Huawei's Profit Doubles With Made-in-China Chip Breakthrough (yahoo.com) 148
Bloomberg thinks they've identified the source of the advanced chips in Huawei's newest smartphone, citing to "people familiar with the matter".
In a suggestion that export restrictions on Europe's most valuable tech company may have come too late to stem China's advances in chipmaking, ASML's so-called immersion deep ultraviolet machines were used in combination with tools from other companies to make the Huawei Technologies Co. chip, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing information that's not public. ASML declined to comment.
There is no suggestion that their sales violated export restrictions... ASML has never been able to sell its EUV machines to China because of export restrictions. But less advanced DUV models can be retooled with deposition and etching gear to produce 7-nanometer and possibly even more advanced chips, according to industry analysts. The process is much more expensive than using EUV, making it very difficult to scale production in a competitive market environment. In China, however, the government is willing to shoulder a significant portion of chipmaking costs.
Chinese companies have been legally stockpiling DUV gear for years — especially after the U.S. introduced its initial export controls last year before getting Japan and the Netherlands on board... According to an investor presentation published by the company last week, ASML experienced a jump in business from China this year as chipmakers there boosted orders ahead of the export controls taking full effect in 2024. China accounted for 46% of ASML's sales in the third quarter, compared with 24% in the previous quarter and 8% in the three months ending in March.
Another article from Bloomberg includes this prediction: The U.S. won't be able to stop Huawei and SMIC from making progress in chip technology, Burn J. Lin, a former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. vice president, told Bloomberg News. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp should be able to advance to the next generation at 5 nanometers with machines from ASML Holding NV that it already operates, said Lin, who at TSMC championed the lithography technology that transformed chipmaking.
The end result is that Huawei's profit "more than doubled during the quarter it revealed its biggest achievement in chip technology," the article reports, "adding to signs the Chinese tech leader is steadying a business rocked by US sanctions." The Shenzhen company reported a 118% surge in net profit to 26.4 billion yuan ($3.6 billion) in the September quarter, and a slight rise in sales to 145.7 billion yuan, according to Bloomberg News calculations from nine-month results released Friday. Those numbers included initial sales of the vastly popular Mate 60 Pro, which began shipping in late August... The gadget sold out almost instantly, spurring expectations it could rejuvenate Huawei's fortunes and potentially cut into Apple Inc.'s lead in China, given signs of a disappointing debut for the iPhone 15...
A resurgent Huawei would pose problems not just for Apple but also local brands from Xiaomi Corp. to Oppo and Vivo, all of which are fighting for sales in a shrinking market.
There is no suggestion that their sales violated export restrictions... ASML has never been able to sell its EUV machines to China because of export restrictions. But less advanced DUV models can be retooled with deposition and etching gear to produce 7-nanometer and possibly even more advanced chips, according to industry analysts. The process is much more expensive than using EUV, making it very difficult to scale production in a competitive market environment. In China, however, the government is willing to shoulder a significant portion of chipmaking costs.
Chinese companies have been legally stockpiling DUV gear for years — especially after the U.S. introduced its initial export controls last year before getting Japan and the Netherlands on board... According to an investor presentation published by the company last week, ASML experienced a jump in business from China this year as chipmakers there boosted orders ahead of the export controls taking full effect in 2024. China accounted for 46% of ASML's sales in the third quarter, compared with 24% in the previous quarter and 8% in the three months ending in March.
Another article from Bloomberg includes this prediction: The U.S. won't be able to stop Huawei and SMIC from making progress in chip technology, Burn J. Lin, a former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. vice president, told Bloomberg News. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp should be able to advance to the next generation at 5 nanometers with machines from ASML Holding NV that it already operates, said Lin, who at TSMC championed the lithography technology that transformed chipmaking.
The end result is that Huawei's profit "more than doubled during the quarter it revealed its biggest achievement in chip technology," the article reports, "adding to signs the Chinese tech leader is steadying a business rocked by US sanctions." The Shenzhen company reported a 118% surge in net profit to 26.4 billion yuan ($3.6 billion) in the September quarter, and a slight rise in sales to 145.7 billion yuan, according to Bloomberg News calculations from nine-month results released Friday. Those numbers included initial sales of the vastly popular Mate 60 Pro, which began shipping in late August... The gadget sold out almost instantly, spurring expectations it could rejuvenate Huawei's fortunes and potentially cut into Apple Inc.'s lead in China, given signs of a disappointing debut for the iPhone 15...
