturing. This means that essentials likely can't improve much. The US EDA developers are probably adding lots of glitz, much as US automakers added tailfins to cars; however, the essentials of the software are probably not changing much. Hence Chinese firms like Empyrean et cetera will have time to catch up.

KYli said:

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I think you need to read this article to get the idea that this is no longer the Chinese government but all major Chinese companies are on board and would try to advance Chinese semiconductor industry without American component even if it meant they would need to take some risks.

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Great article find there and very encouraging for China's technology development. I am hoping this EDA software design ban will only be enacted when the SMEE 14nm trials begin. If they can enact those measures around the same time, it would be a perfect opportunity to further disillusion the still American leaning China companies to finally use China domestic solutions.

IBM says it has made a significant breakthrough in computer processors by creating a 2nm chip in its test lab.

Bellum_Romanum said:

IBM says it has made a significant breakthrough in computer processors by creating a 2nm chip in its test lab.

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R&D lab and production fab is quite a huge difference.

Bellum_Romanum said:

IBM says it has made a significant breakthrough in computer processors by creating a 2nm chip in its test lab.

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@Bellum_Romanum bro TSMC , Samsung also have one both are due for mass production in 2024, with these news the TSMC FABS in Arizona will be a way for Intel (with IBM collaboration) to learn advance chip production processes from the Taiwanese?

Ndla2 said:

R&D lab and production fab is quite a huge difference.

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I will grant you that point since I have little next to nothing knowledge of the semiconductor industry and tech. I saw the headline and read through the P.R. stunt published on one of the most famous advertising agencies in the world the lying BBC.

Bellum_Romanum said:

I will grant you that point since I have little next to nothing knowledge of the semiconductor industry and tech. I saw the headline and read through the P.R. stunt published on one of the most famous advertising agencies in the world the lying BBC.

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You can read it here. This is an actual semi industry news site:

Nutrient said:

Synopsys's thousands of EDA programmers are irrelevant to China while Synopsys is essentially excluded from China -- by the US itself. Yes, the software may still be legal to sell in the country (I actually don't know if it is), but if the products made by using it are sanctioned, it's as good as banned.

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Synopsis isn't excluded from China, nor or any of the other global EDA giants. The US proposal is to globally sanction all semiconductors <=14nm designed with American EDA. American EDA is a triopoly so if such legislation passes, there is no way for China to obtain <=14nm semiconductors because only these American EDA companies have end-to-end start to finish solutions. It is very difficult and inefficient to completely design <=14nm semiconductors using disparate EDA tools from different vendors and patching them together as if they were plug-n-play, and that's why the full design flow EDA tools are a triopoly.

Like I said before, Synopsis has over 5000 programmers worldwide, while the sum total of the entire EDA programmer community in China working for China EDA firms is around 300. On top of this, China's EDA suppliers don't have access to the world's leading edge fabs and equipment like the American EDA giants. China EDA companies cannot possibly compete without extenuating circumstances. So, these discriminator US proposals are actually a golden opportunity to finally catch up in the entire semiconductor supply china. If the SMEE 14nm trials are successful, the last remaining "significant" barrier is full design flow EDA.

Software can be copied. With regards to lack of integration with Chinese fab characteristics or whatever I doubt it will be that hard to modify the software to those flows. It's probably a matter of creating or changing configuration files not code.

The US thinks they are slow boiling a frog, but really they are strengthening the Chinese semi tools market.

krautmeister said:

Great article find there and very encouraging for China's technology development. I am hoping this EDA software design ban will only be enacted when the SMEE 14nm trials begin. If they can enact those measures around the same time, it would be a perfect opportunity to further disillusion the still American leaning China companies to finally use China domestic solutions.

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I'm not sure why you keep focusing so much on EDA. Software isn't hard to move across borders and software export regs are some of the easiest to skirt