So what if China has 7nm chips now, there's no Huawei it can make them 'at scale' Further escalating the rivalry between the US and China, America's Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo earlier today voiced open dismay over Huawei putting out a smartphone powered by a 7nm homegrown processor during her visit to the Middle Kingdom. Raimondo insisted the US administration is utilizing every available resource to …
The powers that be have conveniently ignored that China got its start in making semiconductors because the US industry was too stinking cheap and concerned about hitting quarterly earnings target set by Wall Street. This has been true ever since US manufacturers decided their stock price was more important than sustainability or giving aid and comfort to possible adversaries.
I am curious what the most advanced semiconductor that can be made with "US technology" actually is... considering as far as I am aware they haven't developed any new technology in this area in decades... there is a reason everyone making modern chips uses Dutch technology, not even US companies use US technology...
"The development has spurred the US Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security to initiate an inquiry into the purported 7nm chip, and how or if it was made using American technology."
I seem to recall reading in these very hallowed pages that there is one company in the world that makes it possible to engrave chips at the bleeding edge of technology, and that company is not American, it's Dutch.
So I take it that the USA has the patents and has licensed ASML to use them ? Or is all this just some more USA! USA! Rah Rah Rah chest-thumping ?
Asianometry certainly knows is stuff. Good recommendation.
What I would say though is that SMIC aren't using EUV, they are pushing DUV to its absolute limits.
However, I think ASML is also the only company in the world that makes DUV machines.
My question is, if SMIC got hold of an EUV machine, would they be able to apply the same techniques to that, and produce even smaller chips than Samsung and TSMC?
Look at some of the other vids on that channel about EUV. It is more than just ASML. There is the mask substrate itself, a machine to check the mask for defects, photo resist for the wafer and a whole load of other smaller bits that are needed to make EUV work and they are ALL single source. And I believe all under export control from the US.
One interesting thing is that the lines on the wafer are getting so narrow that the width can be measured in single digit molecules of photo resist. Some other tech needs to improve before things get smaller again. That might come from China, maybe the US, we shall see.
SMIC is mastering process technologies especially in this case to do with multipatterning. The fact that they have to try and conjure techniques to fabricate semiconductors using multi-patterning gives them experience that they can use along with an EUV installation.
Most advanced chips are currently made using both DUV and EUV machines. EUV machines are used for the smallest features only and the wafers are then sent to DUV machines to pattern larger features. ASML is not the only company that makes DUV machines, Nikon, and Canon (of Japan) also make DUV machines, and used to be the major suppliers before ASML.
Many Western commentators view EUV - where ASML is the monopoly supplier, as some kind of Maginot line against China. This is promoted by half-baked media opinions. There are many ways that China can overcome the EUV barrier. It could pursue nano-imprint techniques along with DUV which would enable it to reach 5nm; It could pursue advanced packaging which would make it match the performance of advanced node (5nm, 3nm) chips while still using large feature sizes; finally, it could pursue research on EUV light sources that differentiate away from the laser-produced plasma (LPP) method patented by ASML. It could pursue a discharge-produce plasma method (DPP) or go for an ASML kill shot with a synchrotron approach in the form of an SSMB-EUV.
This latter method Steady State Microbunching (SSMB) could produce smaller features than an ASML machine is capable of without the need for any complex mirroring implementation.
Well ASML is head quartered in the Netherlands and was spun off from Phillips which was a Dutch company, they did purchase the Silicon Valley Group in 2000 which I guess come have held some US patents that are relevant for making modern chips. But as patents are only granted in the US for 20 years surely any US patents which they got as part of the acquisition of SVG have already expired.
Obviously there might be less well know American companies that own patents that are licensed by ASML, although It just seems like another case of Team America world police at it again.
ASML acquired Cymer Inc in 2013.
Even though Cymer is now owned by ASML the US government still assumes its technology to be of 'US origin' and therefore subject to extraterritorial sanctions.
This is just one example in relation to ASML and lithography.