A resurgent Huawei would pose problems not just for Apple but also local brands from Xiaomi Corp. to Oppo and Vivo, all of which are fighting for sales in a shrinking market.
Of course... (Score:3)
Of course, in the end tariff, embargo, export restriction, etc. encourages affected countries to develop their own, even if not as good as the original products, what they come up with will most likely be cheaper. Those countries need the ability to develop the products themselves although but China certainly has that ability.
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No, this is a rare case where tariff, embargo, export restrictions, etc. tend to bring the downfall of the dictatorships, because the ability to invent new, better and cheaper shit resides with the freedom to make your own choices.
In a dictatorship it is always easier for the established player to beat down the competition, consumer choice and all the other factors that create the incentive to progress.
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Re:Of course... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're presuming that the Chinese were the dictatorship talked about.
Re:Of course... (Score:5, Informative)
How is it "exact opposite", when it is literally in the summary - Huawei is using a more expensive method, and the Chinese government is footing the bill. Here, a quote for you:
But less advanced DUV models can be retooled with deposition and etching gear to produce 7-nanometer and possibly even more advanced chips, according to industry analysts. The process is much more expensive than using EUV, making it very difficult to scale production in a competitive market environment. In China, however, the government is willing to shoulder a significant portion of chipmaking costs.
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> While the rest of us pay the costs of these idiotic sanctions.
"China saves billions of dollars from record sanctioned oil imports"
SINGAPORE, Oct 11 (Reuters) - China has reaped savings this year of nearly $10 billion through record purchases of oil from countries under Western sanctions, according to Reuters' calculations based on data from traders and shiptrackers.
An unintended consequence of sanctions imposed by the United States and others on Russia, Iran and Venezuela has been to lower the oil impo
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And?
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They are doing what Intel tried to do, which is to say mass produce 7nm chips at a profit. Intel failed miserably at it's attempt. It's fashionable to pour shit on Intel, but I suspect nobody on the planet knows more about DUV than them. Colour me skeptical at China pulling it off where Intel didn't
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Re: Of course... (Score:2)
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Indeed. I didn't see first hand what COCOM did to the Soviet bloc in the 80s. I probably imagined it.
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Or China isn't the dictatorship that people think it is. People act like there's absolutely no freedoms at all in China. Sure political freedoms may be repressed to some degree, but for the most there's social and economic freedoms. VPNs are easily accessible to access stuff from abroad as well. This is nothing like e.g. USSR but people like to lump the two together. Chinese people for the most part are able to travel anywhere around the world, I would bet that the average Chinese person knows more abo
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People seem to have convinced themselves that China is pretty much just like North Korea.
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People seem to have convinced themselves that China is pretty much just like North Korea.
They did get a bit of help. American media is almost 100% propaganda at this point. It's everywhere.
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Never actually been there I see. Doesn't it bother you that you have been so completely brainwashed about it?
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Plenty of horrible stuff happens in China, but the point is that the majority of people don't experience it. My family certainly has not experienced "violence brainwashing", at school or otherwise.
And for what it's worth, a lot of that shit happens in the UK too. We have a child knife crime epidemic in London, and our democracy is a joke with an unelected leader who succeeds another unelected leader. The US has a school shooting epidemic that half the politicians are actively trying to preserve. Not saying
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So laowhy is 'propaganda.' LOL. You clearly are.
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Sure political freedoms may be repressed to some degree
China killed several hundred people, including running some over with tanks, when some people wanted political freedom. An unknown number were taken away and have not been heard from since. If you're in China and mention anything about Tiananmen Square, you go to jail. In fact, China censored the image of two athletes at the Asian Games because their uniforms happened to be numbered six and four [theguardian.com].
but for the most there's social and economic freedoms.
W
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People act like there's absolutely no freedoms at all in China.
