Intel China's chip technology is 10 years behind
In 2024 at the Davos Forum, Intel Corporation CEO Gelsinger said that there is a 10-year technology gap between China and the world's major chip producers due to joint sanctions from the United States and the Netherlands, and that in the future, American companies will produce 50% of the world's chips.
Kissinger said: Due to the chip industry policy, the chip manufacturing industry is mainly concentrated in Asia, and the United States passed the "Chips and Science Act" to try to reverse this passive situation and enhance the strength of the domestic chip manufacturing industry.
The bill would provide 52.7 billion yuan in subsidies to attract chip industries from several countries to move to the United States, while restricting the investment of subsidized chip companies in China. Of this, 39.2 billion yuan will be earmarked to expand chip production capacity.
Intel, Micron, Texas Instruments, Samsung and TSMC account for 10% and 10% of the five companies, respectively, for a total of 90%, with the remaining 10% being divided among other companies, according to a U.S.** report.
In this case, Intel will receive about 16.8 billion yuan, Micron 11.1 billion yuan, Texas Instruments 7.4 billion yuan, Samsung 6.9 billion yuan, and TSMC 5.3 billion yuan.
The U.S. chip law seems to favor U.S. companies, with Samsung and TSMC just being its adopted sons.
In 2023, the United States, Japan, the Netherlands, and other countries have introduced export restrictions on semiconductor equipment, adding some deep ultraviolet lithography penetrators in addition to the originally restricted EUV lithography machines.
Put simply, this means that sub-14nm logic chips, 16nm DRAM devices, and 128-layer NAND flash devices all require an export license.
Due to equipment limitations, China can only produce 14nm and 7nm chips. TSMC, Samsung, Intel and other companies have already begun to develop 3nm, 2nm and even higher precision chips, and TSMC's 2nm chips will not be available until 2025, even if they are on the market.
How are China's chip companies doing? Are they really a decade behind in technology, as Kissinger claims?
Is China's chip technology a decade behind?
Chip technology covers many areas, such as design, manufacturing, packaging, EDA tools, semiconductor devices, and semiconductor materials.
If we compare Chinese tokens with a cube and put all the links into the cube, the result will look like this:
This principle is called:"The principle of wooden barrels", i.e. the amount of water that a barrel (not a table) can hold.
For example, Huawei may design a chip that uses a 3nm process, but the chip it carries is still a Kirin 9000 with TSMC's 5nm process.
The domestic Kirin 9000 uses a 7nm process and is still imported.
The reason for this embarrassing situation lies in the semiconductor equipment, especially the lithography part.
Chip production requires dozens of equipment, nine of the most important: lithography, etching, ion implantation, chemical vapor deposition, physical vapor deposition, mechanical polishing, metal evaporation, cleaning, and testing.
In terms of lithography technology, the 90-nanometer lithography machine produced by Shanghai Microelectronics Co., Ltd. has been able to produce 55-nanometer chips after many lithographys, which is far from 3-nanometer.
In terms of etching machines, domestic equipment has more advantages, for example, in microsemiconductors, 5nm process etching machines have successfully entered the TSMC industry chain.
The company is currently developing a 3nm process.
However, memory chip manufacturers prefer to use Panarin Group equipment because it is a state-of-the-art engraving method that allows for more engraving.
In terms of ion implantation equipment, CEC has completed the research and development of the 28nm process and has the ability to produce 28nm logic components, memory devices, power components, sensors, etc.
In addition, in the field of CVD and PVD, companies such as NAURA Huachuang, Tuojing, and Shanghai Shengmei have also made great progress, with an overall replacement rate of 13%.
As for the mechanical polishing machine represented by Huahai Qingke, its overall replacement rate is about 20%.
When it comes to cleaning equipment, Shanghai Shengmei's national representative is based on pure technology, with an overall replacement rate of about 50%.
When it comes to test equipment, Sharp Scientific, Precision Electronics, and Yu are among them, with an overall replacement rate of about 9%.
This means that the positions of the nine main groups have been determined, but the accuracy is uneven, and lithography is still in its worst stages.
Lithography is known as the king of industry and is at the heart of chip production equipment, with a utilization rate of up to 24%. However, the Dutch company ASML currently has a monopoly on the lithography market.
ASML has an absolute monopoly on EUV high NA and EUV high-end lithography technology.
