Huawei Claims To Have Built Its Own 14nm Chip Design Suite (theregister.com) 45
Huawei has reportedly completed work on electronic design automation (EDA) tools for laying out and making chips down to 14nm process nodes. The Register reports: Chinese media said the platform is one of 78 being developed by the telecoms equipment giant to replace American and European chip design toolkits that have become subject to export controls by the US and others. Huawei's EDA platform was reportedly revealed by rotating Chairman Xu Zhijun during a meeting in February, and later confirmed by media in China. [...] Huawei's focus on EDA software for 14nm and larger chips reflects the current state of China's semiconductor industry. State-backed foundry operator SMIC currently possesses the ability to produce 14nm chips at scale, although there have been some reports the company has had success developing a 7nm process node.
Today, the EDA market is largely controlled by three companies: California-based Synopsys and Cadence, as well as Germany's Siemens. According to the industry watchers at TrendForce, these three companies account for roughly 75 percent of the EDA market. And this poses a problem for Chinese chipmakers and foundries, which have steadily found themselves cut off from these tools. Synopsys and Cadence's EDA tech is already subject to several of these export controls, which were stiffened by the US Commerce Department last summer to include state-of-the-art gate-all-around (GAA) transistors. This January, the White House also reportedly stopped issuing export licenses to companies supplying the likes of Huawei.
This is particularly troublesome for Huawei, foundry operator SMIC, and memory vendor YMTC to name a few on the US Entity List, a roster of companies Uncle Sam would prefer you not to do business with. It leaves them unable to access recent and latest technologies, at the very least. So the development of a homegrown EDA platform for 14nm chips serves as insurance in case broader access to Western production platforms is cut off entirely.
Today, the EDA market is largely controlled by three companies: California-based Synopsys and Cadence, as well as Germany's Siemens. According to the industry watchers at TrendForce, these three companies account for roughly 75 percent of the EDA market. And this poses a problem for Chinese chipmakers and foundries, which have steadily found themselves cut off from these tools. Synopsys and Cadence's EDA tech is already subject to several of these export controls, which were stiffened by the US Commerce Department last summer to include state-of-the-art gate-all-around (GAA) transistors. This January, the White House also reportedly stopped issuing export licenses to companies supplying the likes of Huawei.
This is particularly troublesome for Huawei, foundry operator SMIC, and memory vendor YMTC to name a few on the US Entity List, a roster of companies Uncle Sam would prefer you not to do business with. It leaves them unable to access recent and latest technologies, at the very least. So the development of a homegrown EDA platform for 14nm chips serves as insurance in case broader access to Western production platforms is cut off entirely.
Borrowed tech (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure they have, using tech they've espionaged from the US, Taiwan, and Europe. Like their space program is the finest in NASA and ESA tech.
They're bad at R&D, but excellent production engineers, can certainly make some improvements to it once they've five-fingered the basics - at this point they're arguably ahead of everyone at practical quantum communications.
Re:Borrowed tech (Score:4, Insightful)
The EDA software is the easy part.
Let's see them build their own EUV steppers.
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The EDA software is the easy part.
Let's see them build their own EUV steppers.
It's only a matter of time. In addition to the knowledge they've 'acquired' from others, they also have intelligence, motivation. and deep pockets. They'll get there, and possibly a lot sooner than Biden and company think they will.
I'm no fan of China, but underestimating them is a mistake. America has gained a short-term advantage; but goading Beijing into developing these capabilities - and the additional ones that necessarily go hand-in-hand with them - will come back to bite the US in the ass.
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I'm no fan of China, but underestimating them is a mistake. America has gained a short-term advantage;
Apparently in fewer and fewer fields. And this one will not last long either. It should also be noted that 14nm is plenty for almost all things.
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Yup. And like so many other articles here this is another that needs to be preceded with "Surprising exactly nobody...". Like overuse of antibiotics breeding superbugs, having the US overuse trade restrictions pretty much guaranteed that China would develop its own versions of the embargoed products, which would then come back and bite the US when they produced stuff better, faster, and cheaper than the US can.
Oh, and for the person who posted the obligatory "copied from the US" trash, that stuff is abou
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Re: Borrowed tech (Score:2)
They have the original software present. I'm sure they still know how reverse engineering works. And if they then develop the specs and blackbox develop new software, it's not even an IP issue.
It is quite simple, really (Score:4, Interesting)
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They're bad at R&D
Explain why they are bad at R&D. Because like this it sounds really racist/xenophobic. It is not hard to imagine that a country with 1.4 billion people and a good economy is able to find great scientists(same reason why they are always on podium at olympic games). Granted industrial secrets exist but research is by nature very open and they don't pretend to be number 1 in chip design. Reverse engineering and industrial espionage is limited to China? Every companies do these things since forever even if
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US has some deluded sense of exceptionalism, but in reality the country appears past its prime. Constant political infighting and disdain for education do not make a recipe for technological success.