Who?
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Taiwan's still going strong. Taiwan, that independent! Taiwan the REAL CHINA! Taiwan! Taiwan! Taiwan! Taiwan! :D :D :D :D :D
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LOL, AC.
But less advanced DUV models can be retooled with deposition and etching gear to produce 7-nanometer and possibly even more advanced chips, according to industry analysts. The process is much more expensive than using EUV, making it very difficult to scale production in a competitive market environment. In China, however, the government is willing to shoulder a significant portion of chipmaking costs.
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Huawei went from top tier phone and network gear manufacturer to a nearly non-entity as a phone manufacturer being overtaken by oppo and xiaomi in phones and Eriksson and Nokia in networks in just a couple of years globally.
If this is "doing extremely well", what does abject failure look like in your book?
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You are still making the same fundamental mistake that made you vastly over estimate the time they needed to ramp up production. China is able to develop this technology itself, to innovate itself. Reverse engineering is not the only way they can develop, and because people keep assuming it is they are constantly surprised by developments.
Chinese universities have been doing a lot of research in this area, and it's filtering through to manufacturing.
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Indeed. China cannot only make cheap trash. And now that they have abundant incentives, they are simply catching up in this area as well. It is even possible they will overtake ASML and then become the leading source of this equipment in the next decade or two. Trade-wars of this type basically make the problem worse. They look good to nil wit voters with short memories and no awareness of history though.
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Jeez you're kind of an idiot aren't you. You really have no idea how difficult the road to viable EUV has been, or how bad Chinese industry is at genuine innovation.
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About reverse-engineering/copying stuff: At least China must have been prudent with regards to that not to lose business relations with companies from those countries in order not to jeopardize business relations. Now with restrictions which end business relations, what would be stopping them from going full scale at it?
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China has seen the writing on the wall for a long time. The point of the belt and road initiative was to give them an alternate way to trade if the US cut off their ocean access. They've also worked to produce domestic alternatives to pretty much everything, especially high tech, in case the US increased sanctions against them.
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They didn't develop their own. They just grabbed what was still available to them from ASML, and then used multipatterning to ridiculous extent to get to claim "we made 7nm grade chip". You can indeed do that. No one but Chinese does this because that's not even remotely cost efficient or competitive. The limits of this approach come from massively reduced possible complexity of designs and ridiculously high error rates on output with what you can output.
This is why those who actually have to generate cost
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It is super weird to see them follow the exact same steps the USSR took. Isolation from the West, stunting of technological advancement, burgeoning economic crises through huge debt loads (specifically in their real estate markets).
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Why is it weird? They're a Communist state, just like USSR was. The only real change was Deng figuring out that they will never develop to compete with anyone after war with USSR demonstrated just how incapable PRC was in every possible aspect, so he subverted Communism from inside temporarily by instituting a regime of massive corruption within The Party. Communist rules were never removed, but every official at every level enforcing the rules became for sale. So you could subvert the whole system temporar
So, like the Soviet Union (Score:3)
They also bought a shitload of old, less-capable tech and tried to "shoulder" the extra costs. You know where it all ended.
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No. USSR end was due to spending 25% of its GDP on its military competing with the US. USSR was always a much smaller economy than the US from the very start, and was in a much more fucked up after WW2 unlike the US. There really was no competition.
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The planned economy lacked pricing information to guide allocation of resources. Allowing anything but human-determined state priorities to guide allocations was anathema to the Soviet system. That inefficiency was the issue with the USSR economy.
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Don't worry, we have improved efficiencies to the highest levels ever with our next Five Year Plan!
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LOL, AC, why do you think the USSR had to spend so much? The answer is in the summary:
But less advanced DUV models can be retooled with deposition and etching gear to produce 7-nanometer and possibly even more advanced chips, according to industry analysts. The process is much more expensive than using EUV, making it very difficult to scale production in a competitive market environment. In China, however, the government is willing to shoulder a significant portion of chipmaking costs.
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That comment is pure cope. Intel is also making 7nm chips with DUV. They are still profitable and even pay dividends.
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10nm. That is what they themselves called the process before rebranding it into "intel 7". Notice the absence of "nm" after "7".
