Foreign media: Japan's chip problem is gradually escalating
In view of the increasing importance of chips, Biden once held a special meeting on chips, inviting global chip giants such as TSMC, Samsung, and Intel to participate in the discussion of chip development plans to strengthen the chip manufacturing capacity of the United States.
Later, the United States promulgated the Ejiao Law and abolished the Ejiao subsidy, attracting many Ejiao enterprises to invest and build factories in the United States. Now, instead of blindly following the United States, Japan held large-scale ejiao production talks some time ago and began to accelerate the development of local production!
After Biden held the chip summit, he actively promoted the implementation of the chip bill and planned to withdraw the $52 billion subsidy, which later had a certain effect. According to relevant statistics, more than 40 projects have announced investment in the American continent.
These projects cover almost the entire wafer ecosystem, including new, expanded, or modernized fabs for various types of wafers, such as logic, memory, and analog wafers, as well as other wafer-related projects such as semiconductor manufacturing equipment and materials.
The planned investment in these projects is about $200 billion, so it's clear that the U.S. chip business has an important role to play.
Although the chip subsidy rules of the United States were too harsh, causing many manufacturers to be very disappointed, TSMC said that it was unacceptable, and Samsung and SK hynix were reluctant to apply for subsidies, but the investment has already begun, and I am afraid it will be difficult to retreat.
At present, the US side has sent representatives to communicate with them, of course, hoping to encourage manufacturers to invest in the project locally.
Seeing that the actions of the United States in chewing gum were fruitful, Europe quickly followed suit. Under the active promotion of the European Union, Europe has also passed a bill on tablet computers, which will absorb 43 billion euros by 2030, increasing the share of tablet production capacity in the world to 20%.
Encouraged by subsidies in the United States and Europe, chip giants such as TSMC, Samsung, and Intel not only build factories in the United States, Intel also plans to build factories in Europe, and TSMC has also inspected Germany in Europe and basically determined to invest 10 billion euros.
In this regard, Japan cannot afford to stand still. According to Japan's ** news, Japan will also hold a high-level meeting of the tablet industry, inviting TSMC, Intel, Samsung, IBM, Micron, Applied Materials and other giants, and the Japanese Prime Minister will also attend the meeting.
It's not often that so many of the world's semiconductor giants get together to talk about the chip industry.
In other words, Biden has held similar meetings before. Now that Japan has also held such a meeting, it is clear that it does not want to develop the chip industry just to be a follower of the United States, but also wants to vigorously develop Japan's local chip manufacturing industry.
In fact, at the end of the 80s of the 20th century, semiconductors in Japan developed very rapidly. At that time, the world's semiconductor industry was the first major change in Japan, which surpassed the United States in the number of semiconductors and accounted for half of the world's market share.
Later, the United States began to impose sanctions on Japan, which led to the decline of Japanese semiconductors, and companies such as Toshiba were suppressed and collapsed.
In this regard, Japan is clearly not reconciled and has always wanted to relive the glory of the past. Previously, Japan** announced that it would invest 600 billion yen to support the local chip manufacturing industry. Among them, 400 billion will subsidize TSMC to build factories in Japan.
Through subsidy incentives, TSMC has agreed to work with Japan's Sony Corp. to build a semiconductor factory in Japan's Kumamoto Prefecture. There is news that TSMC will also build a second factory in Japan. Liu Deyin was confirmed to have attended the talks with the Japanese side, and I am afraid that the matter is being finalized.
It is understood that Samsung also plans to build a factory in Japan, and will open a factory in Yokohama, a production base for cutting-edge semiconductor equipment.
Japan is also committed to the realization of advanced technology by local companies. Previously, the Japanese organization Tokyo Electron, Sony and eight other Japanese companies formed a new Rapidus wafer company with the goal of achieving a 2nm process.
To this end, Rapidus has partnered with IBM on research and development. The latest news shows that Rapidus has spent billions of dollars to build a state-of-the-art chip foundry in Japan by 2027, and has prepared an EUV lithography machine for this purpose.
The plant aims to achieve mass production of 2-nanometer chips, just two years later than industry leaders TSMC and Samsung.
However, Japan also understands that it is not enough to rely on itself, so it has organized these high-level talks with Ejiao giants, with the purpose of calling on Ejiao companies to actively invest in Japan, and Japan will also provide a large number of subsidies and will not set so many restrictive clauses.
At a critical moment when the United States is vigorously attracting companies to invest in the United States, due to the hesitation of enterprises due to the subsidy regulations, Japan has thrown an attractive olive branch, and chewing gum companies will naturally choose to invest in Japan at their discretion.
Some foreign countries directly commented on this action of Japan: seven chip giants gathered in Japan, which means that things must be done!