In the period of "core war" between China and the United States, after TSMC abandoned CIC and cut off its supply to Huawei, it broke through the Western blockade of "China Chip", and SMIC took it up.
SMIC is the most advanced chip manufacturer in China, providing customers with mature processes below 14nm. Although it is still a big difference compared with 3 nm process technologies such as TSMC and Samsung, it still cannot overwhelm SMIC.
At present, there are few industries that can use high-end technologies such as 5 nm and 3 nm, and they are limited to a few fields such as smartphones. On the contrary, the mature process technology of 28 nm, due to its extremely high cost performance, is still in great demand in the market, and the utilization rate even exceeds 80%, and has been widely used in important "tracks" such as aerospace and new energy vehicles.
This is also why, after the EUV lithography machine was forcibly blocked by the United States, SMIC gave up its pursuit of high-end chips and chose to follow the trend and expand 28nm on a large scale.
According to the data, SMIC has expanded production four times in the past two to three years, and invested a total of more than 170 billion yuan in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. According to its capacity plan, the 12-inch factory could produce 330,000 chips a month once it is in production.
Although this cannot effectively provide Huawei with "swan song" level Kirin chips, SMIC can play a vital role in achieving a 70% chip self-sufficiency rate by 2025 and reducing the dependence of domestic companies on Metchip chips.
But recently, there were news reports that SMIC announced that the production capacity of the 28 nm process will be suspended, for the simple reason that the purchase, maintenance, and depreciation of equipment will cause huge losses that they cannot afford.
You know, just a low-level lithography machine is worth millions of dollars, not to mention the manufacture of a chip production line, but also a large number of etching machines, photoresist, photoresist and other materials, as well as maintenance, labor, utilities and other infrastructure, these are a huge expense.
With the continuous advancement of chip technology, the depreciation time of production equipment is also constantly shortening, and it will generally be replaced once every five years, otherwise energy efficiency and yield will be affected. Taking TSMC as an example, the annual recycling cost alone is as high as billions of yuan.
It has to be said that SMIC has stood at the top position in the world, whether it is yield or number of customers, or wafer product types, it is one of the best in China, and in 2022, their revenue has exceeded $7.2 billion, but it is still far from four fabs put into production at the same time.
To be fair, SMIC's possibility of suspending capacity expansion is not great, and the industry is well aware of this, after all, chip production is a "money-burning", high-risk, long-term return industry, coupled with the strict technical blockade of Chinese chips by Western countries, it is undoubtedly full of thorns to "break through".
However, it is gratifying that just when everyone is worried about the future of domestic chips, SMIC officially issued an announcement to suspend the expansion of production: "It is rumored that 28 nm expansion is a long-term plan, and it will not be stopped." ”
SMIC's words are undoubtedly a "reassuring pill", so that domestic chip companies, living up to expectations, continue to provoke the burden. At the same time, it is even more likely that some foreign countries are trying to use public opinion to disrupt the footsteps of "China Core", and beat the flowers and flowers.
In this regard, some foreign media believe that the results are basically clear now, and although the Sino-US "core war" has not ended, the results are already obvious.
Looking at the measures taken by the United States against Huawei and other Chinese companies, from the unilateral chip embargo to "embattled" and "tripod", it has obviously reached the point of "donkey skills". However, China's semiconductor industry has not stagnated, and is even developing at a faster pace.
According to Chinese customs statistics, as Chinese companies cut orders for 96 billion chips in 2022, domestic chips will be cut by about 18 billion in the first two months of 2023, but the self-sufficiency rate of domestic chips will continue to rise. In addition, Chinese companies have also made some progress in core equipment such as lithography machines, and it will not be long before they can get rid of the dependence of Meixin chips.
On the contrary, in the semiconductor market in the United States, because of the lack of goods was branded as "unreliable", lost the backing of China's consumer chip market as a backing of Meixin, in the past two years, has been greatly impacted, there has been "backlog of inventory", "price plummeting" situation, Qualcomm and Intel without exception, forced to "cut salaries and lay offs", but this can not hide its decline trend.
As the saying goes, the victory or defeat of this game is already obvious.