In the field of EDA tools, Siemens acquired Mentor Graphics in 2017 and also finds itself subject to sanctions.
On top of that, with the tightening of restrictions US citizens were banned from working for Chinese companies, losing their jobs in the process.
Being born a US citizen makes you ineligible for certain Chinese employers as it makes you US origin.
That said, thousands of technological advances are made for US interests by native Chinese citizens (some have chosen to become US citizens, some haven't) and if those Chinese aren't hounded out or accused of spying, the US has no qualms about taking those advances as their own.
It is about having your cake and eating it.
I fully expect companies which have found themselves subject to extraterritorial sanctions to design the US technology out of their products to remain competitive. After all, for most of them, China is their biggest customer.
Currently, in the case of ASML, there is an extra complication. The Dutch government (pressured by the US) has imposed export restrictions on ASML.
They won't last long when they realise that companies like Huawei are actively investigating their own EUV options and will become a formidable competitor to one of its most important companies.
There is often confusion in these sorts of stories, where people conflate the nation of the USA with the corporations that control it.
Technically they're supposed to be separate, but in the real world the corporations don't give a bugger about how their vast profits materialise, as long as they do, and as long as they keep growing.
Many of these corporations make a significant percentage of their profits from China, so they're actually a little bit leery about getting too bullish with the Chinese because it's obvious that things can't escalate into a shooting war, so America's leverage is limited and everyone involved knows it.
Late to this party but generally the USA says: if you help someone evade our export controls, we'll blacklist or sanction you next. Or mess with your US operations. Or cut you off from the dollar, the world's de facto currency.
So that's why places like ASML play ball. It's not worth the war with Uncle Sam.
C.
Looking at the Times Higher Education list it appears that China has 9 of the top 100 ranked universities plus roughly 3,500 other universities and higher vocational colleges. It's reasonable to expect them to make progress now Mao Tse-tung has been gone one working lifetime, so no longer forcing them to be dirt poor agricultural peasants.
15 years ago I attended my Ex's masters graduation at one of the UK's top Universities.
I'd say 90% of all the maths and science graduates had names of Chinese origin.
Being part of the Russell's group, I'm pretty sure they were well funded overseas students, just not sure from where, but I'll take a good guess.
1. China did not change from a nation of peasants to the World’s factory overnight. Anyone who visited China before the decades of rampant growth saw a massive industrial infrastructure in the main cities. Creaking in places, sure, but all that despite the exigencies of civil war and “the liberation”.
2. Mate of mine studying Telecommunications at Stanford in the ‘60’s said one of their textbooks was written by a guy from Shanghai.
I said at the time the ban was introduced that it was the fastest way to get the Chinise to develop their own technology. The never worried abour copyright, but once they have learnt all there is to know about something they stop buying them and make their own.
What is depressing is the American stupidity / arigance that they didn't see this would happen / can't belive it has.
How long before they can make better chips than the west? Less than 10 years is my guess.
> I said at the time the ban was introduced that it was the fastest way to get the Chinise to develop their own technology. The never worried abour copyright, but once they have learnt all there is to know about something they stop buying them and make their own.
To be fair, the USA did much the same during the industrial revolution; a lot of their initial industrial bootstrapping was based on patented European technologies, despite the best efforts of the UK in particular to prevent this.
https://theworld.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-nations-are-stealing-us-technology-america-has-history
It was only once they'd gotten to the point where US businesses and citizens started to produce their own patentable ideas, that the USA started to take the concepts of patents more seriously.
So there's a certain irony in just how upset certain parties in the USA are, over how China is now doing much the same!
Rumor has it that they already have an alternative in the works. The problem with alternatives is that they're always "Mark 2", they take existing technology, look at what works and what doesn't work and then build something better. The only thing that holds them back is, of course, they're Chinese so obviously inferior to any American (including the legions of Chinese already working in technology in the US, the ones that are all spies)(of course).
