The current situation of China's chips, design, packaging, testing and manufacturing, there may still be a 10-year gap
As the foundation of the technology industry, as well as the foundation of computerization and digitalization, chips have attracted much attention since their birth and have been booming.
In recent years, as the United States wants to cut off the global chip chain and break the global chain integration pattern, it has triggered a global panic, and we see that countries around the world are building chip industry chains and trying to get rid of or reduce their dependence on the United States.
China is an exception, because we are one of the key targets of US repression.
In recent years, domestic semiconductors have made continuous progress in materials, equipment, and processes, but at the same time, we have also found a more embarrassing fact, that is, the current three major links of wafer manufacturing, design, testing and the overall top-level level are basically synchronized, but the manufacturing is relatively lagging behind, with a gap of up to 10 years.
The first is design, the current international most advanced chip design level is 3 nanometers, and there is the same level in China, Huawei Kirin cannot be mass-produced, but Huawei's research and development has not broken through, and it is synchronized with the world's top level.
More importantly, when Samsung mass-produced 3nm, domestic manufacturers were the first batch of customers, which also shows that the ability of domestic designers of 3nm chips was earlier.
In addition, in terms of packaging and testing, there are three major packaging and testing manufacturers in China, ranking among the top ten in the world, namely Changsheng Technology, Fu Microelectronics, and Tianshui Huatian, and the three major packaging and testing companies are ranked in the world.
These three companies also said that they have 4nm chip packaging and testing technology, as for 3nm, because it is only mass production, so they did not say, but considering that the threshold for packaging and testing is not high, then these three companies have no problem to achieve 3nm packaging and testing simultaneously.
The most backward is the chip manufacturing part, and the strongest chip manufacturing company in the mainland is SMIC, which is currently publicly disclosed, and the mass production process is 14nm, which will be mass-produced in 2019.
However, due to the lack of EUV lithography machines, which stayed at 14nm, and were blacklisted in 2022, further restricting the import of advanced process equipment, it is estimated that it is temporarily difficult to break through the process, so SMIC's current strategy is obviously to increase the production capacity of mature processes, first solve the problem of insufficient domestic wafer production capacity, and slowly figure it out.
The main chip process in the world is the 3nm process, from 14nm to 3nm. So, how long does it take to go from 14 nm to 3 nm?We might as well refer to the three giants of ** Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd., Samsung and Intel.
TSMC reached the 16nm process in 2015 and then the 3nm process in 2023, a difference of 8 years, and Samsung's time is about the same, which is also about 8 years. As for Intel, it will take longer to go from 14nm to 3nm, which is expected to be around 9 years.
Therefore, for SMIC, even if the advanced equipment is not restricted, it is estimated that it will take about 10 years, and the current advanced equipment and some technologies are still limited, and 10 years may not be enough.
Therefore, in general, the manufacturing capacity of integrated circuits should be compensable, as long as the manufacturing capacity is improved, design and testing are not a problem, and at a certain time it can be on par with the international top level.