This is why current intel chips are huge and require something around twice the power (and require far more cooling) to compete with AMD's products. And why intel is finally trying to address this with meteor lake by finally moving to intel 4 which is their first EUV (and actual 7nm grade process).
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Damn, the conditions at your troll factory must've gone bad again, since you're back to just randomly calling people noting reality about current situation in China "russians" randomly.
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No, intel are moving to EUV for 7 nm. Meteor Lake is a thing. And they've been losing their position to AMD for last few years because they were stuck with huge, power hungry, hot and expensive chips with last couple of generations at 10nm with is their last DUV process, after AMD moved to EUV.
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No idea. What did your troll factory boss tell you about it? How do you link topic of DUV vs EUV technology in PRC to a bunch of Muslim North Caucasians and Turkic peoples behaving... pretty much like their ideological compatriots are behaving elsewhere right now?
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Wait, do Russians even have DUV? Maybe they have some super early variant, but that Baikal or whaever crap that they actually made was some really ancient tech.
But that has nothing to do with China vs US. Russians made their opinion on Chinese claims to Far East very clear back in 1970s when it was still a Soviet Union. They're not going to just trap PLA troops on some island and shell the ever living shit out of them as they did last time. Instead, they're just going to nuke Beijing and call it a day if PL
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If you hadn't noticed, the EU and US are both dumping tens of billions into developing high end chip manufacturing too.
Canon just developed a cutting edge lithography machine in Japan. Do you think they stole all that technology? What about the US companies working on it, have they stolen tech from Europe's ASML? ASML was the only option until Canon developed their machine.
You are crazy to think that China simply can't do it for some ideological reason, and even crazier to think that China is communist or a
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I haven't noticed EU and the US stealing Western (and Japanese) tech like Huawei does. I know Japan quite well and I haven't seen the Japanese government make people disappear the way China does.
And you must be really, really ignorant of China's domestic developments if you somehow missed Mr. Si Pooh-Ping re-establishing a bona-fide totalitarian state over the past decade there.
In short, you're a not very interesting person to talk to.
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Japan was accused of stealing and cloning everything too, until it rapidly became apparently that e.g. Japanese cars were way better than most out ours. Then the 80s came and Japan dominated consumer electronics too.
Of course the whole reason for Hollywood's existence was because the technology was stolen and they wanted to avoid lawsuits by being as physically far from the patent holders as possible.
Back when Fukushima happened people were accusing Japan of disappearing people and using "disposable" worker
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What are you babbling about?
1. Japan has been licensing (as in, actually paying for use of) technology successfully since the late 50s.
2. WTF? What technology did Hollywood steal? Are you drunk?
3. What people accused Japan? Who disappeared? Can we see some facts here? I was in Japan in 2011 and I call bullshit.
4. I've lived in China for years, dimwit, I speak fluent Mandarin and reasonable Cantonese and I can read and write in Chinese. I don't need the revelations of a tourist, thank you.
Re:So, like the Soviet Union (Score:5, Informative)
2. WTF? What technology did Hollywood steal? Are you drunk?
"Hollywood" moved to California to escape NJ based patent-master Thomas Edison [pixstory.com]. The poster is referring to this.
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Sure, Amy.
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China *could* develop a modern economy, but not with the CCP in charge.
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China is no leader in 5G, though thanks for confirming you are a paid ChiCom troll. Chinese 5G is inferior technology, and is laden with Chinese spying devices.
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Of course I missed it, I don't have time for fantasy anymore.
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I like the strength of your arguments, chicom.
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Yeah, I did miss those. You can enlighten me with examples. Here's a list to get you started:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
You can also try to explain to me how Mr. Xi Pooh-ping's China isn't a totalitarian dictatorship.
Restricting China's access to tech... (Score:1)
... is futile and will backfire badly
They are smart and will find workarounds while effectively fighting back
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I disagree. China's only "workaround" involves some variety of theft. China's entire economy is built around stealing technology from countries where creativity trumps state control, and exporting cheaply-built, over-packaged garbage to the rest of the world while they use their Third World status to maintain immunity as they spew poison on a scale similar to the US.
