Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment
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Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment
#2> In return, the company — once a symbol of China’s progress and engineering know-how — will be allowed to buy the American-made microchips, software and other tools it needs to survive.
Aren't most mobile device SoC/ASICs made by non-US companies like TSMC and Samsung?
Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment
#3> In return, the company — once a symbol of China’s progress and engineering know-how — will be allowed to buy the American-made microchips, software and other tools it needs to survive. Aren't most mobile device SoC/ASICs made by non-US companies like TSMC and Samsung?
Your premise is very narrow. Six or seven of the ten largest semiconductor companies are American. The US has a lot of big companies working in or around the semiconductor market.
Eg - Texas Instruments, Qualcomm + NXP, Apple, Intel, AMD, Applied Materials, Cisco, Xilinx, Analog Devices, GlobalFoundries, Maxim, Microchip Tech + Microsemi, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research, Marvell, Broadcom, Micron, nVidia, Teradyne, Cypress, On Semi, Praxair, Skyworks, Ambarella, Cirrus Logic, Diodes Inc, Integrated Device Tech, IPG Photonics, Semtech, Qorvo, Cavium, Mellanox (US-Israeli), Inphi, Monolithic Power, Lumentum
Now you've even got Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon looking into/working on their own chips.
Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment
#4I think history will suggest that the end of Deng Xiaoping's long-term strategy of "hide our capacities and bide our time" around 2015 was too premature to meet the government of China's long-term goals. The moderate amount of international goodwill that existed seems to have completely evaporated and been replaced with significant amounts of suspicion following the events of the past few years in the region.
Because of this, China finds it harder than ever to access US semi-conductor technology through financial means, being blocked from acquiring companies due to national security concerns. Even deals without any immediately obvious problems such as Broadcom/Qualcomm are being blocked.
Additionally, the demographics situation is very severe in China, and made worse by the gender-imbalance among young people caused by the One Child Policy. While Chinese government debt and household debt rates are relatively low, company debts are extremely high. Far too high for a nation without a high per-capita GDP. Interestingly enough, the demographic situation in the US is highly favorable compared to all other advanced economies (it also has a debt problem though)
The demographic situation dovetails into this interesting op-ed piece [1] about offering more green cards to international students -- it argues that even with the high risks of espionage in certain areas, it's well worthwhile for the long-term US economic competitiveness. I submitted this article to HN a few hours ago, but after 10 upvotes it was flagged -- which is unfortunate, I thought it's a very intellectually stimulating topic of discussion that's urgently required in our open, inclusive society. I highly recommend people read the article and think deeply about it.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-04/trump-is-...
Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment
#5China has an official plan, "Made in China 2025".[1] It's about moving up the value chain. Key areas are semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and aircraft engines.
China is still way behind in wafer fabs, but SIMC is coming along. Wikipedia says they're at 40nm, which is not close to the state of the art, but is good enough for much consumer electronics.
Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment
#6China has an official plan, "Made in China 2025".[1] It's about moving up the value chain. Key areas are semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and aircraft engines. China is still way behind in wafer fabs, but SIMC is coming along. Wikipedia says they're at 40nm, which is not close to the state of the art, but is good enough for much consumer electronics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025
Slightly off-topic (sorry for taking oxygen away from the semi-conductor fabrication discussion): I find that Wikipedia page you linked to very frustrating: understanding the central economic policy document of a growing superpower is very important but it's just a stub. A stub that almost only links to the non-independent sources.
The page history shows that it was once a much bigger article but just a copy/paste job from the source policy documents. At least the page doesn't seem appear actively sabotaged by highly-motivated, non-impartial user accounts like some others.
I wish there was a way I could help fund some Wikipedia editors to write a long, impartial, well-cited article about this very important government policy document.
Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment
#7> In return, the company — once a symbol of China’s progress and engineering know-how — will be allowed to buy the American-made microchips, software and other tools it needs to survive. Aren't most mobile device SoC/ASICs made by non-US companies like TSMC and Samsung?
Your premise is very narrow. Six or seven of the ten largest semiconductor companies are American. The US has a lot of big companies working in or around the semiconductor market. Eg - Texas Instruments, Qualcomm + NXP, Apple, Intel, AMD, Applied Materials, Cisco, Xilinx, Analog Devices, GlobalFoundries, Maxim, Microchip Tech + Microsemi, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research, Marvell, Broadcom, Micron, nVidia, Teradyne, Cypress,…
Unless I’m mistaken, your list contains both semiconductor companies with and without fabs.
I think for this discussion semiconductor companies with fabrication facilities are more interesting.
How much fab is still done in the US?
Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment
#8> In return, the company — once a symbol of China’s progress and engineering know-how — will be allowed to buy the American-made microchips, software and other tools it needs to survive. Aren't most mobile device SoC/ASICs made by non-US companies like TSMC and Samsung?
The fabrication of SoCs for mobile is mostly at TSMC in Taiwan and Samsung in Korea, but the ownership of the chips is American. TSMC manufactures the die, but it's fair to say that Qualcomm is the one "making" it since they own the IP and do the front and back end design-work. Similarly, you can say Apple makes the iPhone, even though final assembly is done at Foxconn or Wistron.
Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment
#9More funding coming this way for RISC-V
Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment
#10China has an official plan, "Made in China 2025".[1] It's about moving up the value chain. Key areas are semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and aircraft engines. China is still way behind in wafer fabs, but SIMC is coming along. Wikipedia says they're at 40nm, which is not close to the state of the art, but is good enough for much consumer electronics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025
I read reports years ago they were at 28nm:
https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2014/07/03/smic-and-q...
https://anysilicon.com/smic-28nm/
http://smics.com/eng/foundry/technology/advanced_logic_28.ph...