China's leading deep ultraviolet lithography machine has a market share of about 95%.
When will lithography in my country meet ASML's standards? It's hard in the short term.
Of the nearly 100,000 parts, 3,000 precision bearings and 2,000 cables of the EUV lithography machine, 32% are local in the Netherlands, 27% in North America and 27% in Asia. Europe** accounted for about 14%.
The proportion of Chinese mainland ** merchants is very small, and the equipment provided is also insignificant.
In this case, we cannot prevent the modernization of ASML technologies and equipment, but we can only allow domestic component manufacturers to quickly increase their technical level.
So far, the main components of the 28nm chip have all been replaced.
The project, which will be developed by Beijing Keyi Hongyuan Company, uses excimer laser technology to obtain light with a fundamental frequency of 579 nm through a nonlinear crystal and achieve 289A frequency doubling output of 5 nm, which in turn produces a light source of 193 nm.
The dual bench was built by Tsinghua University in collaboration with Huazhuo Precision Technology and is capable of 28nm lithography.
The immersion lithography system produced by Zhejiang Qier Machinery is adopted, and the temperature stability error can reach 0001, like ASML in the United States, Nikon in Japan and other companies, has reached the second most advanced level in the world, and can meet the requirements of 28nm process.
Optical lens: Produced by the Changchun Institute of Optics and Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the technology has reached 28 nanometers, but there is still a big gap compared with the German Zeiss lens.
Once the basic components are obtained, the localization of 28nm lithography technology is just around the corner.
However, ASML's first immersion lithography machine was completed in 2004.
ASML has been introducing EUV lithography for a decade.
The fact that there is a gap of more than a decade in lithography proves that Intel CEO Kissinger is not wrong.
But it may seem unfair that China has used its greatest weakness against the world's most advanced technology in this decade, but that's how the world works.
What is the concept that 50% of chips will be produced in the United States in the future?
How likely does Kissinger think 50% of the world's wafers will be produced by U.S. factories in the future?
As a result of the CHIPS and Science Act, companies such as TSMC, Samsung, Intel, and Micron have increased their production capacity in the United States, thanks to the $52.7 billion allocated by the CHIPS and Science Act.
The most famous of these is TSMC, which invested 40 billion yuan to build two chip factories in Arizona, USA, 5nm and 3nm.
Initially, the project should not be commissioned before 2024, but probably not until 2025.
There are many reasons for this, the main ones are:1Infrastructure backlog to meet short-term production needs; 2.There is a shortage of skilled labor in the United States, which must be recruited from elsewhere and hindered by American labor unions; 3.Workers in the U.S. are too difficult to manage; 4.Lack of ** subsidy.
TSMC is a lesson from the past, Samsung wants to build a factory in the United States, it is too difficult, not to mention Intel and Micron, even if it is a national enterprise, it cannot be so smooth. It is feasible in technology and equipment, but there are many difficulties in practical operation.
Our chips, equipment, and domestic talent are among the best in the world, so subsidies are not an issue. The only problem is the shortage of semiconductor equipment.
Fortunately, the country's chip companies stockpiled enough semiconductor equipment last year to last year.
Analysts**, China's chip production capacity will reach 7.6 million pieces per month by 2023, 18 new projects will be added in 2024, and chip production capacity will reach 8.6 million pieces per month, which will double to 15 million pieces per month in the next five years.
Within five years, 28nm lithography machines can be produced nationwide, and the technology can be taken to the next level, and when the national 7nm process is completed, the foundry's market share will increase.
The U.S. must change the work ethic and move chip production to the U.S. so that all skilled workers are'Make do with it'。
Can Americans work 996 hours a day and work two shifts on weekends? The answer is no.
Therefore, Intel intends to build an artificial intelligence system foundry to guide the future development direction of the semiconductor industry, but the power of American labor unions should not be underestimated, and the dismissal of American workers is bound to cause strong repercussions.
In short, the backwardness of China's chip technology is an indisputable fact, and we have to accept it, but it doesn't matter, the important thing is that Chinese chips will become an indispensable part of the world one day in the future.
As for the fact that 50% of the world's potato chips are produced in the United States, this is a joke. American workers, accustomed to drinking coffee and traveling, would rather strike in the streets than work overtime in factories.
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