Proceedings |Wen Qiulin.
U.S. officials are discussing with Nvidia about allowing chips to be sold to China, but stressed that it cannot give Chinese companies its most advanced semiconductors.
On December 11, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Raimondo said in an interview that he was in discussions with chipmaker Nvidia to allow Nvidia to provide chips to China to a limited extent. A few days ago, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed that he is cooperating with US officials on China's ** chips.
According to Raimondo's previous statement, Nvidia doesn't want to give a chip to China. Of course, there must be personal preconceptions in this. However, this time it can be ** that rules are needed - it is not that Raimondo's mind has changed, but that the United States has to bow to capital. After all, the United States is a business empire, and the real controller of the United States is the owner of capital, not the ***.
In October 2022, the United States implemented a series of chip export restrictions, and Nvidia was unable to provide A100 and H100 artificial intelligence processors to the Chinese market, so it specially provided A800 and H800 chips that meet the requirements of the United States for the Chinese market to bypass the control of the United States**. The U.S. Department of Commerce issued a series of new chip export restrictions on October 17 this year, expanding the definition of advanced artificial intelligence chips and imposing additional licensing requirements for chip products shipped to more than 40 countries to avoid resale to China.
Although the United States has strengthened the control of chip exports, it cannot prevent Nvidia from entering the Chinese market. Nvidia occupies more than 90% of the Chinese chip market, much higher than other American chip manufacturers. In 2022, revenue in China accounted for 20% of all of NVIDIA's revenue. After all, China's huge market "cake" is also the reason why Nvidia can't let go and can't put it down.
China, with its vast manufacturing system, is a huge and lucrative market for U.S. chip exports. These micro-technologies are essential for smartphones, laptops, refrigerators, cars and other products that Chinese companies produce for domestic consumption and for global export.
According to Boston Consulting Group estimates, if the U.S. completely bans chipmakers from selling to Chinese customers, U.S. chipmakers will lose 18% of their global market share and 37% of their revenue, and the chip production industry will also lose 150,000 to 40,000 high-skilled jobs.
More importantly, for any chip company in the world, the Chinese market is very important and cannot be ignored. No matter how high-end and advanced the chip you produce, after it is manufactured, it must be digested by the market to reflect its value, and China can meet their wish. At this time, China is in the stage of high-quality development economy, and the demand for chips is very large, becoming the world's largest chip consumer market.
Despite escalating technological competition with the United States, China's quest for chip self-sufficiency has caught the attention of chip giants in the United States, South Korea, Japan and the Netherlands. At this year's China International Import Expo, a total of 47 chip-related companies participated in the "Integrated Circuit Zone". Executives and domain experts from multinational chip companies in many countries said that China's fast-growing semiconductor industry and the promotion of digital transformation have brought huge opportunities.
Relevant data show that before 2018, China's chip self-sufficiency rate was 5%, and in 2022, this figure will reach about 17%, and this year's self-sufficiency rate of China's chips is likely to increase to 25%, and in the next 5 years, it may reach 50%. China's self-sufficient chips are mainly composed of traditional chips, which means that the traditional chip market exported by the United States to China has decreased sharply, which has had a huge impact on the American chip market.
In addition to the shortcomings of China's chip manufacturing in addition to the need for breakthroughs in technology, the key factor is to cultivate the market, no market expects enterprises and first-class investment is to seek their own death, and technological progress is not achieved overnight, it needs to be improved in the market application to continuously find problems and solve problems.
Although Nvidia has chosen to avoid U.S. restrictions, it is beneficial for China's development interests to continue to cooperate with China. But in the field of chips, after all, it is still necessary to develop in the direction of self-sufficiency. We can buy a little bit of mid-to-low-end chips, but "it's better to build than to rent, and it's better to rent than to buy" is already a thing of the past. We shouldn't fall twice in a pit and always have someone else take a chip to jam our neck.