Chinese semiconductor industry

Yukiolweipqled51 said:

Standing at position 4 out of 4 players is not usually considered standing at a leading position. It seems you think otherwise.

In fact, China remains the single largest net importer of integrated circuits (of any kind) on planet Earth as of 2020.

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Apparently, you are either woefully misinformed or unable to understand the question.

Wikipedia or other such open source encyclopedia, public discussion forum, social media such as youtube, youku, weibo, twitter are never considered authentic references for good reasons.

FYI, China also remains by far the largest net importer of any types of machines and equipment used in the manufacture of of semiconductor boules or wafers, semiconductor devices, electronic integrated circuits or flat panel displays; machines and apparatus specified in note 9 C to chapter 84; parts and accessories, n.e.s..

That not only includes lithography tools but also materials and equipment used in every stage of the front end and backend processes involved in the fabrication of integrated circuits on silicon wafers, of course.

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Moreover, the co-CEO of SMIC Mr Liang Mengsong states publicly that SMIC's 7nm process tech is at least 35% inferior to that of competitors or rivals.

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I could continue, just that it's too wasteful. No point in spoonfeeding the audience here or anywhere.

Would you still say China will no longer play catch up in the semiconductor industry because it is supposedly a leading player?

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Shouldn't you also evaluate output and production of IC in China and trend that to give a clearer picture? Simply saying year x snapshot shows China is the world's largest importer of IC is really a pretty poor effort to make your claim. USA was once the world's largest importer of cars. Doesn't mean they didn't and don't produce cars. Pathetic logic.

China's chip imports have always been high after the turn of the century. It went from making no chips and having no ability to make chips into making plenty of chips and having second tier ability to produce chips using various processes and equipment it has developed or learned and mastered over time. There is no doubt its progress is fairly quick but the question is whether it can catch up quick enough to play in the top tier. If it does, it would have self reliance in almost the entire chain unlike South Korea and Taiwan who would still depend on American, Dutch, Japanese, and German equipment. They also do not own the entire chain. If anything only the US can be considered to hold the entire chain since it has hegemony over all these other suppliers.

If anyone wants to do a genuine and mathematically relevant assessment of the stats that supposedly show the health of a chip making nation, plot the trend line in imported chips (by value) of several major tech nations and how much in goods which use chips they have exported. Compare them. It's no use focusing only on one since we're given stats of value. The price of chips are determined by thousands of major economic and industrial factors, even logistics and things like how many shitcoin farmers are increasing around your neighbourhood.

Plot Taiwan, China, Japan, Korea, USA, France, UK and take a look. Then remember that Chinese tech exports have been increasing like mad and only in recent years have Chinese cars been exported in these sorts of unprecedented numbers into western markets. Not to mention machinery and other electronics which are also unprecendented high in export value and volume for China since 2015. All those things require chips and of course China imported more chips but did they import more than other major tech powers? Did China export more goods that use chips than those other nations? YES... by some crazy, increasing margin as well. Check the gradients. Value goes up because top end chip prices have tripled over the years (adjusted).

ougoah said:

35% inferior to alternative 7nm processes in Taiwan and South Korea is surprisingly impressive. I was thinking of 2022/3 at least when any Chinese foundry manages to do 7nm on any acceptable commercial scale.

Now that 35% is curiously specific like it is determined by production output or some chip equivalent of EROEI measure wrt fab materials, energy and costs or even just production rates.

Yangtze Memory breakthrough is nice progress.

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@ougoah Sir N+1(8NM) is comparable to Samsung 8nm in performance, the N+2 is the real deal 7nm with TSMC 7nm DUVL chip as the benchmark.

ougoah said:

Shouldn't you also evaluate output and production of IC in China and trend that to give a clearer picture? Simply saying year x snapshot shows China is the world's largest importer of IC is really a pretty poor effort to make your claim. USA was once the world's largest importer of cars. Doesn't mean they don't produce cars.

China's chip imports have always been high after the turn of the century. It went from making no chips and having no ability to make chips into making plenty of chips and having second tier ability to produce chips using various processes and equipment it has developed or learned and mastered over time. There is no doubt its progress is fairly quick but the question is whether it can catch up quick enough to play in the top tier. If it does, it would have self reliance in almost the entire chain unlike South Korea and Taiwan who would still depend on American, Dutch, Japanese, and German equipment. They also do not own the entire chain. If anything only the US can be considered to hold the entire chain since it has hegemony over all these other suppliers.

