China the Largest Buyer of Chipmaking Machines As Sales Hit An All-Time High (theregister.com) 18
Global sales of semiconductor fab equipment grew by 5 percent during 2022 to hit an all-time high, with China the largest buyer despite a fall in its investment amid the standoff with the US over access to chips and other technology. The Register reports: The figures come from SEMI, the industry body for electronics manufacturing and supply chain, in a new Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Market Statistics (WWSEMS) report. According to the report, sales of chipmaking kit hit $107.6 billion last year, up from $102.6 billion in 2021, as semiconductor companies invested to add more capacity, despite the downturn that took hold in the latter half of last year as inflation gripped many economies.
"The record high for semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales in 2022 stems from the industry's drive to add the fab capacity required to support long-term growth and innovations in key end markets including high-performance computing and automotive," claimed SEMI president and CEO Ajit Manocha. These results also reflect a desire by chipmakers in multiple regions to avoid any repetition of the supply chain issues that surfaced during the pandemic, he added. Many companies cut investment then, in response to falling orders, leading to shortages when demand picked up again.
China remained the largest market for semiconductor equipment despite seeing a 5 percent slowdown in investments compared with the previous year, according to SEMI. This drop is likely caused by US moves to curtail China's ability to make advanced chips, which has now extended beyond American companies such as Applied Materials to include others such as Dutch photolithography giant ASML, as Washington has browbeaten allied nations including the Netherlands and Japan to join its sanctions.
"The record high for semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales in 2022 stems from the industry's drive to add the fab capacity required to support long-term growth and innovations in key end markets including high-performance computing and automotive," claimed SEMI president and CEO Ajit Manocha. These results also reflect a desire by chipmakers in multiple regions to avoid any repetition of the supply chain issues that surfaced during the pandemic, he added. Many companies cut investment then, in response to falling orders, leading to shortages when demand picked up again.
China remained the largest market for semiconductor equipment despite seeing a 5 percent slowdown in investments compared with the previous year, according to SEMI. This drop is likely caused by US moves to curtail China's ability to make advanced chips, which has now extended beyond American companies such as Applied Materials to include others such as Dutch photolithography giant ASML, as Washington has browbeaten allied nations including the Netherlands and Japan to join its sanctions.
Who could have forseen this... (Score:2)
Block someone of buying something, and they will just try to make it themselves, who could have thunk!
The greatest favor the US did to chinese industries after propping them up, is encouraging them to grow themselves independently.
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The problem is, what is China buying? Japan is the place to go to buy photolithography machines and supplies - they've invested so much money they're pretty much the sole source for that. ASML is the place you need to go for EUV light source - and they managed to do what 20 years of research by the Japanese failed to do.
(The Japanese remain the source of photolithography machines - basically used to be Canon and Nikon, now it's mostly Nikon. The other Japanese companies make the chemicals needed - the photo
Re:Who could have forseen this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then again, China will literally need to reproduce what ends up to be over $100B worth of R&D money and 30+ years, so if they do it themselves, they've literally cost a huge chunk out of their economy.
It'll be nothing like that. They don't need to recreate the thousands of failed attempts, they just need to check the literature for the most viable technology and then recreate that using everything that's been published at ASMC and similar venues. For example we've just (mostly) implemented a fairly complex piece of tech that would have taken us probably ten years if we'd started from scratch but which actually took maybe a month because others had done it before and documented their work. Now I'm not saying they'll build a cutting-edge EUV fab in a year or two, but they can certainly do good-enough fabs for the bazillion M3/M4-class CPUs that are the bread and butter of the industry.
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Trivial if it makes them self sufficient. Barely a rounding error if it's spread over the 30 years you suggest.
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Following the initial sanctions a few years ago, China's government realised the strategic importance of semi-conductors. In response China created a national priority research program with the singular objective of creating a 100% Chinese-owned IP stack that, by 2030, will have parity with whatever the leading edge tech is at that time. To achieve the objective, China established three institutes of technology to undertake research and train the thousands of specialist workers that the industry will need
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Yeah, yeah. In the 70s and the 80s there was a huge dictatorship that was called "the Soviet Union". It also had a "national priority program" to copy Western technology. Do you know what happened to the program? Despite its ambitious goals and copious funding, it quickly degenerated into copy-paste of Western technology papers and patents. When it came to actually producing the stuff, well, tough luck, turned out that all these government-fed appointees could not do shit. The program failed, and later on s
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Sorry you don't like the truth, ignoramus, but those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, be they ruzzkie nazi, chicoms or royal saudi camel lovers.
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A serious comeback, LOL. I can smell the pedigree in international politics from half the world away.
You fathered by Qian Qichen and Gromyko, right?
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It's hard for Western countries to compete with that. All we can really do is offer companies incentives to do what we want, we can't simply build massive new R&D institutes that compete directly with the private sector, and then order companies to work with them.
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$100B, lol. You really fail to appreciate the scale of China and what is going on there. $100B is sandwich money for China. They were already investing $1.4T into the semiconductor industry in the 2020-2025 timeframe, and that was before things went sour on the trade war front. Now that things are sour, they are doubling and tripling down.
Compare that to Bidens $50B investment that is supposed to jumpstart US semiconductor manufacturing again, and you might start to understand which way the wind is blowing.
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The upshot is that the monopoly is formed by market forces instead of technical hurdles - most of the supplies are just high purity chemicals, so many people in many countries can
So the term "per capita" just doesn't exist (Score:2)
Probably preparing to invade Taiwan (Score:3)
At that time, TMSC will be gone and everybody needs to be able to make their own chips.
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Quite possibly. There used to be reasons not to invade Taiwan, like the sanctions they would face. Thing is, the sanctions are already there in large part. If they do nothing the West will have time to replace Chinese products and supply chains, but if they move fast we will have little choice but to keep buying from them.
I really hope Taiwan can make the invasion look costly enough to dissuade them.
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There's still a significant reason, beyond the obvious that it might provoke a US military response: it would threaten the US export market.
If they invaded Taiwan, I don't really see US just accepting the status quo and doing business with them as usual. It would, economically speaking, hurt like hell to break off economic ties, but it would hurt them more. The US is a HUGE market for them, and I don't think they're keen to lose it.
Look at how Russia has largely become a pariah state among the larger worl
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Lets hope you are right.