In my 40 years of working in California I'd say that where you find the native born Americans for the most part is in accounting, finance, sales, legal and HR. The actual heavy lifting is done by a mongrel crew that includes some Americans but mostly Chinese, Iranians / Armenians, Europeans and a smattering of 'others'. (This is obviously non-military R&D -- the military used to be US citizens only but has relaxed somewhat to include Green Card holders relatively recently).
(If you like jokes then one project that was subcontracted to us by one of the aerospace companies required two hardware engineers. It was a proper secret job, needed US citizens only, had extra safes and what-have-you. Of the two engineers one was from Russia (initially trained with the Soviet air force) and the other was from China. Both citizens, of course.....)
from the article
"Further escalating the rivalry between the US and China, America's Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo earlier today voiced open dismay over Huawei putting out a smartphone powered by a sophisticated 7nm homegrown processor during her visit to the Middle Kingdom."
So they have made her look like a twat.
Does she seriously think that they would postpone release out of deference to her feelings? She thinks she is that imporant?
Obviously not to Huawei
This is the same administration where someone in a petrol powered car was sent ahead to 'reserve' an EV charging space for a publicity stunt by the energy secretary.
Yes, well that would be an accidental thing. You'd send a junior member of staff to do that sort of thing who's not going to be missed much in the office.
And of course, the only people who can afford EV's are the top 25% or so of the population by income who live in a city and don't need to drive anywhere, who tend to be the most senior of senior staff who won't be sent to sit in their car taking up an EV charging point. Junior staff (if they own a car at all) will tend to own a cheap second hand vehicle, which is going to be a petrol or diesel car, because 90% of the value of an EV is in the battery which has a thousand charge cycle life, and so the entire car is an economic writeoff before it gets to the point that it would be bought by a junior staff member.
We had a new housing estate built near us with ~30 houses and probably a couple of dozen flats to judge from the parking which opened at the start of this year; it doesn't have a single charging point on the entire estate. The houses also aren't built with high amperage circuits to the garages or drives for charging an EV, which you'd have thought would have been part of the construction spec if we are moving to EV's in ~7 years. These houses were built by the county council.
The change in building regulations for new builds only came into effect in June 2022. Like all things, it only applies to developments commenced after this date, but expect much wiggle room: if initial plans for 5,000 homes were submitted prior to this date, it is not clear whether detailed planning for releases of homes within this outline plan are new build or simply a continuation of an existing build given the infrastructure sign off would have happened prior to the June date…
> is this a novelty
Sounds like your flat was built relatively recently.
I'm living in a complex which was built in the 1930s, long before car ownership became commonplace. So there's a very finite amount of on-street parking available. To be fair, there's a few charging stations within a quarter mile or so, but that's not quite as convenient...
EVs are common in Thousand Oaks, California, where I live. Its an upscale, suburban, environment where all houses have garages and where the electricity supply is adequate. The cars aren't very expensive relative to new cars as well (average cost of a new car in the US is currently $42K). By 'common' I mean that if you're stopped at a traffic signal you'll invariably find one or two waiting as well, they're more numerous than Toyotas (and its stablemate, Lexus).
I used to live in Whalley Range, Manchester. M/Cr has got a rather more upscale over the last few decades but based on the tales repeated to me by old friends there its core values haven't changed much. We lived in an old Victorian semi, big enough for a driveway and small garage but based on personal experience of the "if its not nailed down it gets nicked immediately, if it is nailed down it takes a few minutes to prise it up" sort I'd expect any exposed charging cable to have a very short service life. (On the bright side there was a bus stop at the end of the road and distances in the UK are tiny so its not a big deal to use public transport.)
I think they moved the release up a few weeks just to needle her (there were other products in the pipeline and no pre-release marketing). That's exactly what I'd have done in their situation.
