The United States has begun to sanction China again.
The latest measure is to ban the import of certain semiconductor chips made using American tools without permission and strictly restrict the export of chip-making equipment to China.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Yes, similar tactics have been used on Huawei.
In order to block the supply to Huawei in the Trump era, Huawei was blocked, first reducing the technology from the United States from 25% to 10%, and found that the effect was not good, and then simply reduced to 0%, completely cut off.
This is known as the Foreign Direct Product Rule (FDPR), which applies not only to U.S. chipmakers, but to any chip company in the world that uses U.S. equipment or software.
There's also an even tougher: prohibiting U.S. nationals from working in the development or manufacture of chips in China, including after-sales of U.S. equipment.
If these measures can really be strictly enforced, I am afraid that many companies in China will have to live a hard life like Huawei.
You may ask, why can the United States be so overbearing?
Isn't the lithography machine a Dutch ASML? Isn't OEM manufacturing Taiwan? Isn't the memory chip Korea? HiSilicon also has strong chip design capabilities, why should it listen to the orders of the United States?
Because the United States is indeed standing at the top end and controls the entire chip industry.
Lithography machine
Take ASML's most advanced EUV lithography machine, the development of EUV theory began as early as 1997.
At that time, Intel and the US government led the establishment of the EUV LLC alliance, which brought together the top research resources and chip giants in the United States, including the three national laboratories of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, and joined IBM, AMD, Motorola and other technology giants, gathering hundreds of top scientists to jointly study EUV lithography technology.
At that time, the largest lithography machine manufacturer was not ASML, but Japan's Nikon, which definitely wanted to join, but the United States did not allow foreign companies to use the most cutting-edge technology in the United States, especially the rise of Japanese semiconductors in the 80s was a major threat to the United States, Nikon was excluded.
ASML is a Dutch company that has made a bunch of commitments to the United States, such as regular audits, building factories in the United States, promising that American parts account for more than 55% ... This is when it is allowed to join.
From 1997 to 2003, scientists at EUV LLC published hundreds of papers in 6 years to verify the feasibility of EUV lithography machines. Then the EUV LLC consortium was dissolved.
Who will make EUVs? It has to be ASML.
According to the data, ASML's largest shareholder is Capital Research and Management Company, which owns 15.81% of the equity. The second largest shareholder is BlackRock Inc., with a 7.95% stake.
The agreement constraint + equity control determines that although ASML is in the Netherlands, the owner is in the United States.
Semiconductor materials
The Japanese did not eat the big fat of EUV, and turned to the study of semiconductor materials.
According to Moore's Law, chips are updated every 18 months, and semiconductor materials have never changed since the invention of the transistor, as long as the purity and formula are done well, there is no need to worry about disruptive innovation.
This is so much in line with the taste of the Japanese, the "craftsman spirit", slowly polished from generation to generation.
Of course, craftsmanship alone is not enough, Japan's basic research is quite powerful, and since 2000 it has won 15 Nobel Prizes, 5 physics prizes, and 6 chemistry prizes.
Strong basic science, slow work out of the spirit of meticulous work, the Japanese continue to improve the sophisticated manufacturing process, to make semiconductor materials better and better.
The purity of the semiconductor silicon wafer has reached 11 9s, which is equivalent to the area of two football fields, with only one grain of sand-sized impurities.
High-purity hydrogen fluoride, the concentration of impurities is controlled to less than one part per trillion.
These high-precision semiconductor materials are made by the Japanese who are good at smashing.
Now Japan accounts for 52% of the global semiconductor materials market, especially its king fried products high-purity hydrogen fluoride, photoresist and fluorinated polyamide, there is no competitor in the world, not the United States.
But everyone knows that Japan does not dare to disobey the orders of the United States, and semiconductor materials are also indirectly controlled by the United States.
EDA software
Compared with equipment and materials, the third big killer in the United States is directly controlled EDA software.
EDA software is simply to draw the circuit board, you may ask, isn't it a circuit, hand drawing can't work?
In the early days, it was indeed hand-drawn, but now the high-end chip is only the size of a fingernail, with more than 10 billion transistors connected together, and if it is hand-drawn, it has to be drawn until the earth is destroyed.
Therefore, EDA is called the "crown jewel of semiconductors", which plays a pivotal role in the entire semiconductor industry chain, and without EDA, all chip design companies in the world have to stop.
The global EDA market is mainly occupied by the three giants of Synopsys, Cadence and Siemens EDA.
Among them, Synopsys and Cadence are American companies, which together account for nearly 60% of the global market share.
A little thought
In 2018, ZTE was sanctioned by the United States, which directly led to the shock of all businesses, and later paid a $1 billion fine, reorganized the board of directors, and allowed the United States to select personnel to enter the compliance team.
At that time, I asked a classmate at ZTE: If the United States imposed similar sanctions on all Chinese companies, what would happen to the domestic communications industry?
He smiled and said: It is possible to return to the 2G era.
It's a joke, but it also highlights how much pressure is under severe sanctions.
This pressure will also keep us awake, except to develop the chip industry steadily, there is really no way out.
It is undeniable that the lithography machine is difficult, EDA is difficult, and semiconductor materials are also difficult, especially when there are already mature products on the market, it is even more difficult to develop. But the United States is now doing China a big favor.
Because the best way for the leader to occupy the market is to dump at low prices, suppress local products, let him not develop, because from scratch research and development, backward technology, high cost, no competitive advantage, the company is not stupid, they will spontaneously buy high-quality and low-cost products.
Many countries want to develop local backward industries, generally first build tariff barriers, increase the cost of foreign products, weaken their competitiveness, first develop themselves, and then go overseas to participate in international competition. But this violates the principles of free trade and will be caught and attacked by the leaders.
Now the United States takes the initiative to close the door of China's large market, which is equivalent to helping to establish a barrier, although domestic tools and chips are not good, poor performance, instability, many bugs, but also have to be used, so that the entire industrial chain will develop. The Chinese market is huge, with integrated circuit imports reaching $440 billion in 2021, enough to feed a large number of giants.
The import volume of chips in the first seven months of this year decreased by 43 billion, which has shown that the self-sufficiency rate of domestic chips is further improving, and the replacement of domestic chips by US chips is accelerating.
Our country seems to be particularly good at throwing money, doing something from 1 to 100, from 100 to 10,000, but not good at going from 0 to 1.
Things like photolithography machines, Europe and the United States have already created, the problem of 0 to 1 has long been solved, China can also make it, and the rest is to constantly evolve and continuously improve accuracy.
What is needed now is time, to be patient, we cannot solve the problem at once, and use a few years to surpass the accumulation and achievements of others for decades, then don't we become gods?
To see the progress of Chinese chips in ten years as a length unit, it will definitely be very difficult under severe sanctions in recent years, but I firmly believe that we will definitely be able to climb the technology tree of chips, and Chinese chips will definitely be able to stand on top of the world.