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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
China aims to become the global supplier of chips in the next few years.
Market research and tech consulting firm Yole Group predicts that China will have 30% of the world’s global foundry production capacity, making it the largest hub of semiconductor production. At the moment, Taiwan holds the highest output capacity at 23%, followed closely by China at 21%, South Korea at 19%, Japan at 13%, the U.S. at 10%, and Europe at 8%. According to Digitimes, China is expected to take the lead because of the massive investments in domestic semiconductor manufacturing, driven by Beijing’s goal of reaching self-sufficiency for its chip production.
In 2024, the East Asian country’s semiconductor production hit 8.85 million wafers per month, an increase of 15% from the previous year, and is projected to hit 10.1 million in 2025. China achieved this with the construction of 18 new fabs — for example, Huahong Semiconductor, and pure-play foundry based in Shanghai, just opened a 12-inch fab in Wuxi, with production beginning in the first quarter of this year.
The U.S. is the largest consumer of wafers, accounting for about 57% of global demand. However, it holds just around 10% of global production capacity, meaning it must source the rest of its supply from other major producers like Taiwan, South Korea, and China. On the other hand, Digitimes says that Japan’s and Europe’s production largely satisfies internal demand. There are other producers out there, too, like Singapore and Malaysia, which make up around 6% of global foundry capacity. These companies are largely foreign-owned, though, and exist to satisfy the demand in areas like the U.S. and China.
It seems that the report does not consider the fabs that are under construction in the United States, though. Several companies have started construction in the U.S., TSMC chief among them, with the company expecting to build 30% of its advanced chips in Arizona. Intel, Samsung, Micron, GlobalFoundries, and Texas Instruments also have projects underway, which will add to the U.S. wafer production capacity.
Additionally, the report did not specify how the technological capabilities of China's fabs compare to those of their Western counterparts. The U.S. has been putting export controls on the most advanced chip-making tech, making it harder for Chinese companies to acquire the necessary equipment to produce the latest chips. Because of this, Beijing is pouring billions of dollars into helping fill in the gaps in its semiconductor industry, like lithography tools and electronic design automation (EDA) software. So, even though China will likely have the upper hand when it comes to output capacity, the question of which country will have the greatest capability of producing cutting-edge chips in the near future is still up in the air.
(Score: 2) by FuzzyTheBear on Friday July 04, @10:44AM (4 children)
" The U.S. has been putting export controls .. " TACO has backed up and he lifted the restrictions. We expected this from Trump. It was announced like 2 3 days ago. China is on it's way to beat the US on every front.
(Score: 3, Touché) by janrinok on Friday July 04, @11:27AM
Has any country been hit with the full threatened tariffs yet?
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 04, @03:23PM (2 children)
That's because they're hell-bent on doing so, and Sleepy Joe let them (well, not Joe, he was out to lunch, but his handlers did it. A younger Joe Biden would have been much sharper and would have stopped it).
So what do you propose? Think it through and suggest something.
Do you let it happen?
Do you try to stop them (not possible)?
Or maybe make America stronger? We have pretty good internal drive and ideas, but we lack the unity of Communism and the world-dominating resolve of CCP. Maybe remove barriers for those of us (US / Western world) who might be able to Make America Great Again?
(Personally I'm depressed that life has to be so competitive.)
(Score: 4, Informative) by jelizondo on Saturday July 05, @07:01AM (1 child)
Exactly, how does one stop them?
Huawei was ran out of the telecom business in Europe, Australia, Canada and the USA. It just made them better, so much that Fortune ran the article Even the Pentagon can’t completely freeze Huawei out of its operations [fortune.com], so banning them doesn't seem to work.
So, stop selling them high-end GPUs? A report from Morgan Stanley [morganstanley.com] highlights "U.S. export controls could create barriers for AI development in China but won’t stop its progress.", which makes sense seeing how they stunned the AI world by announcing DeepSeek [wikipedia.org] back in January, months before MS' report.
So how does one stops them? Willing to go to war with a nuclear power? I don't think so.
Current policies concerning cutting funds to the NSF, NASA and NHI plus picking fights with top-level universities, making researchers wonder if they have a future in the US of A, won't win this fight; particularly if said researchers decide to go somewhere else. (Even if moving to Europe, the US of A loses top talent and falls behind.)
Again, how does one stop them?
Maybe stopping them isn't the answer... Just saying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 05, @02:33PM
Exactly. I hope they do better. Science investment wins. Look at the last 500 years - those who kept praying to the sky fairy lost badly. This is the lesson of history. Now go reflect on the Orange Jesus decimating the US science budget. "Smart".