She really doesn't understand the Chinese (or Chinese (probably). Or anyone else for that matter. Although I'm a naturalized American now if someone had done that to a British company that I was working for and it was within my power to do so I'd have worked 24/7/365 to screw them. I already experienced American imperiousness back before I came to the US -- back in the early 80s it was all about preventing re-export of technology to the USSR but it was the same deal and -- believe it or not -- many of the same players. One of the numerous reasons for leaving the UK was that the government there was spineless, instead of telling the US to go f**k themselves they took every opportunity to roll over and adopt a "take me, I'm yours" mindset (so long as the City is safe who cares about the rest of the country?). (So my attitude was "Since I'm living in an ersatz version of the US I might as well take this job in the real thing.....the pay's a lot better, at least even if the technology leaves a lot to be desired.....".)
Nowadays, they have some of the most advanced military tech in the world.
Such as?
Their tanks are a development of the T72, with the same autoloader. These are unlikely to be any more survivable than the T72's that are being spread across the landscape in Ukraine. They use a mix of soviet derived artillery, which they consider obsolete and are replacing with western standard 155mm artillery pieces, so they are on a par there with the west with their most modern equipment. It's advanced enough to not be insultingly outmatched and reasonably competitive with their neighbours, but isn't remotely competitive with NATO standard equipment. (except where they are using NATO standard equipment)
Their air defences are developments of older soviet equipment that will have worse range than the more advanced Russian equipment being blown up in Ukraine. Their most advanced aircraft and the only bit of equipment in their arsenal competitive with NATO equipment is the J20 fighter, which is probably equivalent to the F35. The US has as many F22's, and has built 5 times the number of F35's.
They can certainly build "good enough for most things" equipment, but they are unlikely to want to put it to the test against our obsolete equipment, let alone our most advanced equipment. Are chips going to be different for the foreseeable future?
> They can certainly build "good enough for most things" equipment, but they are unlikely to want to put it to the test against our obsolete equipment
I'm not so sure.
WW2 gave us several examples of how quantity has a certain quality all of it's own; German military vehicles may have generally been superior to their allied equivalents, but were also significantly more expensive; a Tiger 1 was roughly three times as expensive as a M4A1 Sherman or T-34.
https://www.quora.com/What-were-the-costs-per-unit-of-the-most-iconic-WWII-tanks-planes-and-weapons
Equally, the current war between Russia and Ukraine is almost certainly going to rewrite the book on military tactics, thanks to the ongoing arms race between drones and anti-drone weaponry.
I'm not going to say that tanks and airplanes are going to vanish overnight, but we may be getting to the point where quantity increasingly matters more than quality.
And China definitely has major economies of scale which it can bring to bear. Not least because (unlike Germany in WW2), they have all the natural resources (e.g. rare earths) and manufacturing capabilities within their borders...
It seems very odd that Biden is trying to suck up to China one moment, saying how they also follow the 'one china policy' etc. and the next moment banning exports to china.
It was funny when the TDS sufferers were claiming the orange one was being protectionist and now they are applauding Biden for the same thing. I think the major difference is that Biden is handing out billions of taxpayer money.
Ha, I don't know, I'm not exactly pro or anti American, but I sometimes question what the trigger point and desired outcome of these things are.
Are China a threat to US dominance in the tech markets? It's hard to believe that the US politicians are not wary that TSMC and Apple combined have a market cap/value of ~ $3 trillion dollars. Funnily enough the US power brokers keep finding odd little excuses to block Chinese tech.
When Huawei started looking like it was threatening Apple / Samsung back in 2020 (gaining 5 out 20 of the top selling phones that year), lo and behold a military connection was determined and pressure applied.
That said though, I'm quite willing to accept there may be shenanigans in the background that result in these export restrictions. Would be interesting to see how the Chinese have developed their 7nm technology, cause it appears that Intel are struggling to release 7nm processors, so it doesn't look good if the Chinse have released the 7nm chips already.
It appears China is using deep ultraviolet lithography (DUV) which does involve issues with low yield and complications. I presume that is what this US politician is referring to - but if it works, it works!