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they spew poison on a scale similar to the US
Even though they have 4x as many people...
God help us if Chinese people ever decide to spew as much poison as American people. Instantly 4x worse environment.
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This statistical lie has been debunked many times. Once you leave the highly urban areas, the rest of China is mostly dirt poor subsistence farmers who produce effectively zero pollution of any sort. When you only look at the people who are involved the modern productive polluting part of the Chinese economy this intellectually dishonest per capita pollution lie quickly falls apart.
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China already produces far more pollution and waste than America, by an order of magnitude.
Mainly because they just don't give one shit.
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Your numbers are off for both countries but I'll play along anyway because at least you're starting to acknowledge reality.
Next up, how many coal plants is China building every week vs US?
Which direction is each country headed in terms of actual pollution generated on either absolute or per capita basis?
What is the GDP/pollution for each country?
Per capita is a statistical lie because you need to know what was produced in exchange for that pollution. Individuals don't make pollution out of context sitting
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You're just a Chinese propagandabot. This is why ACs should be banned from /.
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It isn't a zero sum game. Presuming Chinese can't innovate is very shortsighted. There was a reason why they've been flooding US universites with applicants for the last 40 or so years.
The same kind of things were said about the Soviet nuclear program. We found out later they'd more or less done it themselves. Beria used the espionage information to check on what his people were doing, rather than just giving it to them. Presuming the Chinese experience will be much different is very shortsighted indee
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It isn't either/or. Industrial espionage will allow thieves to quickly catch up to a technologically superior while still doing their own research.
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Presuming Chinese can't innovate is very shortsighted. There was a reason why they've been flooding US universites with applicants for the last 40 or so years.
You see, if we kept all those students when they graduated instead of forcing them to go back to China, China wouldn't be able to innovate.
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Presuming Chinese can't innovate is very shortsighted.
Authoritarian regimes are notoriously bad at innovation. China would do fine if it could shed the CCP.
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In light of other posts on this topic, a close examination of their opponents is necessary. Are China's opponents also authoritarian? if so, the difference might well be slight, or advantage China.
Re: Restricting China's access to tech... (Score:2)
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Uh no... no they don't.
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uh yes... they do.
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I would be interested to see whether those Chinese names you mention are over- or under-represented on patents. As for the US space program, you're correct, of course. Von Braun probably should have stood trial for war crimes, and it's obvious the Redstone was basically a V2 wearing a Stars and Stripes bathing suit.
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Not anymore. Not for quite a while. Like all nation that kick-started their economy by intellectual theft, they eventually became able to do it themselves a while ago. Incidentally, the US did pretty much the same.
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Maybe you're right, but I strongly suspect current Chinese (government-driven) social norms aren't particularly conducive to innovation.
As for the US, I have to agree with you. In my home and native land, the term "Yankee trader" historically referred to somebody who is a liar, a cheat and a thief. In the US, of course, it's not so much of an insult.
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You're an idiot. I'm not an American, and I'm no fan of the US. You're deaf to reality...probably because your head's so far up your ass.
Look at YTMC too... (Score:1)
US sanctioned the company so that it wouldn't be able to develop more than 200 layer nand chips. They just recently came out with the most advance chip in the world with more than 200 layers. Chinese commentators were suggesting the reason why US allowed Samsung and Hynix to continue business in China a couple of months ago was because they wanted the two companies to try flooding China's market, so that YTMC wouldn't be able to compete under a complete monopoly.
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They just recently came out with the most advance chip in the world with more than 200 layers.
Nonsense. Stop reading Chinese proganda. And stop repeating it here. Though I'm sure you're getting paid, CCPbot.
The law of unintended consequences. (Score:2)
Re:The law of unintended consequences. (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone knew. No one expected China to give up and go back to fishing and rice farming. The point of cutting off access to technology is to slow them down.
Short of nuking another country or successful full scale military take over there is no one magical thing one country can do to another to "stop them" from doing xyz. Only slow them down.
Even North Korea under essentially complete embargo for everything still managed to build missiles and nukes. It came at great expense to their people but they did it. But they would have some it faster and more efficiently under free trade.