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Here's the hilariously stupid part. By the logic of high net imports and high share of foreign products = backwards and primitive, any country can apparently easily increase its technological position: simply have a failing electronics industry.

then USD would suddenly command a 40% market share. By the logic of low net imports = good, doesn't this mean there was a vast improvement?

ansy1968 said:

@ougoah Sir N+1(8NM) is comparable to Samsung 8nm in performance, the N+2 is the real deal 7nm with TSMC 7nm DUVL chip as the benchmark.

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So is the 35% number calculated from production related metrics or consumption ones? Like for their process, every 100 attempted results in 50% success as opposed to 85% success? I'm still wondering why Liang said the process is 35% inferior.

FairAndUnbiased said:

Here's the hilariously stupid part. By the logic of high net imports and high share of foreign products = backwards and primitive, any country can apparently easily increase its technological position: simply have a failing electronics industry.

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then

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USD would suddenly command a 40% market share. By the logic of low net imports = good, doesn't this mean there was a vast improvement?

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I think he still makes the important and relevant point that shows China's electronics industry is extremely dependent on purchasing Taiwanese and Korean fabbed chips that its own domestic efforts (while very impressive and quickly developing) is still nowhere near enough to satisfy the demand. This also isn't an issue of scale but technological maturity for foundries and the performance of the chips. A Chinese 14nm simply cannot compete with a Taiwanese 7nm.

Of course he goes about making that point in such a silly way. Is it tidalwave/insert 100 aliases? Reads like his stuff. Too much confirmation bias (to the point of using the import stats as evidence lol) and refusal to look at the big picture developments.

ougoah said:

I think he still makes the important and relevant point that shows China's electronics industry is extremely dependent on purchasing Taiwanese and Korean fabbed chips that its own domestic efforts (while very impressive and quickly developing) is still nowhere near enough to satisfy the demand. This also isn't an issue of scale but technological maturity for foundries and the performance of the chips. A Chinese 14nm simply cannot compete with a Taiwanese 7nm.

Of course he goes about making that point in such a silly way. Is it tidalwave/insert 100 aliases? Reads like his stuff. Too much confirmation bias (to the point of using the import stats as evidence lol) and refusal to look at the big picture developments.

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Ok, but an even worse dependence is in place for many developed European countries yet apparently nobody talks about how UK is a puny insect in semiconductor even though a 1980s 200 mm fab is apparently a national champion or how terrible Sweden, Norway, Italy etc. are.

FairAndUnbiased said:

Ok, but an even worse dependence is in place for many developed European countries yet apparently nobody talks about how UK is a puny insect in semiconductor even though a 1980s 200 mm fab is apparently a national champion or how terrible Sweden, Norway, Italy etc. are.

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Of course. But at the same time I suppose we're also not talking about the ability of chip production in those nations. There are only two nations on earth that can produce any semiconductor of reasonable performance purely on their own and those are USA and China. Not including Russia since reasonable performance would be 28nm at the least. Even then, I'm sure there are some parts, chemicals, machinery these two use that originate in Japan, Germany, or elsewhere. For example while Taiwan's TSMC is a great foundry, they use Dutch this, German that, Japanese everything else etc. While they do this, those Dutch, Germans, and Japanese also cannot do what the Taiwanese do. Only the Americans and Chinese hold enough of the entire chain to do everything themselves but not to the degree of the specialised alternative.

Nobody in this thread would talk about e.g. Netherlands (despite owning EUVL tech) because the only countries that have foundries capable of <28nm are China, USA, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan (sorry not a country oops lol).

His point, if you ignore the doom and gloom stuff and the occasional clear hyperbole, is that China is still not at the same level as those other four and also nowhere near close to being totally self reliant in supplying Chinese industries and exports with China's own chips. Its production is too low and while industrial uses and whatnot can make use of generation or two lagged chips, commercial products cannot. So scaling up production of relatively obsolete chips is fine for military, industry, domestic uses for tech sake, it doesn't make much sense beyond a certain point. Even that point hasn't been reached at the moment as most Chinese companies can and do buy the leading chips from fabs in Taiwan and Korea. They are not barred from buying and even contracting TSMC so why would they switch to Chinese chipmakers until they are on the same footing as TSMC and Samsung.

To me this is all a matter of how the gov can properly direct efforts to close the fab gap. Chinese chip designers rule and have been top of the game for close to 10 years if not longer. That may not be as technically challenging as working out the entire fab process and every single piece of tooling, machinery, and know-how involved with those processes but it's a matter of organisation and incentives. This isn't being tasked with building a warp drive engine. It can and will be done with some effort. However it hasn't been done anywhere else yet (everyone depends on something and doesn't know something along the chain) except the US which has only recently began to consolidate everything along the chain to the leading edge, 5nm at the moment?

