The United States has always wanted to control the direction of the chip market, especially China's chip market. As a result, the United States issued new chip regulations, together with Japan and the Netherlands, to hinder the export of chip high-tech equipment to China.
Now, TSMC, Samsung, ASML and other chip companies have no way to ship freely. In order to eliminate the impact of the external supply chain on the domestic technology industry, technology companies such as Huawei and SMIC have begun to lay out the domestic chip industry chain.
Huawei, Mainland China and SMIC have been struggling in the chip field, and Huawei plans to solve the supply problem of some chip products through chip overlay solutions. SMIC expands its chip foundry capacity in the mainland, which can further expand the domestic market.
But to complete these, it is inseparable from the purchase of chip equipment such as lithography machines. As early as 2021, SMIC added a large order of US$1.2 billion to ASML in the Netherlands to purchase chip manufacturing equipment. But there has been interference from the United States, which has led to the fact that the equipment has not arrived.
Dutch ASML also officially announced that it will accelerate the layout in the Chinese market and provide more professional equipment and services for Chinese customers.
Obviously, ASML does not intend to listen to the US arrangement this time. Although this new regulation, many high-end equipment of ASML cannot be exported, such as NTX:2000Di released lithography machine products, almost all of which cannot be exported.
At present, ASML manufacturers can only ship 1980Di and other models of lithography machines, and other equipment cannot be exported in the short term.
As we all know, ASML's 1980Di lithography machine is mainly suitable for lithography processing of mature process chips of 38nm and above. This means that the existing equipment is not enough for the mainland to produce 14nm and 7nm chips, which is what the United States wants.
For ASML, they definitely don't want to give up the Chinese market, but because of the policy, there is no way to do so. The purpose of the United States is to make China's chips unable to move closer to high-end chips, and can only stay in the stage of mature chips.
Therefore, the United States is causing trouble everywhere, using its hegemony to force several other manufacturers that can produce high-end equipment to stop exporting high-end equipment to China.
The United States does this for two main reasons, on the one hand, to restrict the development of Chinese chips, and on the other hand, to solve its own chip inventory problems.
This incident once again shows that the chip industry can only rely on itself, want to achieve self-sufficiency in the chip industry, take the route of independent research and development, and promote the upgrading of domestic chip equipment.
Because only by doing so can we solve the problem of limited chip supply from the root and no longer be subject to people.
At the same time, to grasp our existing mature chip market, the US Intelligence Agency has spoken out, intending to terminate chips with processes below 14nm, which is a good opportunity for China and a good opportunity to quickly deploy mature processes.
At present, Huawei has been laying out chip overlay technology, and the production of 28nm and 14nm processes to be completed now is enough to solve the problems of existing technology companies as long as it can be successful.
It is precisely because of this that in recent years, the state has introduced many policies conducive to the development of chips, whether in terms of talents, equipment or funds, to provide comprehensive support. The will of chip manufacturers to overcome problems has begun to strengthen.
In September 2022, Shanghai officially announced the mass production of 14nm process chips, which is a qualitative leap.
The mass production of 14nm chips by the mainland has the same significance as the mass production of 28nm, which is a major breakthrough and means that the mainland can reduce its dependence on US chips. Through self-sufficiency, it meets the needs of high-end technology equipment chips.
More importantly, this can effectively alleviate the problem of high-end chips relying heavily on overseas companies.
On the other hand, American companies will lose more chip orders in this context, including overseas semiconductor companies such as ASML in the Netherlands, will eventually suffer from "backlash", foreign media have said that the situation of China's core has completely changed.
In addition, China occupies a great advantage in the layout of mature chips, SMIC has a huge mature chip production capacity, building four 12-inch wafer fabs in major cities in China, once all factories are put into operation, the monthly production capacity can increase by 340,000 pieces.
Secondly, most of China's suppliers have broken through the 28nm process to achieve the coverage of mature processes. This is a situation that the United States never expected, did not expect to inhibit the development of China's high-end chips, but created China's achievements in mature chips.
This time, the United States really shot itself in the foot, which is really ridiculous.
High-end 7nm chips, currently only used in high-end mobile phones, TSMC's latest 5nm is also only used by Huawei Kirin chips, but there is no large number of market. The highest-end computers only use 14nm chips, and other computers use 28nm or more.
In addition, the chips used in home appliances and automobiles, 90nm is sufficient. Military, some even microns instead of nanometers.
Therefore, high-end chips account for less than 10% of the total number of chips. The proportion of mature chip use in the market is indeed higher. No matter what they say, we must have determination, work hard in the established direction, and finally complete the ultimate goal of chip development.