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Re: The law of unintended consequences. (Score:2)
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LOL more bloviating by a Chinese propaganda bot.
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surge of skilled researchers
China hugely overpays for talent, because "skill researchers" would prefer to live anywhere but China. That includes China, which is undergoing a massive brain drain.
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"Building missiles" doesn't take recent technology.
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Everyone knew. No one expected China to give up and go back to fishing and rice farming. The point of cutting off access to technology is to slow them down.
And that has worked how often in history for a pre-warned opponent? Right, never. No, the point was to convince nil wit voters that "something was being done" even when that something made the problem worse.
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Ok then if it does nothing then why has China cut us off from various raw materials?
How does the cake taste?
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You said it "does nothing", I did not. Also, have you missed that China does politics too? And public posturing? And obviously has to react or lose face? And may not want to be forced to innovate this fast, even if it is good for them?
Seriously, you strike me as more and more stupid every day. You miss obvious things now.
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Of course we knew, but they aren't going to be catching up anytime soon, and they haven't, despite what their their propaganda bots spew.
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They haven't "caught up" in the slightest, and are NOT going to be selling the most advanced chips. This is just propaganda. Nor have their sales or profits doubled. It's just another CCP lie.
Geez (Score:5, Interesting)
"But less advanced DUV models can be retooled with deposition and etching gear to produce 7-nanometer and possibly even more advanced chips, according to industry analysts."
The cat was out of the bag at this point. The Chinese have had the machines able to do 7nm for years. So it was only a matter of time until they did it. The same ASML litho machines which are sold to do 45nm can do 7nm. As for the deposition and etching tools the Chinese can make those themselves already.
The fact that people like Eric Schmitt thought this could be reversed using sanctions to then stop China from making FinFET chips with such cockamamie rules is what is risible.
They should have stuck to the ban on EUV litho instead of trying to get creative.
Breaking support for tools you already sold and allowed them to use is going to lead to a massive trade war. And they will just either make their own tools or figure out how to maintain them themselves eventually.
"The process is much more expensive than using EUV, making it very difficult to scale production in a competitive market environment. In China, however, the government is willing to shoulder a significant portion of chipmaking costs."
Is it? TSMC used just DUV to make its initial 7nm process. And Intel still only uses DUV machines too. They make 7nm processors. This is just pure cope.
The fact that Huawei increased its profits should be pretty much indicative. Do they think the factory is losing money on each order? The factory is a private company as well.
"Chinese companies have been legally stockpiling DUV gear for years — especially after the U.S. introduced its initial export controls last year before getting Japan and the Netherlands on board... According to an investor presentation published by the company last week, ASML experienced a jump in business from China this year as chipmakers there boosted orders ahead of the export controls taking full effect in 2024. China accounted for 46% of ASML's sales in the third quarter, compared with 24% in the previous quarter and 8% in the three months ending in March."
The Chinese are currently building a lot of factories. There is a lot of pent up demand for older chips in China to make consumer electronics and electric cars. Some this construction was decided when there was a shortage of legacy chips during the lockdowns. Plus, now that the US started sanctioning the sale of certain chips, there is no telling when they will do the same for essential older chips as well. So the Chinese industry is massively accelerating design of Chinese chips. Something the Chinese government had been trying to do since the 1990s with limited success.
"Another article from Bloomberg includes this prediction:
The U.S. won't be able to stop Huawei and SMIC from making progress in chip technology, Burn J. Lin, a former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. vice president, told Bloomberg News. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp should be able to advance to the next generation at 5 nanometers with machines from ASML Holding NV that it already operates, said Lin, who at TSMC championed the lithography technology that transformed chipmaking."
The man himself says it. The Chinese can do 5nm if they want to.
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The fact that Huawei increased its profits should be pretty much indicative.
The amount of profit is arbitrary, and relates to how much money the CCP moves from one industry to another in the form of subsidies. If the chinese system were more open, we could run some numbers and actually figure this out.
Do they think the factory is losing money on each order? The factory is a private company as well.
There's no such thing as a profitable private company in an authoritarian state.
