Chinese chipmaker SMIC says US sanctions mean it will struggle to develop 10nm products

China’s largest chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), has told investors that new US sanctions announced late last week will be a long-term hassle but won’t impact its current operations. In a Sunday disclosure [PDF] to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, SMIC said its addition to a US “Entity list …

[Anonymous Coward]

> the ban “will have a material adverse effect on the research and development and capacity construction of 10 nanometres and below advanced technology nodes.”

so where's the spin on this ... surely they should be announcing

"these sanctions will have no effect on our ability to match the advanced technology nodes of US companies such as Intel"

[Synkronicity]

Despite being ultimately owned by the Chinese government they still have a fiduciary obligation to their foreign and domestic private investors. Spin can only take you so far and SMIC has no better example of this than Intel's own 10nm woes

[Tigra 07]

"these sanctions will have no effect on our ability to match the advanced technology nodes of US companies such as Intel"

Is this because they've already stolen this information through state hacking?

[martinusher]

They use a different process to achieve 7nm equivalent resolution. Intel itself is having problems at 10nm and below, currently it appears that only TSMC is in a position to mass produce at this level and they've got the problem that a lot of their product goes to ...... China.

A lot of this really fine geometry is specmanship -- it just represents the smallest feature on a chip, not every feature.

As for 'stealing information' its really not that simple. I know that back in the day the blueprints for some secret naval installtion would be stolen and Sherlock Holmes or Piorot or whoever would recover them but even then there's a lot more to process knolwedge than a simple file or two. Everyone knows roughly what needs to be done but doing it, and doing it repeatedly and reliably on a large scale, requires a lot of institutional knowhow, the collective knowledge of a lot of people.

[Yes Me]

The struggle

What they're not announcing is the Chinese plan for developing their own versions of the whole supply chain, including very specialised technology that they currently have to buy in. No, I haven't seen that plan, but I am completely certain that it exists. China has learnt a long-term lesson from tRump: don't rely on the West for anything essential. Own goal for the West.

[Nathar Leichoz]

While SMIC struggles, India sees opportunity. The nation last week issued an expression of interest [PDF] for anyone who fancies building a semiconductor fabrication plant in the country, or local consortia keen to buy one outside India.

I think a lot of companies are going to take the wait and see approach to see how Apple's manufacturing progresses in India before moving their semiconductor production to India.