Chinese semiconductor industry

ansy1968 said:

@horse @Overbom and @FairAndUnbiased bro I've been thinking with our topic regarding the Taipei and Seoul Spring, is the American cajoling the Chinese to launch a Pearl Harbor type attack? the situation may not be serious like that of the Japanese before WW2 but the tactics are eerily similar, replacing oil with chips. Maybe I've been over thinking it to much and at least the Chinese leaderships are all student of history and may had studied it.

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The criticial distinction is that globally the world has crossed a point of inflection where due to combination of resource depletion (and global peak of energy and deminishing EROEI etc) and human overpopulation it is now (at biggest picture level) not only a zero sum game but a negative sum game where its "winner takes all", "last man standing" in the context of everyones pie getting smaller and Cannibalization/Harvesting being the only way forward in terms of running faster just to stay in place....

America is using its digital OPEC (semiconductor supply chain chokehold) to extent the dying petrodollar hegemony (just like it used oil to keep USD alive after they went off the gold standard when Fort Knox turned up empty in 71) while also as a means to kneecap Chinese tech ascension, to make China constrained into not being able to climb out of the middle income trap economically, thus forcing China to continue to be enslaved by the US in forever playing the role of cheap labor factory thereby allowing US to keep inflation low whilsts focusing on the high end jobs....

If there is going to be a war its gonna be the US that sneak attacks China when/if China succeeds in escaping the US grasps

After AUKUS and the Wind Farms, I hope that puts to rest the case some were making that China only ever needs 300 nukes for deterrence

ansy1968 said:

@horse @Overbom and @FairAndUnbiased bro I've been thinking with our topic regarding the Taipei and Seoul Spring, is the American cajoling the Chinese to launch a Pearl Harbor type attack? the situation may not be serious like that of the Japanese before WW2 but the tactics are eerily similar, replacing oil with chips. Maybe I've been over thinking it to much and at least the Chinese leaderships are all student of history and may had studied it.

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Hey brother, don't bother with it.

The Americans putting TSMC and Samsung down, that is Taiwan's problem, and South Korea's problem. They were too slow to protect themselves, and diversify their risks.

Maybe TSMC did something about it, try to protect themselves, since they are Chinese, then they can pretend they do not understand English. The Koreans don't have that luxury. TSMC executives can run to China and hide with all the Taiwanese people there. Korean executives probably just wind up arrested.


The facts are the facts.

90% or more of the world's semiconductors production are 14nm and 28nm and higher. That is the chip market. The entire market can only change slowly over time.

China is very close to having the tech know-how on supplying the vast majority of chips that China Inc. consumes. 14nm, the entire supply chain to fab that, will be domesticated relatively soon (according to reports), then build out the fabs.

I don't believe that this should be 100% domestic this IC equipment, should leave some space for friendly competitors.

But that window is closing.

Taiwan IC and Korean IC must think of their own survival. The Americans want to hijack their know-how right now. Then the Americans will build fabs and processes with this hijacked know-how, not in Taiwan or Korea, but in America. Then the US House of Congress and corruption will demand that America buys American. Anyone who at any time was involve in business can see this coming a mile away.

So I am not thinking what you are suggesting.

This is not a battle between China and America.

America is trying to build a separate IC supply chain that does not involve China. China is already doing this.

The word here is exclusivity. America wants to exclude China from its chip industry. China is more or less doing the same. One person's self-sufficiency is another person's exclusion. But this will be slow.

In the meantime, the output still gets sold into China, the actual chips.

Taiwan and Korea are just collateral damage.

Uncle Sam has just cornered Taiwan and Korea, and there is no one around except China, who is watching.

Uncle Sam demands that Taiwan and Korea hands over their lunch money and meal tickets. "Give it up!" Uncle Sam demands.

What would China do? What China did, was arrest a couple of Canadians, threaten the foreigners, and slapped sanctions on people in Europe to howls of protests. What laughs! That was great! They should do more of that.

China should not get involved, it should get closer, and stand there and watch this shakedown in the alley.

China should make it presence felt by getting closer and watching, but mind its own business at the same time.

If the Americans get upset that China should watch, f- you, you know. We ain't shaking down anybody, this is your family.

weig2000 said:

65nm is sufficiently good for military applications. I heard Russia has hired a lot of Taiwanese (TSMC?) engineers to help them build fabs in Russia, paying over $200K a year per person.

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They did, but they will be primarily working on restoring the "Angstrom-T" fab in Zelenograd, which was 65 nm as well. There are big talks about funding EUV and all that crap, but there are zero chances it is going to amount to anything because Russia is also under similar sanctions.

65 nm is sufficient for most military chips, but the person was talking about "playing significant role in semiconductor supply chain", which is not true. Russia fabs primarily work for the domestic market, are low tech and low volume. Russia does produce some optical parts for the lithographic equipment, but that's about it. Not really significant.

All i'm seeing out of all of this is that anglo america has so little confidence in its own racial superiority myths of intellectual competitiveness, that it needs to steal IP from Asian nations.

xypher said:

They did, but they will be primarily working on restoring the "Angstrom-T" fab in Zelenograd, which was 65 nm as well. There are big talks about funding EUV and all that crap, but there are zero chances it is going to amount to anything because Russia is also under similar sanctions.

65 nm is sufficient for most military chips, but the person was talking about "playing significant role in semiconductor supply chain", which is not true. Russia fabs primarily work for the domestic market, are low tech and low volume. Russia does produce some optical parts for the lithographic equipment, but that's about it. Not really significant.

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So lets say when China has increased its own capacity to cover like 70% of its internal semi conductor needs, Chinese semi equipment manufactures can start providing tooling for core SCO nations? Given most if not all SCO/BRI nations are under the same Wassenaar arrangement for exporting dual use equipment and tooling.

BlackWindMnt said:

So lets say when China has increased its own capacity to cover like 70% of its internal semi conductor needs, Chinese semi equipment manufactures can start providing tooling for core SCO nations? Given most if not all SCO/BRI nations are under the same Wassenaar arrangement for exporting dual use equipment and tooling.

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China is stronger than Russia in the field of microelectronics. China could use some of this technology in exchange for other military technology from Russia. Both countries benefit.

FangYuan said:

China is stronger than Russia in the field of microelectronics. China could use some of this technology in exchange for other military technology from Russia. Both countries benefit.

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Yeah military technology exchange or just money, having Russia and Iran be able to create 28nm or 14nm post 2025 should help increase their own technical capabilities. By then I expect china to have 7 and 5nm capability in limited capacity. Maybe enough to help some logic semi fabless companies like HiSilicon.

BlackWindMnt said:

Chinese semi equipment manufactures can start providing tooling for core SCO nations?

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Do these nations (including russia) have the domestic market for it? Just because they can buy from china, doesnt mean that they will find it worthy to set up an industry for it. But perhabs someone here can answer this.

FangYuan said:

China is stronger than Russia in the field of microelectronics. China could use some of this technology in exchange for other military technology from Russia. Both countries benefit.

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No. DUV, EUV etc technologies are cutting edge with tremendous commercial opportunities. Why would China trade technologies (incl. supply chain) worth hundreds of billions of dollars for military tech which China is already catching up to Russia?

Everything is based on economics, and as such China would prefer to have tremendous economic benefits than whatever mil. tech Russia has.

Selling the products "as-it-is" to foreign companies: ok
Selling and doing ToT about cutting edge technologies with tremendous economic opportunities:NO.