Point is while Tidalwave is understandably "concerned" in his own way, these are all first world problems. The only danger for China is the US banning every single Chinese company from contracting TSMC or buying chips from American (also fabbed by Taiwan), Korean, or Taiwanese companies. Because this would disrupt China's tech exports so much it would be a near killing blow. It also would hamper China's own development progress since every engine of development runs on chips. While that would be okay for years, it would be hard to develop and compete on the same level using aging chips. But alas China is not lagging anywhere near as much these days and its tech capabilities are impressive to say the least. When the Americans banned chips for Chinese supercomputers about half a decade ago, they've been using their own and topping the list, even developing two world first exascale computers using Chinese chips.

On that note, how cool are the names Loongson and Sunway in Chinese and combining it with the English interpretations. To me there is indeed something almost other-worldly with IC technology.

Yukiolweipqled51 said:

Standing at position 4 out of 4 players is not usually considered standing at a leading position. It seems you think otherwise.
In fact, China remains the single largest net importer of integrated circuits (of any kind) on planet Earth as of 2020.
Apparently, you are either woefully misinformed or unable to understand the question.
FYI, China also remains by far the largest net importer of any types of machines and equipment used in the manufacture of of semiconductor boules or wafers, semiconductor devices, electronic integrated circuits or flat panel displays; machines and apparatus...
That not only includes lithography tools but also materials and equipment used in every stage of the front end and backend processes involved in the fabrication of integrated circuits on silicon wafers, of course.
Moreover, the co-CEO of SMIC Mr Liang Mengsong states publicly that SMIC's 7nm process tech is at least 35% inferior to that of competitors or rivals.
Would you still say China will no longer play catch up in the semiconductor industry because it is supposedly a leading player?

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Yes, YMTC is in the top NAND Flash producers in terms of memory density. You seem to think that is a poor result, when the company did not even exist one decade ago (founded in 2016). Yet look at a well established company like Intel, which had to exit the NAND Flash business because they could not compete with established players. YMTC memory is also faster than alternatives because of its architecture.

China is the single largest net importer of integrated circuits because they are basically the factory of the world's consumer electronics. How many of those integrated circuits stay in China and how many are re-exported? Do the math and you might end up figuring out China already has enough fabrication to offset any imports for its own use.

The fact is China already has more wafer fabrication capacity than either the US or Japan and is only behind South Korea and Taiwan. Considering the industry was basically non-existent two decades ago I think that is a pretty good result.

China is still importing a lot of the machine tools but the amount of machine tools it can produce natively keeps increasing. And China is basically the only country which has even a chance of producing all the machine tools it needs for semiconductors by itself. Because only China has the scale of manufacturing demand to require those tools in large enough amounts to make their production viable all by themselves. You ignore the fact everyone else is importing machine tools and materials from someone else too.

SMIC's N+1 process is basically 10nm and the N+2 process is the 7nm competitor. And of course if you compare it against TSMC N7+ with EUV it might be worse. Because SMIC is banned from getting EUV machines. But it should be just as good if not better than TSMC and Samsung's non-EUV 7nm lithography, or Intel's. Intel does not use EUV at all.

China already is a leading player and would be the dominant player by now had the US not played its anti-competitive hand to kneecap Chinese industry. But just like they failed to kneecap the Chinese space industry last time they tried it in the 1990s, they will fail at semiconductors too. It is a simple matter of economics. Factories have been leaving the US at least since the late 1980s. None of the production of final consumer goods is done in the US anymore. Last time Google and Apple tried to produce something in the US and figured out it cost twice as much they pulled the plug on it. Without the demand for chips the fabs won't get built it is as simple as that.

I think the production costs for US is a point to be made for pretty much everything except chips. While it may cost a bit more, there absolutely is demand. And if the US manages to take that away from TSMC and Samsung, they are the only shop in town at the 5nm, 7nm level. Now the Americans may not go as far as destroying "allied" foundries through those economic and political means but they do seem interested in consolidating chipmaking abilities inside the US.

China getting there may or may not attract many partners who will contract Chinese foundries to make their chips, simply because there are close to no others out there with their own chip lines e.g. like Huawei (but not Chinese) who don't already have close connections to the established Asian players and will have connections to American foundries.

Some Indian tech companies are beginning to design their own chips and they currently will be using Korean or Taiwanese foundries but they won't be using any Chinese ones due to various political reasons and will consider an American one. Even without foreign customers, those American ones will have American business.