This is anything but profitable (Score:5, Interesting)
Some comments here are saying: We banned it, so China built their own. They did not. Although the evil idiots in Washington failed to prevent exactly this type of thing from happening, it was not because China built their own stuff. The buying of many extra last-generation machines was a great strategic move by China. They probably spent $50B and potentially a lot more more to buy enough equipment and build fabs for SMIC so that they can retrofit and experiment as much as possible to get the most advanced process that they could manage to tweak and copy, with no regard to yields. The government threw a ton of money at the problem. None of that investment is reflected in Huawei's "profit" calculation. SMIC is almost certainly shipping chips with -100% or worse margins, but doesn't care because this is government-funded and strategic for China. The government requires advanced hardware and AI for internal surveillance and control.
It's impressive that they were able to make something like this work and if they are lucky, they'll be able to produce enough chips for themselves and improve yields over time. It's doubtful that they'll get smaller than 5 nm in the next decade and if they're lucky they will get somewhere near break-even on actual production of chips sometime in the next several years. Their other big problem is that almost no westerners who are versed in chip tech are going to be able to work in China, so from here on out, everything they develop is going to have to be mostly home-grown with a heavy helping of industrial espionage.
China's financial system is almost completely divorced from reality. It's a mostly-closed system that the Chinese government uses to incentivize projects and work that it finds strategically and politically important. This is essentially state-sponsored capitalism. It works so long as the underlying real economic activity within the country is positive, so long as it can do import of critical items and so long as it can rely heavily on exports to keep foreign cash coming in. All three of these l pillars are crumbling. Many of their internal projects are economically negative. They have built essentially 2 - 3 x as much infrastructure as their population can use. There are dozens of brand-new empty cities in China that have almost no residents. Their shoddy construction and abandonment is causing them to crumble. They are dangerously close to losing access to foreign energy and fertilizer required to power and feed their population, and the internal inefficiencies and rising wealth of the population that does export work is causing them to lose competitiveness, slowing or reversing their export growth. At the same time, the Chinese population is shrinking, which is causing internal social stresses and undermining the maintenance, much less the growth of the economy. In short, the power of China has probably peaked and will slowly recede over the next 5-10 years. After that its collapse will likely accelerate.
If China manages to build 3 or 4 nm parts in the next 5 years, my thesis will be disproved. But, I would bet heavily against that happening.
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It's impressive that they were able to make something like this work and if they are lucky, they'll be able to produce enough chips for themselves and improve yields over time. It's doubtful that they'll get smaller than 5 nm in the next decade and if they're lucky they will get somewhere near break-even on actual production of chips sometime in the next several years. Their other big problem is that almost no westerners who are versed in chip tech are going to be able to work in China, so from here on out, everything they develop is going to have to be mostly home-grown with a heavy helping of industrial espionage.
Given that your other comments on their financial system and the current state of their economy are spot on, it is very surprising how far off your assessment of their technology capabilities seems.
This wasn't luck or an accident, far from.
They already know what tools are needed just as well as the rest of the world. We (the US) barely made a dent in their existing timeline.
I suppose such a conclusion isn't surprising given the spin of the Bloomberg article.
Chinese tech didn't "ghetto together" their fab e
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Interesting. I admit that I'm less certain about the details of the semiconductor tech, but my understanding of it is that there's no easy path from the current upgrades to the DUV processes to EUV and DUV with enhancements doesn't really go much below 7 nm. I should say that it's impressive to me because even if they are mostly following recipes developed elsewhere, this stuff is complex and therefore hard. I admire these people for doing the hard work, even if I'm appalled by their leadership.
Maybe I'm
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There is a big of an information embargo wrt to China. But you can get some pretty good estimates of whats going to by looking at the size and value of the real estate market, the size of the construction industry and the actual number of people living in the country and their incomes. People who have done those analyses are seeing an overheated real estate market, which has driven overbuilding. This is all due to problems that ordinary Chinese people have trying to find places to save their money and h
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China's spying will yield dividends for some time. (Score:2)
Self-actualization (Score:2)
Capitalism/Socialism/Democracy/Autocracy/Basic Income will succeed when they lead everybody to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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That is called "denial".