News on June 24, according to Nikkei news reports, the Japanese government-backed Japan Investment Corporation (JIC) is negotiating to acquire JSR (Japan Synthetic Rubber Company), a photoresist production company for semiconductor production, for 1 trillion yen (about 50 billion yuan).
JSR is one of the four EUV photoresist suppliers in the world, and its photoresist market accounts for about 35%, ranking first in the world. Samsung, TSMC, Intel and other chip giants are its customers. This means that JSR has become a state-owned enterprise again many years after the privatization of the restructuring.
On July 23, Japan will officially implement the restriction rules, which will strictly restrict the export of 23 kinds of semiconductor production equipment and materials such as lithography machines and photoresists. That is, there is less than a month left. The list of device restrictions published by the Japanese government has been expanded to include mature chip processes such as 45 nanometers. It can be said that the Japanese side has set an example for the Netherlands!
Because also in July, the Netherlands is about to make the final decision and introduce new restrictions and rules, it can be said that the moment of truth has come! However, let's not expect too much from the Netherlands.
According to Reuters on June 30, the United States and the Netherlands plan to further strengthen restrictions on China's exports of semiconductor manufacturing equipment this summer. According to reports, the Dutch government plans to announce new export restrictions by the first week of July at the latest, including restrictions on the export of DUV equipment from Dutch lithography machine manufacturer ASML to China.
Currently, ASML's EUV equipment was already limited in 2019. In March, the Dutch government restricted the more advanced 2050i and 2000i models in ASML's DUV lithography machines, and according to people familiar with the matter, the new regulations to be issued in the Netherlands may be extended to ASML's older DUV models, such as TWINSCAN NXT:1980Di, and may ban their use in six Chinese wafer manufacturers.
The new rules will not take effect immediately and are expected to take effect within two months of publication, in September. That is to say, the restrictions on the Dutch side are very likely to be the same as Japan, and the process node of the lithography machine is also controlled at 45 nm, and all immersion lithography machines (banned below 45nm) are banned
In addition to the export restrictions of the Netherlands, the United States also plans to further upgrade the relevant restrictive measures in July this year based on the new regulations on semiconductor export restrictions to China issued in October last year. According to people familiar with the matter, the new rules will restrict the export of foreign equipment containing U.S. components, even if only a small amount. However, the specific equipment involved will have to wait for the United States to issue new regulations.
In addition to upgrading equipment export restrictions, the Wall Street Journal reported that the United States is considering new restrictions on the export of artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China. It is expected that a halt to shipping AI chips made by NVIDIA and other U.S. chip companies to Chinese customers could be requested as early as July, which could include restrictions on exports of NVIDIA A800/H800 models to China.
In fact, in October last year, the United States introduced new regulations on the export of semiconductors to China, including export restrictions on high-performance computing chips to Chinese mainland. These limits are based on the performance specifications of NVIDIA's A100 chip. This also makes NVIDIA A100/H100 series and AMD MI200/300 series AI chips unable to be exported to China.
However, in order to meet the needs of Chinese customers and comply with the restrictions of the United States, NVIDIA announced on November 8 the launch of the A100 replacement product - A800 that meets the new US regulations.
In March this year, NVIDIA released a new generation of GPUs based on the 4nm process, called the H100, while NVIDIA also launched a special version of the H800 designed for the Chinese market. According to Reuters, the H800 has half the chip-to-chip data transfer speed of the H100.
That is to say, according to the latest reports from foreign media, the United States is considering the implementation of new restrictions in July, which may prohibit the sale of NVIDIA A800 chips to China without a special export license from the United States.
This also means that even NVIDIA's castrated version of the A800/H800 series chips for the Chinese market in order to circumvent restrictions will also be restricted from export.
This is a negative impact for domestic manufacturers that rely on high-performance AI chips to provide AI hardware, Internet companies that provide AI services and other AI technology vendors. The lack of strong AI chip support will affect the development of its AI technology and the AI services it can provide.
Because of the GPU chip AI field, although there are currently many domestic GPU acceleration chip and AI chip manufacturers in China, such as Bicheng Technology, Muxi Integrated Circuit, Moore Thread, Haiguang Information and Cambrian, etc., there is still a big gap with NVIDIA and AMD in terms of performance, which cannot meet market demand.
Although it will have a certain impact on the field in the short term, for mainland AI chip manufacturers, the new AI chip restriction policy of the United States is also good news.
It is worth noting that recently, the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced that it has made a major breakthrough in the field of optical computing chips. The technology can be applied to AI chips and is said to be faster than the Nvidia A100. And at present, affected by this, today's A-share market AI chip concept stocks rose sharply.
At present, the Biden administration is extending the exemption period in the field of memory chips such as TSMC, Samsung, and SK Hynix, while expanding restrictions on the currently hot GPU chip AI field.
Because the current mainland memory chip industry has achieved rapid development in the past few years, Changjiang Storage's 232-layer NAND flash memory has now achieved mass production applications, and can even be said to have surpassed competitors such as Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, which is a major breakthrough for China's memory chip industry.
The purpose of the US behavior is more obvious, while wooing Japan and the Netherlands to restrict equipment, it has launched strikes on some storage fields that have achieved breakthroughs on the mainland, while comprehensively restricting some areas that have not yet formed a threat.
So far, some foreign media have also directly commented: The US side is embarrassed and angry with its restrictive behavior, there is no bottom line, and it is also helping China's AI chips, memory chips are an example!
In this regard, in the next July, we can only wait and see how the Netherlands chooses and how the new US rules are implemented. But 4 years of sanctions did not stop us, and any subsequent restrictions will not scare us!