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The chip industry, once awe-inspiring for its complexity and high technical content. However, in 2022, the mainland experienced an unprecedented turmoil, with 5,700 chip companies disappearing in just one year, a 68% surge in disappearance rate compared to last year. Some foreign media even ridiculed: China cannot make chips, is this a fact or a misunderstanding?
To solve this mystery, you first need to understand the essence of the chip. A chip, in short, is a wonderful combination of an integrated circuit and a semiconductor backplane. Its performance is closely related to the number of integrated circuits included, and the more integrated circuits, the more powerful they are. For example, if you want a kettle to achieve heating and temperature control, you only need an integrated circuit. But if you want to add electronic screen display functions, you need an additional integrated circuit. Therefore, chips are important because they can realize the various functional requirements of the physical world at a very fast speed, through the collection and feedback of information to achieve this goal.
Whether civilian or military, chips are ubiquitous in modern society. From children's toys to missiles, rockets and satellites, everything relies on chips for computing and control tasks. Without chips, rockets cannot be launched, missiles cannot be manufactured, high-end weapons cannot be equipped. The importance of chips is comparable to the place of electricity in our lives. Unfortunately, however, the mainland relies on imports for 90% of its chips, more than crude oil and iron ore combined.
Western countries use chip technology and intellectual property rights as bargaining chips to adopt trade sanctions or export embargoes against the mainland, which is enough to bring serious troubles to the mainland's computers, mobile phones and other industries, and even cause security impacts on core systems such as national defense, military industry, government affairs and banking. Why is the manufacture of chips so difficult, even more complicated than making an atomic bomb? How far is the mainland's chip manufacturing technology compared with the international level?
First, the complexity of the design scheme makes chip manufacturing more difficult. To achieve more functionality, transistors must be smaller and more densely arranged. The so-called 7nm or 14nm process actually refers to the distance between transistors, the shorter the distance, the shorter the transmission time, the greater the computing power, and the more powerful the chip performance. However, 1 nanometer is equivalent to one-fifty-thousandth of the diameter of a hair, a staggering scale.
Secondly, the complexity of production equipment is also one of the factors restricting chip manufacturing. Manufacturing nanoscale chips cannot rely on manual soldering, but requires advanced equipment such as lithography machines. The shorter the light source of the lithography machine, the smaller the components manufactured. However, only the Dutch company ASML in the world can manufacture extremely ultraviolet lithography machines. A lithography machine requires at least 100,000 parts, each component represents the world's advanced level, and the difficulty of manufacturing a lithography machine can be seen.
In addition, chip manufacturing involves dozens of industries, hundreds of processes, and some processes need to be cycled multiple times. Even if these processes are mastered, supporting raw materials such as hydrogen fluoride, photoresist, etc. are required. Chip manufacturing is a complex ecosystem, and every link must be precisely coordinated.
In terms of the market, chips, unlike atomic bombs, cannot just be manufactured. It must be constantly updated and iterated, and the manufacturing process must also be continuously improved. Currently, Taiwan's MediaTek tops the list of the world's top 10 chip makers, while HiSilicon, a subsidiary of China's Huawei, ranks eighth. Although China has made achievements in the field of low-end chips, there is still a huge gap in the field of high-end chips with the United States, South Korea and Taiwan.
So, how is the development of chips in the mainland? Why did 5,700 Chinese chip companies disappear in the past year? At present, the most advanced mobile phone chip in mainland China is Huawei's HiSilicon Kirin 9000, with a process of 5 nm, followed by UNISOC Zhanrui's Tangula T770, with a process of 6 nm. However, these chips still cannot be considered purely domestic, as most raw materials and components still need to be imported.
As far as the manufacture of lithography machines is concerned, the DUV lithography machine that is currently expected to be mass-produced in mainland China can only manufacture chips at most 14 nanometers, and there is still a significant gap compared with international giants. Against this background
In this context, in 2019, the United States imposed sanctions on Huawei for four consecutive times, especially the restrictions on EUV lithography machines, which further aggravated the mainland's difficulties in the field of chip manufacturing. This series of events has caused foreign companies that originally cooperated with China to cut ties with Huawei, forming a chain reaction.
To avoid further sanctions and to ease the pressure, Huawei had to sell its Honor subsidiary, and while this may seem like a concession, in the eyes of some, no way back means the only way out. Therefore, "getting rid of dependence and independent research and development" has become the ultimate goal of Huawei and China's chip industry. The Chinese government has also provided strong support and provided certain subsidies to companies that develop chips. In a short period of time, more than 9,000 chip companies have emerged on the mainland, which have joined the army of chip research and development.
However, the problems plaguing China's chip industry are not just technical barriers. Many small chip companies, while eager to fish in troubled waters to obtain government subsidies, lack real research and development capabilities. In the face of the lockdown in the United States, the repeated epidemic, and high input costs, these companies have closed down, which is regrettable. In less than three years, the failure rate of domestic chip companies has exceeded 60%, and dozens of companies are still written off every day. This has led some foreign media to claim that China simply cannot make chips.
However, the fact is that there are still 170,000 chip-related companies in China stuck to this field, and some strong companies have been screened out. Although the United States has recently imposed another blockade on Chinese chips, China has long understood the intentions of the United States and has begun to lay out the research and development of domestic chip technology. Although there is still a gap between the chip field and the international level and faces great challenges in semiconductor technology, China no longer pursues the concept of "making is better than buying". China may not be the best country in the world, but it is undoubtedly the hardest-working country. On the road to catching up, China is bound to make greater breakthroughs. As many Western countries believe: the more pressure the United States exerts on China, the greater the Chinese backlash. China, come on! Chinese core, come on!
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