In the multi-year tech war between China and the United States, the United States has continued to increase sanctions on Chinese companies, the latest round of which is the revocation of Qualcomm and Intel's licenses to sell chips to Huawei. This has undoubtedly further intensified the confrontation and game between the two countries in the field of science and technology. However, although this series of measures by the United States has brought a certain impact to Chinese companies, including Huawei, it is worth noting that China has made a number of major breakthroughs in core technology fields such as chips, fully demonstrating its resilience and innovation strength to cope with external pressure.
U.S. blockade measures emerge one after another
As we all know, chips, as a key pillar of national economic development, play a vital role in the Sino-US science and technology war. The U.S. government is clearly aware of this, and as a result, over the past few years, it has been increasing sanctions against Chinese companies, especially Huawei.
This new round of sanctions comes from the regulatory reports released by Intel and Qualcomm, two global chip giants. According to the report, the licenses previously obtained by the two parties to export chips to Huawei have been revoked. This caused an uproar in the industry, as China is an extremely important overseas market for both Intel and Qualcomm. Once they lose their supply channels to Huawei, their revenues and profits will be hit hard.
After the report was announced, the stock prices of Intel and Qualcomm fell in response, and Intel's stock price fell by nearly 38%. This reflects investors' concerns about the U.S. government's move, as well as concerns about the company's future prospects.
There is no doubt that the U.S. government has abused export controls to carry out an economic coercion campaign against Chinese companies on the grounds of "national security". This not only violates the relevant WTO rules, but also politicizes economic and trade issues, which will undoubtedly damage the credibility of the United States in the international community. But what is even more ironic is that while trying to suppress China's technological development, American companies are suffering from this. This strategy of "killing 1,000 enemies and losing 800 self" is destined to lead to a lose-lose outcome.
China's chip technology breakthrough is encouraging
Despite extreme pressure from the United States, China's development in core technology areas such as chips has not stalled. On the contrary, a series of breakthroughs have fully demonstrated China's response and innovative strength in this technological war.
First of all, Huawei itself is not completely unprepared. It is understood that in the face of the chip embargo in the United States, Huawei has made great efforts on its Kirin PC version of the processor, and its performance is close to that of Apple's M3 processor based on the Taishan v130 architecture design. In addition, this chip is equipped with a Mali-920 GPU, which has graphics processing power comparable to that of the Apple M2. This means that even if it can't purchase Intel chips, Huawei still has good strength in self-developed processors.
What's even more exciting is that China has made breakthroughs in the field of lithium tantalate heterogeneous integrated wafers and high-performance photonic chips, and has successfully developed a new type of "optical silicon" chip that can be manufactured in batches. This kind of photonic chip is regarded as the key to the development of integrated circuits in the future, which can greatly improve the performance of the chip, and has broad application prospects in communications, mobile terminals and other fields.
The so-called "optical silicon" chip is a new type of photonic integrated circuit material such as lithium tantalate, which is integrated with traditional silicon-based chips, so as to endow silicon chips with excellent performance such as photoelectric conversion. Lithium tantalate materials are expected to play a significant role in improving chip speed, reducing power consumption, and increasing frequency and bandwidth due to their extremely low optical loss and efficient wall-plug conversion.
The breakthrough of this technology is of great significance to the development of China's chip industry. On the one hand, it provides strong support for the large-scale production of domestic optoelectronic integrated chips and RF filter chips in China; On the other hand, it also heralds the possibility of a performance breakthrough in the field of communications for China.
Innovation is an eternal proposition
If the above breakthroughs are mainly focused on chip design and materials, then China's innovation in chip manufacturing processes and other links is also worth paying attention to.
According to reports, following Nanjing Unisplendour Group, Unisplendour Tongchuang Technology has also made a breakthrough in manufacturing the most advanced 14nm chips in China. The company's latest R&D achievement is the first commercial chip manufactured on the 14nm process in China, which has greatly improved performance and power consumption. It is worth mentioning that the chip also adopts domestic technology and equipment, creating a precedent for domestic 14nm process.
At the same time, Changxin Storage has also made a breakthrough in domestic memory chips. This company has successfully launched the most advanced 128-layer vertically stacked NAND Flash memory chip in China, with a single chip storage capacity of up to 1.33Tb. Compared with the previous generation of products, the new products have been greatly improved in data transmission rate and other indicators.
These innovative advances will undoubtedly inject new impetus into the development of China's chip industry. They not only demonstrate the strength of the mainland in chip design, technology, materials and other links, but also show that despite the increasing external pressure, China is still steadily promoting the process of chip independence and controllability.
There is still a long way to go
Looking at the present, in the protracted "marathon" of the Sino-US science and technology war, China has made a series of exciting phased achievements. However, we should also be soberly aware that the chip industry, as a highly capital, talent- and technology-intensive field, needs more long-term and arduous efforts to achieve a fundamental breakthrough.
For China's chip industry, although encouraging progress has been made in chip design and advanced technology, there is still a certain gap between the overall strength and international giants. For example, although there has been a breakthrough in 14nm chips, there is still a big gap with the world's leading 5nm and 3nm processes; Although the 128-layer 3D NAND memory chip is in the leading position in China, there is still a gap with the 196-layer products of international giants such as Samsung and Western Digital.
It can be said that China's chip industry is accelerating the transformation from "following" to running and even leading in some fields. However, in order to completely bridge the gap with the international advanced level and achieve independence and control, China still needs to make more arduous efforts in talent training, capital investment, and industrial chain coordination.
In terms of talents, high-end chip talents have always been a key bottleneck restricting the development of China's chip industry. According to the report, there are only about 200,000 senior talents engaged in integrated circuit design and related work in China, while the United States has more than 500,000 talents in this field. In addition, chip design and process R&D talents are even more scarce. To change this situation, China not only needs to vigorously cultivate seed players from the education level, but also needs to offer internationally competitive salaries and benefits for chip talents to attract more talents at home and abroad to join.
In terms of capital investment, although the state has continuously increased the central government's investment in the chip industry in recent years, there is still a gap compared with the United States. Due to the long cycle and high risk of the chip industry, enterprises and countries need to have enough determination and endurance in continuous R&D investment. At the same time, China also needs to further improve the capital environment of the chip industry, provide diversified financing channels for enterprises, and enhance their financial strength for continuous innovation.
Industrial chain coordination is the biggest shortcoming. There is a structural fracture in China's chip industry chain, and there is a lack of efficient collaboration between upstream design, midstream chip manufacturing and downstream packaging and testing. Chip companies may make breakthroughs in some fields, but to form a complete industrial ecology, they need efficient coordination of the entire industrial chain. This requires China to take big steps in integrating existing resources, strengthening the cultivation of leading enterprises, and promoting the deep integration of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain.
Overall, although China's chip industry has made a number of exciting breakthroughs recently, there is still a long way to go to achieve complete independence and controllability. This will require China to make more arduous efforts at multiple levels such as policy, investment, talent, and industrial chain, so as to finally win the final victory in this protracted war.
In the current critical period, only by adhering to innovation-driven development, keeping up with the trend of technological development, and accelerating breakthroughs in core technologies, can China's chip industry reshape a new situation of take-off in the face of adversity. Only in this way can China truly take the initiative in this Sino-US science and technology war and lay a solid foundation for industrial independence.
The Sino-US science and technology war will be a protracted contest, but as long as it maintains its strategic focus and innovation momentum, China will surely win the final victory in this big test concerning the core interests of the country. It is believed that in the near future, a new story of the chip industry will bloom gorgeously and continue to write a new chapter in China's dream of becoming a science and technology power.