Author: Niu Yimao Technology
This year, TSMC received more than NT$500 billion from Apple, but it still can't change its dilemma.
Continental chips are rising rapidly
TSMC's cut off of Huawei's supply has triggered a boom in chip manufacturing in mainland China, and chip-related companies have grown from 7,417 in 2018 to 47,392 in 2021, nearly doubling 6 times. Ion implantation machine, lithography machine, etching machine have achieved a breakthrough of zero.
The etching machine of Zhongwei Semiconductor has achieved catch-up from scratch and from existence to leading. The domestic production of lithography machines guarantees the chip demand of the mainland's basic industries, people's livelihood supplies, national defense equipment and so on, which is our bottom card.
In addition, ASML's mature lithography machines are pouring into China. Recently, Shanghai Jita Company announced that it purchased 3 lithography machines from ASML, and SMIC previously said that it would spend $1.2 billion to purchase lithography machines. With these devices, SMIC has not only increased chip production capacity of 28nm and above, but also achieved mass production of 14nm chips.
The low-end market is being cannibalized
As we all know, China enjoys the title of the world's factory, and once the Chinese machine is started, the cost of goods will be compressed to a minimum, and then occupy the global market. Some experts predict that if the mainland masters the chip technology, the chip will be the "cabbage price".
Today, more than 70% of the global chip demand is low-end chips, and as SMIC's production capacity continues to expand, TSMC will not only lose its business in the mainland, but also foreign markets will be impacted.
According to statistics, in 2020, the sales of the semiconductor industry in the mainland accounted for 9% of the global total, which has surpassed TSMC and is expected to account for 17% by 2024.
The only thing left for TSMC is to continue to develop high-end chips.
The latest lithography machines have been cut off by Intel
TSMC is now developing 2nm chips, according to ASML, the current EUV lithography machine in the production of 2nm chips, the need to use repeated exposure method. This method will greatly increase production costs and reduce the yield rate of chips.
ASML announced last year that the high-NA lithography machine it is developing is the main force in the production of chips of 2nm and below. In order to be the first to grab the new equipment, Samsung, TSMC, and Intel have snapped up at high prices.
But the first $400 million High-NA device was eventually sold to Intel, with delivery scheduled for 2025. Without the most advanced chip production equipment, TSMC's plans to march into high-end chips have been cut off.
Silicon chips will eventually be replaced
With the continuous growth of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, human society has higher requirements for the computing power of chips. Experts say the demand for hash power now doubles every 6 months, while the hash rate of silicon chips takes 12 months to double.
With the approaching of Moore's Law, the research and development cost of silicon chips has increased exponentially, but the performance improvement has fallen into a bottleneck, and the gap between the development of silicon chips and the demand for computing power is gradually widening.
"We urgently need new technologies, photonic chips and quantum chips may be a substitute for silicon chips", researchers from many countries have reached a consensus.
At present, China is accelerating the research and development of new technologies such as photonic chips and quantum chips, and has made major breakthroughs in many nodes. It is believed that China's chip curve overtaking is about to be staged.
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