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China Is Still Multiple Generations Behind In Chip Manufacturing
When it comes to the actual foundries China has within its borders, the picture isn't good for the country. Perhaps the most advanced foundry there is owned by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC). A company spokesperson late last year said, "Our 14nm technology will start risk production by 2019, 12nm process development is completed and under customer verification."
Keep in mind how much further along the rest of the world is: TSMC (Taiwan) is already producing high performance AMD CPUs on its 7nm process with low power Apple parts having shipped in 2018, Samsung is readying advanced EUV production lines for NVIDIA's next generation of graphics chips, and Intel is rolling out its 7nm-equivalent this year as well. We even reported yesterday that TSMC is now actively developing its 2nm node!
If China's most advanced foundry is only beginning low-volume 14nm production this year, that would put them about four or five years behind the rest of the world. An eternity in the world of semiconductors.
For now, Huawei is building their world-class and cutting edge SoC, Kirin 980 on TSMC's 7nm process. If they were forced to use SMIC's 14nm process it would force them to regress in both performance and efficiency which would be a death-knell. Currently the Kirin 980 can compete with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855, but should Huawei be forced to fab its chips within its own countries[sic] borders this wouldn't be the case.
[...] It seems Chinese companies will have to do things the old fashioned way and grit their way through the learning curve with using these chip-production tools. One way around this would be to hire talent away from companies with a mature understanding of the technology, but even this is proving difficult.
For instance a Chinese DRAM company CXMT attempted to hire away a top Samsung engineer who had expertise in his field, but a South Korean court blocked the move. Kim Chi-wook headed the company's DRAM design team and would be a home-run hire for any DRAM company lacking knowledge. The court made no qualms about the fact that the engineer getting hired by CXMT would potentially hurt Samsung's competitive edge. They wrote, "Chinese semiconductor companies are estimated to be three years to 10 years behind in technology gap regarding DRAM designing technique."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @07:25PM (1 child)
If they lowball all of the commodity parts vendors out of the market
who cares if they can't build a high-end part? They will still own
the world's electronics manufacturing business.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday June 14 2019, @08:58PM
"My part is 20% slower and warmer, but my spying code is 30% more efficient, and my users have realized they don't need half of the useless fluff you put in your code anyway"
We're all carrying supercomputers in our pockets, and wasting most of their capabilities.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @07:29PM (6 children)
Taiwan is part of China.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @07:38PM (1 child)
Taiwan is still occupied by the US and is ruled by the US appointed military governor. Yes, this position is currently empty, but this does not change the legal fact.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 15 2019, @01:02AM
China.... concerned about US legal facts... ROFLMAO
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 14 2019, @08:06PM
Comment would have been better if you had said "Chinese Taipei".
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @11:12PM
> Taiwan is part of China.
Well, yeah, according to the Mainland, but not according to many other countries.
I call shill from the People's Republic, who knew that our little SN was worth bothering with...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @11:57PM (1 child)
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday June 15 2019, @02:06AM
I have worked for many businesses that also did business in Taiwan, and in some cases I have seen our operations outsourced there. "Almost as cheap as Chinks without being Chinks" is how I would describe them.
And if you doubt me, look at their mailing addresses:
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday June 14 2019, @07:36PM (2 children)
The whole "huge trade deficit with China" issue is somewhat misunderstood. Currently all the statistics are done against final assembly point. Since China does it the most, the results are biased toward China.
Having said that, China will develop to the typical 80% of the US per capita level for sure and as such will be at least twice bigger that the US in all the terms, including the number of aircraft carriers near Washington to make sure Americans have no funny ideas about their debt.
How this very near future develops is what makes this whole trade war exercise interesting.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @07:48PM (1 child)
US debt is denominated in US dollars. Makes it kind of easy to inflate the debt away by printing money.
Have you looked at fed reserve data on money creation since 2008 ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 15 2019, @01:07AM
FTFY
Not if it makes the Saudis unhappy, no. The moment it happens, they'll switch to petro-other-currency-most-likely-yuan. And then... [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday June 14 2019, @07:54PM (3 children)
ISTM, without detailed knowledge, that most of the advantage of electronics can be had within their current levels of expertise. It's true that there are increased advantages with more tightly controlled manufacturing, but the cost rises so much that the advantage is decreased.
China would probably do better in developing new technologies for the job than in urgently refining their current techniques. Improve things at the most economic rate, but look for different approaches. Photonic computers, spin-based diamond sheets, something. That way they'd be entering at the start, where while the failures are numerous, the profits are immense. And it might obsolete the high-end silicon chips.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 14 2019, @08:10PM (2 children)
That probably is a good idea. As silicon scaling continues to slow down, it will be easier to steal the trade secrets and remain competitive. It's the potential 1,000x performance increase from new technologies that has to be found ASAP. The problem is that there are a number of promising technologies and nobody is sure which ones will come out on top.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @08:38PM
"The problem is that there are a number of promising technologies and nobody is sure which ones will come out on top."
In a long-game mindset, try them all, and the State kills of the ones that fail
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Saturday June 15 2019, @01:29AM
Let me add to this an immutable fact of nature: the lattice constant of Silicon is 5.431Å [wikipedia.org].
A 5nm gate = 50 atoms in thickness. Guess what happens when you have too few of them in a gate?
Translation: it's already easier to steal trade secrets in electronics and the law of diminishing returns guarantees the situation is not gonna improve.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Friday June 14 2019, @08:33PM (3 children)
Why would China bother to follow in our (USA) footsteps making the incremental upgrades to the foundries ? We stepped up/down as technology became available. They will just steal our current tech and skip the now defunct levels and jump to 7nm. The early bird gets the worm, the early predator gets the bird. We need to learn to strike back, soon and hard at the growing infrastructure of China, and we need to develop something to destroy the value of the growing military structure. Some sort of weapon or tech that will render the vast investment in slightly outdated military technology the Chinese have been stockpiling. A hypersonic drone system capable of rendering missiles, aircraft, slow subs, and air craft carriers useless. All that said I do really love me some Chinese food so maybe I'll be OK. Come to think of it I really like Indian food as well, but I draw the line at borscht so I hope Russia's glory days have passed us by.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday June 15 2019, @01:35AM (2 children)
Says someone in a country that couldn't win a war in Iraq or Afghanistan, against armed forces which used guns designed in 1945.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Saturday June 15 2019, @08:13PM
Hard to win a war against a country that has no infrastructure, but I'd say we won in Iraq again Saddam, and we did no worse or better than Russia (Ussr) in Afghanistan. Which wonderful and shining jewel of democracy totally dependent on UN support do you hail from ? All that said I do wish we had learned our lesson from trying to fight the war in Vietnam against a country and people accustomed to living in jungle tunnels with no infrastructure of any kind.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Sunday June 16 2019, @10:41AM
Don't be stuck in the 1700s, War is not among nations anymore. So USA waged wars, but USA didn't win nor lose them. People lose, the MIC and the loaners win.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RamiK on Friday June 14 2019, @09:33PM
Demand for faster SoCs and more RAM has died out years ago. A well priced 14nm SoC with modern video decoding, baseband/wifi and a good camera or three will be more than satisfactory even at the high-end.
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