The sanctions imposed by the United States have hurt me very much.
Recently, chips are changing dramatically! Lithography machine giant ASML "thunder"!
The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, China, reported that researchers said that U.S. export controls may have inadvertently led to China's dominance of traditional global chip production.
The chip industry seems to be reshuffling. And all of this, in fact, stems from US sanctions. So what's going on?
In other words, the chip industry is very large, we can divide it into two looks, first of all, mobile phone chips and AI chips, both of which belong to advanced process chip technology, which is an area that China has been stuck in before. In addition, the other part is mature semiconductor technology, which has not been stuck.
In recent years, whether it is advanced process chips or mature semiconductors, China can be said to have advanced by leaps and bounds. Let's start with advanced process chips.
As we all know, the United States continues to increase sanctions on China's advanced process chips, hoping to destroy China's chip industry in one fell swoop. It seems that the results did not develop according to the script that the United States wanted. To manufacture advanced process chips, you have to use lithography machines, which must not bypass ASML.
ASML, on the other hand, has been in trouble lately. At the root of the problem is dissatisfaction with the Netherlands' repeated compromises with the United States, which has led to its inability to provide services to China, the world's largest chip market, which puts ASML in a dilemma.
So ASML wanted to leave the Netherlands and look elsewhere for opportunities.
Looking at the world, only China is expanding production capacity and buying lithography machines, while other places are relatively sluggish and cautious about buying lithography machines. In the first quarter of this year, ASML's revenue from Chinese mainland accounted for 49%.
ASML Chief Financial Officer Dahlsen said:
Chinese customers account for about 20% of the company's backlog. Demand from China is strong. The increase in production capacity is justified and in line with global demand in the second half of the century.
And China's chips were sanctioned, which led to ASML's revenue in the first quarter of this year was very unsatisfactory, from 9.2 billion euros in the fourth quarter of last year, to only 3.6 billion euros, and the previous expectation was at least more than 5 billion.
ASML CEO Wennink said:
At the moment, there is nothing stopping us from servicing the products that our Chinese customers have already purchased.
At the same time, they are trying to resist additional US sanctions as much as possible.
ASML's experience is just a microcosm of the chip companies in Europe, America, Japan and South Korea, and they are all hurt. After these companies produce chips, their biggest customers can't buy them. The key point is that the order volume of this largest customer is still skyrocketing, while the orders of other customers are not only not rising, but are still falling, can you stand this? Once the income decreases, the cost of investment in research and development will also decrease, which actually slows down their technological development in disguise.
Therefore, the sanctions imposed by the United States are essentially weakening its own strength. It's okay if China's chip technology doesn't improve, everyone loses. But the problem is that China's chip technology is developing rapidly.
In August last year, when U.S. Secretary of Commerce Raimondo visited China, Huawei, which had been sanctioned for many years, suddenly released a new generation of flagship mobile phones, equipped with domestic self-developed chips Kirin 9000s, and the network speed was not weaker than 5G. And the emergence of this mobile phone has also made Apple suffer in the Chinese market, that is to say, not only the chip companies in Europe, America, Japan and South Korea have been injured, but in fact, other related industries have also been injured.
8 months later, in the United States, where Huawei chips are not manufactured, Huawei released Pure70, which is also equipped with a new generation of self-developed chips, this time even the memory is made in China, it is estimated that this will be depressed and depressed, this mobile phone is destined to further encroach on the high-end mobile phone market, making Apple's life worse.
In fact, not only mobile phone chips, but also AI chips have been sanctioned by the United States, but the script is almost the same as that of the mobile phone chip industry. U.S. sanctions forced Nvidia to sell A800 and H800 chips with poor performance to China. Later, the U.S. sanctions increased, which made Nvidia very uncomfortable, and could only sell to China H20 chips, which were only about 20% of the H100 performance. Nvidia was also helpless, and Huang Jenxun said:
There is only one Chinese market, so even if the chip performance is greatly reduced, Nvidia will not give up the Chinese market.
But what is clear is that this chip actually sells poorly. At the same time, Huawei launched the Ascend 910B, which has much stronger performance than Nvidia's H20 chip, which naturally eats up a large number of orders, which makes Nvidia very popular, but I am very happy.
Therefore, advanced process chip technologies such as mobile phone chips and AI chips have not been killed by the United States, on the contrary, European and American chip companies cannot enter the Chinese market due to sanctions, but have given Chinese companies the opportunity to develop rapidly.
China is in a backward position in mobile phone chips and AI chips, but it is definitely the king in other mature semiconductor fields, not only that, but China's position as the king in these fields is being further strengthened.
China's total integrated circuit production soared 40% to 98.1 billion pieces in the first quarter, which is almost three times the number in the first quarter of 2019. Not only that, due to the sanctions imposed by the United States, China's local chip companies have given up their illusions, are ready to fight, and quickly develop independently, while they have received a lot of investment and embarked on the road of "chip self-sufficiency". According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, in March alone, China's integrated circuit production increased by 28.4% to 36.2 billion pieces, a record high.
In fact, these outputs do not fully meet China's demand, on the contrary, we still import the bulk of the goods we import every year, second only to crude oil. In other words, on the road of "chip self-sufficiency", we still have a lot of room to play, in the future Chinese enterprises will gradually eat up the share of these imports, so who is the loss? It is obvious that some reports say that by 2027, the global share of Chinese mainland in mature process capacity will reach 39%, compared with 31% last year. Of course, I feel that this estimate is too conservative. It won't take 2027 at all. In other words, U.S. sanctions have inadvertently promoted China's dominance in the field of mature semiconductors. True to that sentence: Whatever can't kill you will make you stronger!
Looking at the development of the past 40 years, no matter which industry China enters, it will eventually become the king of this industry, and I believe that in the future, even advanced process chips will be no exception. When we embark on the road of "complete self-sufficiency in chips", in fact, we should thank the United States in turn, thank them for helping us block European and American chip companies, give Chinese companies enough time and space for development, and thank them for abandoning their martial arts and only caring about the development of remote breeding technology.
In fact, the United States has used this trick against Japan, Germany, and France in the past, and it has proved to be easy, but in fact, they just want to replicate the previous cases in China, but this time they ignored a key point, that is, the Chinese market is too big, and Chinese companies can rise completely by relying on the Chinese market, while the countries that were sanctioned by the United States before do not have this characteristic at all. The companies involved in the Chinese market can be killed indiscriminately in the international community in recent years, whether it is in the mobile Internet industry, in the automotive industry, or in the mobile phone industry.
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