This has been brewing for a few years, before Trump started his (first) campaign for the White House - China’s economy was starting to challenge the US’s status as the worlds largest economy. The shock has turned to outrage and as so much is dependent upon Computer technology, the pushback has gained a focus.
Intel’s “7nm” process (Intel 4/3) is supposed to generally be more on par with TSMC N4/N3. So SMIC’s N+2 7nm-class process won’t have near the transistor density. Granted, this all depends on Intel actually executing for once and releasing a pile of the damn transistors in the first place.
I’m personally more excited for the GAAFET (Intel’s silly-named, so-called “RibbonFET”) transistor architecture. I think it’s gonna be a bigger jump than planar to FinFET was.
Wake me up when we have 2D transistors with channels made of graphene being manufactured, with high yields, though.
People still seem to be thinking back to when the Soviet Union + Soviet-aligned countries were the 2nd largest "country" in the world behind China.
India overtook them in the 1960s, and overtook China earlier this year.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, around 1/3 of the population was Russia, 1/3 other Soviet Union, and 1/3 aligned countries.
Now they are only a little over twice the size of the UK, and smaller than countries like Bangladesh and Nigeria. They are still the largest country in the world in terms of km², but it is mostly uninhabited.
When the US behave then I for one will not slag it off. Biggest polluters, biggest waste producers, experts at bullying smaller nations to do as it says not as it does.
When it stops trying to push it's shit on the rest of the world while saying that anything from China should be banned everywhere else, not just the US then it can go and fuck itself. Not trolling, just reality.
Behave like a part of the human race and as a nation that respects others and you will be treated with respect. The rest of the grown up world is getting tired of their antics.
do you know how much concrete USA CAN and SHOULD pour into making new infrastructures and replacing infrastructures for last 20 years? 200 - 500billion.
And do you know how much the war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya cost? $2.0+ TRILLION DOLLAR, not including the new war in Ukraine coming to $100 billion. Not including the cost of human life in those countries and the damage to their infrastructures.
WRONG in so many ways
"I’m not saying U.S are angels by any means, but you should be equally critical."
…And you’re giving us shit for helping Ukraine retain their sovereignty?? Should we have just let Russia steamroll them?
Say what you want about representative democracy, it can be very ugly. I agree.
I’ll still take it every day of the week over communism. When one man consolidates power (with no checks/balances to prevent it in the first place), it never ends well. We had a demagogue. We voted the shitbag out of office. I truly wish China and Russia could do the same.
Trump got the ball rolling on Huawei by strong-arming AT&T out of carrying the Mate 10 in the US. I'm still waiting to see the explanation of how exactly that represented a national security threat. Of course it never really was, was it?
And if the Chinese government were really hell bent on using consumer phones to eavesdrop on Americans, why wouldn't they use any and all Chinese brands? Seeing as, according to the US at least, all Chinese companies report to the government? What gives?
No. Huawei got whacked simply because it was singled out as a real threat to American hegemony in the tech sphere. Protectionism, pure and simple.
Then Trump started tweeting his every thought in real time (until Twitter blocked him) and made it clear that economics was the real deal here even though 'national security' would be the blanket used to cover every move.
Trump was surely the biggest national security threat of all!
So? What next? Well Tim Cook had at least two 'private' conversations with Trump around that time and was surely feeling the heat of Huawei.
Huawei phones were blazing a trail all over Europe at the expence of Apple’s iPhones and, at the time, Huawei was poised to kick start the fourth industrial revolution via 5G (somewhere where the US had little to nothing to offer).
So we got the Entity List (which in hindsight was probably just a list drawn up by a collection of titties), designed to crush and choke Chinese interests.
Of course, all this was taking place under the backdrop of a trade war (also initiated by the Orange One) that the US couldn't possibly win.
It had to pump billions into the farming industry to stop it from collapsing as a result.
Did no one tell Trump that the US trade deficit was basically with the whole world? Not just China.
