An interesting study by Mathieu Duchâtel, Director of the Asia Program from Institut Montaigne. This is a good summary of the China-US semiconductor tech war dynamic. Its conclusions and recommendations are close to what we've seen the US and EU actually end up implementing. Overall, a good summary of the global semiconductor industry with a few critical errors imo.
"Looking ahead, the power of Chinese internet platforms like Alibaba, Baidu
and Tencent and their business growth into cloud, AI, the Internet of Things
and systems for autonomous vehicles will be a powerful driver for the further
growth of Chinese IC design"
"Changxin: the company signed sales contracts for its new DRAM products and could supply up to 4% of the world's DRAM capacity – essentially on the Chinese domestic market – by the end of the year49. Changxin uses 19-nanometer technology, compared to 14 nanometers for the world's leading memory companies."
"But there are two critical bottlenecks that China needs to overcome to pass the 7-nanometer manufacturing hurdle: a steady supply of EDA tools, and extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment. Dependence on EDA is a potentially fatal weakness for the Chinese semiconductor industry in case the US escalates the technology war."
"Chinese EDA developers find themselves excluded from the virtuous circle of innovation by operating mainly inside their domestic ecosystem."
"Even if two institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have research programs on EUV technology, Chinese contract foundries will not be able to develop 7 nm nodes if export controls prevent ASML from selling them advanced EUV machines."
"The Chinese industry has been discussing opensource alternatives to Arm architecture for years. Arm’s architecture is open for many interfaces, and the open-source space is increasing, but most industry sources see no credible sign that open source constitutes a comprehensive alternative in case Arm architecture is targeted by US restrictions."
"But China’s vulnerabilities remain easily exploitable. As underscored by a scholar from the Chinese Academy of Sciences: “Obviously, the most prominent shortcoming restricting China’s technological innovation and economic development is that the core technology is not in our own hands and we are facing a serious bottleneck problem. Even if we benefit from the global division of labor thanks to our comparative advantages, we still need to have control over core technologies."