I worked with several engineers from China and many of them are quite good. My coworkers visited Chi
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US has some deluded sense of exceptionalism, but in reality the country appears past its prime. Constant political infighting and disdain for education do not make a recipe for technological success.
Indeed. The US deeply believes it is so far ahead that it does not need to try anymore. Probably the only thing that keeps the population in line, because if they know how mediocre and sometimes really bad the living conditions in the US actually are compared to the rest of the developed world, that would likely cause a civil war. The downside of that strategy are things like the disdain for knowledge and education that is rampart in the US. All it takes for the US to collapse economically within a few dec
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Sigh. We are going to keep losing, aren't we?
Huawei recently demonstrated 50Gbps over passive optical fibre in a consumer router. Product to launch later this year. We've got nothing, nobody in the West is close to having a carrier grade POF system capable of 50Gbps to customers ready to install.
Obviously it wasn't stolen, since there was nothing to steal.
Of course we won't be able to benefit from that technology, because we banned Huawei products. Maybe it will make it into a standard and our guys can pay
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Sigh. We are going to keep losing, aren't we?
Yes we are. Remember than during the last 2000 years, China was a big economic power during a good chunk of it [weforum.org].
We used our fossil fuels peak (in 1940, the US were producing 60% of the world oil, in 1920 Great Britain passed its coal extraction peak) to make some great innovations: cars, trains, planes, chemical industry advancements, electronics...
Since then, China invested and planned a lot on tomorrow technologies: EV, batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, rare earth mining, nuclear, chip manufacturing
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But I must say that the "Inflation Reduction Act" from Biden really seems like a step in the good direction, as it pushes toward more in-house manufacturing, which is a first step toward regaining control of the innovation. I hope Europe understands that and does something similar. Or, and one can dream here, that there is some kind of alliance between Europe/US about that. Yeah, not gonna happen.
Steps to push towards more in-house manufacturing almost inevitably work against globalization and international competition.
If Europe does something similar, access to EU markets will be reduced for US products as well. That on top of current sanctions against China may eventually break the global economy into three big blocks:
- The US and probably the rest of North America.
- The EU
- China and whatever associates they can find (Russia?)
I'm not sure where Africa and South America wou
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Steps to push towards more in-house manufacturing almost inevitably work against globalization and international competition.
Not necessarily against all aspects of globalization: innovations can still cross borders, patents too, a company could have manufacturing plants on several continents...
International competition: maybe.
Would it be a bad thing though? When there is a competition, it means there are winners and losers. I am not talking about the consumer being part of the equation here: the fact that consumers get cheaper products in the short-term is exactly what it is. A short-term side effect. I am talking about long-term
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But I must say that the "Inflation Reduction Act" from Biden really seems like a step in the good direction, as it pushes toward more in-house manufacturing, which is a first step toward regaining control of the innovation. I hope Europe understands that and does something similar. Or, and one can dream here, that there is some kind of alliance between Europe/US about that. Yeah, not gonna happen.
Steps to push towards more in-house manufacturing almost inevitably work against globalization and international competition. If Europe does something similar, access to EU markets will be reduced for US products as well. That on top of current sanctions against China may eventually break the global economy into three big blocks: - The US and probably the rest of North America. - The EU - China and whatever associates they can find (Russia?) I'm not sure where Africa and South America would end up in this scenario.
You left out the rest of Asia and Africa. As for whatever associates China can find you can probably count on the EU, S-America, Asia and Africa continuing to do business with China even if the US and their vassals like the UK and Australia have decided to go full 'Yellow Peril!!' and isolate themselves. This will continue until the Chinese do something blatantly hostile to piss any of these factions off (and, no, balloons do not qualify). This is probably why the Chinese, despite their 'partnership without
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China and whatever associates they can find (Russia?) I'm not sure where Africa and South America would end up in this scenario.
China has already made [cfr.org] significant [economist.com] inroads [forbes.com] into gaining control over Africa. And given the past behaviour of European countries and the US in Africa, I'd guess the Chinese are receiving a fairly warm welcome.
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Steps to push towards more in-house manufacturing almost inevitably work against globalization and international competition.
This is a good thing.
Every nation must look to the needs of it's citizens first. Trade is good, but dependence to the point of vulnerability is bad. International standards do not necessitate single sourcing.
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No, it is not. And it fails their citizens. The universal effect of protectionism is crappy products for high prices and generally falling farther and farther behind. Of course, the proponents of protectionism always claim that everything is going to be different this time because reasons, but that never happens because it cannot happen.