It had to rip and replace all existing Huawei kit in rural areas (more billions) and after protesting for years that China was subsidising its tech industry, Biden came up with an identical plan! More billions, this time on the CHiPS Act although subsidies were not in any shape or form unusual for US (or EU) business.
Of course, there were plenty of strings attached and all of them designed to cut China out of the picture.
Now, China itself was already on its own much touted roadmap to reducing technological dependence on other countries, so the only thing US sanctions have done is to accelerate that process, and wholly at the expense of the US semi-conductor industry which is now reeling both economically and technologically.
They were alarmed that Huawei managed to even get a new chip out the door. Now they are trying to claim that that is 'OK' because they can't produce at scale!
Wait a sec!
Who was investigating this? Abbott or Costello?
Two months ago Qualcomm formally announced it would see 'no further material revenue' from Huawei. Excuse me? That alone means millions in lost chipset sales. Was no one paying attention?
Maybe Huawei had a plan?
After all, when you stop placing orders for millions of chipsets you are normally fairly sure that your alternative supplier can deliver, right?
Then we got the Kirin 9000s announced formally. And not on one phone. A whole series of phones!
Then we hear it is shipping in some Geely cars and will very probably ship in the Nova series next month and at least on tablet this month.
That's a LOT of devices that will need chips.
Yield, and therefore supply, certainly don't seem to be issues on the face of it.
And on the 25th of September there will be a new launch event which may include yet another phone (Mate RS).
On top that (and due to the hyperthreaded nature of the Kirin 9000s), rumours persist of a possible laptop like running a desktop flavor of HarmonyOS!
Now, the biggest and fattest Hawks (tits?) are calling for even more 'sanctions'.
So if plan A backfired, doubling down on the same tactics in plan B is guaranteed to work!?
Ladies and Gentlemen of the US Administration.
You screwed up from the outset!
Extraterritorial sanctions (never ever a good thing).
Weaponising technology (great move. Not!)
Bullying allies!
Forcing adversaries to home brew alternative solutions and create direct competitors for US interests.
Fiendish plan Baldrick!
So after three years of watching Huawei turn the ship in a completely new direction, they are beginning to show the fruits of their efforts.
TechInsights said clearly last year when SMIC released a 7nm chip for bitcoin mining. The key takeaway wasn't 7nm. It was that the US had no national 7nm capacity of itself at all! It depended on Taiwan. China was technically ahead of the US in terms of dependency in that field.
Techinsights is back now with another big question.
What EDA tools (the US has a dominant position here) were used to design the Kirin 9000s. Their conclusion is that it is probably that Huawei has developed its own tools (in partnership with others). Ouch!
The amazing thing here is that things can still actually get far worse for US semiconductor interests.
Across the board.
It's not happening on Trump's watch though (which is all he ever wanted to avoid) but the dagger hasn't stopped inching its way into the heart of US tech interests yet.
At the end of the day, the biggest national security threat was Trump himself (and then Biden & Co.)!
is like a drowning man. Arms flailing all over the place in a desperate effort to stay afloat. But, drowning is inevitable.
Resorting to bullying allies? Allies when it suits the U.S. that is. Any other time there is no world outside of the U.S.
Using borrowed money to "boost" U.S. jobs and exports?
How much money has the U.S. borrowed off China? (At last count 1.3 trillion)
This time I think that maybe the U.S. has bitten off more than it can chew.
At the end of the day, the U.S. is shit scared of not being the "World Boss".
Not to worry U.S. you are still the world champs at blackmail. (do as we say or... sanctions)
Not to worry U.S. you are still the world champs at blackmail. (do as we say or... sanctions)
I would suggest not. The trick with sanctions is to make it a better option to comply than not. That usually rests upon complying or going it alone, with going it alone having big risks and huge costs. It's often pragmatic to suck it up and comply.
But cutting someone off shifts the choice to going without or going it alone. Which is a no-brainer and inevitably forces acceptance of those risks and costs.
It staggers me that America would walk this path, force China into upping her game.
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