After the United States lifted the ban on Huawei, it was once again **, criticizing the United States for being shameless!
After nearly 4 years of being suppressed by the US blockade, Huawei has finally managed to break through this barrier! A series of Kirin chips such as Kirin 9000S, Kirin 8000, and Kirin 9000SL have been released one after another, and have been shipped on a large scale on Huawei Mate and Nova series models, which means that Huawei has completely broken through the blockade of the United States!
The United States and Western countries went from disbelief at the beginning of the investigation to hard to accept, and finally forced to accept this reality. Subsequently, the United States quickly changed its strategy towards China, continued to blockade the field of advanced semiconductors that China did not have, and strictly restricted the export of artificial intelligence chips to China. In addition, at the request of the United States, ASML has just launched a 2nm lithography machine that is given priority to Intel over TSMC. TSMC, which is obviously unwilling to hand over its technical secrets and has delayed building a factory, has become"Outcasts", the United States wants to take advantage of the situation to support Intel to advance all the way and continue to open the gap with China in advanced technology!
Not only that, after China's large-scale reduction in chip imports, as well as Shanghai Microelectronics, Harbin Institute of Technology, etc., have successively conquered a number of basic technologies such as lithography machines, the United States realized the sense of crisis and began large-scale dumping in the mature semiconductor field in an attempt to destroy China's semiconductor industry chain!
Samsung and SK hynix obtained"Perpetual immunity", memory chips can be exported to China without restrictions. You must know that Samsung and SK hynix, as old storage companies, still have certain advantages in terms of technology and cost, and open dumping will inevitably damage the living space of Yangtze River Storage and Xinlong Storage, which is extremely unfavorable to the development of China's semiconductor industry.
While ASML's high-end DUVs are still banned, the mid-range NXT:2050i and NXT:2100i are not. However, 2024 has only just begun, and ASML's license has been revoked in the United States, which will affect at least 15% of ASML's sales, according to ASML CEO Winninger.
After the lifting of the ban in the United States, again, for what? Personally, I think that it is likely that the United States discovered or suspected that the rework of Huawei's Kirin chips was related to ASML lithography machines. In fact, the United States has long had a similar observation, and my opinion at that time was that this was a test by the United States.
The speculation of the United States is entirely possible, because theoretically, the four immersion lithography processes NXT:2100i, NXT:2050i, NXT:2000i, NXT:1980DI, the highest process can reach 7 nanometers, which must be achieved with the help of multiple times, which is technically difficult and low-cost and has a high yield. So, in general, the use of mid-range DUVs to make advanced chips is just a situation where higher precision lithography technology is not available, but at the same time there is an urgent need for chips with advanced processes. And this is precisely Huawei's current situation, so this is likely to be the real reason for the combination of U.S. dredging and blocking!
Even so, we don't have to worry too much because, according to ASML, the company has already delivered essentially all prepaid orders for extruded DUV lithography machines for customers in continental Europe in 2023. This means that even if the ** is cut off, we don't have to worry about a shortage of DUV lithography opportunities in the short term.
Ren Zhengfei once said:"I am not afraid of pressure from the outside world (the United States), no matter how the outside world (the United States) puts pressure on me, I will go on firmly, and the era of scaring a country by relying on a few ** no longer exists. China is no longer the China of a hundred years ago, and in the same way, it is just wishful thinking to force us to surrender by blocking a few lithography machines! The US approach will not have much impact on us, on the contrary, it will backfire!