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The US is going to lose this "war" for sure. As to Europe, not necessarily. There is still real R&D going on here and people are not resting their minds on a flawed perception of superiority. Also, education is valued. As to the UK specifically, it really depends on the next few years. If it is "Brexit was the right thing to do and I insist on it while I starve!" then it will look really bleak for a long time. If, however, some sanity can be found, then things may still stabilize on an acceptable level,
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Obviously it wasn't stolen, since there was nothing to steal.
Hey, China's so good at stealing US tech that they've already stolen stuff the US hasn't even invented yet! That just shows how much of a threat they really are.
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Every tech is built on prior ideas, they might have illicitly acquired those prior ideas but it doesn't mean they won't be able to build and expand on it. It's like a Chinese claiming the west simply made improvements to the original Chinese idea of rockets, gunpowder, and guns.
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Don't kid yourself. 14nm and the EDA for it is well within reach of the Chinese without the need to steal anything. At this tech-level, stealing also does not work, because you need to be able to adapt the tech and that works a lot better if you built it yourself. Grossly underestimating an enemy is a very stupid move.
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DUV (Score:2)
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This is not about making hardware. This is about software that designs the layout of the chip at certain sizes. This sort of software is fairly complex in that it needs to accurately automate a lot of process at those sizes. This is why US has been banning multiple technologies needed to make smaller chips. It makes it much harder to get the whole working properly and at scale than allowing PRC to focus on just one aspect of chip making.
China still can't make DUV hardware that's better than what was made in
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By that logic, everything is a dead end, because there will always be something better in the future.
Development is rarely if ever about leaps. It's most about going step by step.
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China won't accomplish that literally ever.
Because the Chinese are inferior as a people, right?
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No, it's because they have have an inferior system of government. As bad as ours is, theirs is worse — no more sustainable, but substantially worse at producing nails that haven't been hammered down, and their actions over the last few decades have dissuaded foreign nations and corporations alike from sharing their best technology with them. Now that other nations have become credible manufacturing centers, why would anyone use China for a new project given their attitude towards foreign IP protection
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why would anyone use China for a new project given their attitude towards foreign IP protection?
That attitude has been changing for a while and the reason is more and more patents from China. They have stopped being dependent on stealing a while ago. In a few years, the stealing will go the other way round in most areas.
Wei to go (Score:1)
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How better to surveil its citizenry. China and its people are stuck in 1984.
I find it amusing when people throw that criticism at China over surveillance because quite honestly, the USA actually is where China can only dream of being when it comes to surveillance capabilities.
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Yep, pretty much. The only thing that is better in the US is that you have some, limited change to fight against when the surveillance data is used against you. But it is not really a good chance and it is getting smaller all the time.
Good. (Score:4, Informative)
If you have ever suffered using Cadence software, any sort of solid competition is desperately welcomed. Cadence is like the Borg, buying up various competitor products and lashing it onto their Frankenstein’s monster of a product with a heap of badly written Skill code written by their Indian software group . The real insult are the rapacious pricing they impose as you are forced to use beta level software in perpetuity, and their jerk support that gaslights you every time you try to pin them down (talking about you Klaus C.).
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If you have ever suffered using Cadence software, any sort of solid competition is desperately welcomed. Cadence is like the Borg, buying up various competitor products and lashing it onto their Frankenstein’s monster of a product with a heap of badly written Skill code written by their Indian software group . The real insult are the rapacious pricing they impose as you are forced to use beta level software in perpetuity, and their jerk support that gaslights you every time you try to pin them down (talking about you Klaus C.).
Sounds like a description of Adobe.
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Cadence and Synopsys are both equally good (or crappy depending on your perspective)!
Re: Wring country isolated... (Score:2)
Yes, comrade.
Re: Wring country isolated... (Score:2)
Go for it. You just need to convince the rest of the world. Generally people may not like the US but most dislike and distrust everyone else. And many, don't even like their own governments more.
But consider that you think the US "isolated" you just cause this one country with less than 10% of the world population wanted to stop doing some business with you because we didn't like your rules. Would you say anything if this was Somolia or Peru or Finland or Ireland?
You want to isolate the US, it's easy, ya
Welcome to 2014! China and reverse engineering (Score:2)
Congratulations China, your industrial espionage campaign has moved you to 2014, only one decade to go.
The question is will the world decouple from China faster than China can steal the worlds technology?
Good news for the CCP! They now make smaller chips to spy on their citizens.
Remember, 1984 was supposed to be a book of fiction, not an implementation guide.
Also, if you want to watch the CCPs China technology propaganda channel, check this out.
https://www.youtube.com/@china... [youtube.com]
The CCP is so upset about bei