Wen丨Fayan shredder
Editor丨Fayan shredder
[Editor's note: This article is the original exclusive first release of Toutiao, please do not plagiarize and reprint]
After visiting China, Aunt Raimondo accidentally "went out of the circle" on the Internet and became a "wild Huawei spokesperson".
Shortly after her return, the United States announced that it would export billions of dollars' worth of chips to the mainland. However, there is an additional premise in this, that is, these chips are not the top.
Isn't the United States going to completely block chip exports to the mainland? How is it now that "conscience has found a part"? Is there some conspiracy hidden behind this?
Chip wars
In the industrial era, without oil, the economic level of that country can only stay in the agricultural era. And in the information age, if there are no chips, that country can only be suppressed on the base of the international economic pyramid, and the wool will be plucked forever.
Nowadays, chips have been closely related to our lives, to build a car to use more than 1,000 chips, household appliances basically need chips for various function control, even the power supply in the computer needs chips. Not to mention the mobile phones that we need on a daily basis.
Because of this, when the mainland's economy was developing rapidly, the United States came up with a killer tool to block chip exports, in a vain attempt to suppress the mainland forever in the industrialized era.
In the past, there were always a group of compradors in China who shouted that "it is better to make their own than to buy", and many companies have also been using imported chips for supply chain stability and cost considerations. Therefore, the development of the mainland's own chip industry has always been difficult.
And with the announcement of a chip blockade by the United States on the mainland, compradors did not dare to shout anymore, and domestic enterprises finally realized that the crisis was finally coming. Fortunately, with a spirit of not admitting defeat, we have developed a 14-nanometer-class chip.
Many people will say that the current mobile phones have used 7 nm process chips, the next step is to use 5 nm, the mainland 14 nm chip is not "born behind"?
In fact, in industrial applications, 28nm process chips are enough.
This is also why the mainland's current low-end chips can not only meet domestic needs, but also have the ability to export.
As for chips with 7nm and above processes, they are mainly used in electronic devices with demanding requirements for volume and performance, such as mobile phones. However, with the rise of artificial intelligence, the information society is very likely to enter the 2.0 stage. Artificial intelligence requires very high-end chips, and the low-end chips that the mainland can currently produce do not meet the requirements.
Therefore, the United States recently announced an embargo on the mainland in the field of artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
At the same time, while curbing the development of the mainland, the United States has other plans.
Because the United States has now relocated traditional industries on a large scale, industrial hollowing out is very serious. Therefore, the development of the US economy is increasingly dependent on high-tech industries.
In these industries, especially the semiconductor chip industry, the United States has mastered the most advanced designs and standards and can earn high profits, so they outsource relatively "labor-intensive" links such as chip production to foundries such as TSMC. In this way, American capital does business with the lowest cost and the highest return.
Then, in order to always be at the top of the world economic pyramid, the United States will not allow any country to take a piece of the high-tech industry.
The mainland, on the other hand, does not believe in this evil. The more sanctions the United States has, the more the mainland develops. Moreover, whenever the United States sanctions the mainland, as long as the mainland can develop and mass-produce, it will surely sweep the global market with ultra-high cost performance, and no one can match it.
This is also the point that the United States fears the most. Therefore, the United States will do its utmost to maintain the hegemony of its high-tech industry and spare no effort to suppress the mainland.
For the chips that have been developed by the mainland, the US strategy is to liberalize exports and use dumping to eliminate the mainland's domestic chips.
For chips that have not yet been developed by the mainland, the United States carries out an all-round blockade, and any related technologies, raw materials, equipment, etc. are not allowed to be exported to the mainland.
In previous years, the United States had done just that. Completely cutting off the supply of Huawei mobile phone chips is the pinnacle of its containment. Since then, Huawei's mobile phone sales have fallen from hitting the world's first place to "other". The United States is complacent about this.
But during Raimondo's visit to China, Huawei calmly released a new machine. For a time, what chip was used in the machine caused heated discussions in various countries.
The United States is nervous about this.
So, is American tension necessary?
Process 7nm?
There is a question, can't more sophisticated chips be produced without a sufficiently advanced lithography machine?
In the past, this was indeed the case.
And with the development of a technology, this has changed.
This technique is called "stacking". To put it bluntly, it is to integrate two chips together to achieve a higher level of chip performance.
For example, stacking two 14-nanometer chips on top of each other can reach the level of 7-nanometer chips in performance, and even surpass it. In this way, the roadblock of the lithography machine can be bypassed, and the production cost can be reduced by the way.
In 2022, Huawei announced that it has put this technology into practical use. In addition, new packaging technologies can also achieve the purpose of improving chip performance.
Therefore, after Huawei launched the new machine, the outside world speculated that Huawei used this new technology of "corner overtaking" to expand some volume at the cost of making the mobile phone performance reach the level of 5G.
After many professionals and institutions disassembled Huawei's new mobile phone, they found that there was only one chip in the mobile phone.
Professionally speaking, the greater the number of transistors on the chip and the greater the density, the higher the performance. Therefore, scanning the chip to determine the density of transistors is an effective way to judge the advanced degree of the chip.
A professional institution abroad used electron microscopy scanning, and the results showed that Huawei's mobile phone's chip transistor density was 98 MTr per square millimeter, that is, 98 million transistors per square millimeter of space.
In comparison, TSMC's 7nm process chip has a transistor density of 97 million per square millimeter, and Samsung's 7nm chip has a transistor density of 95 million. It can be seen that the level of transistor density of Huawei chips even exceeds the process technology of TSMC and Samsung, at least on par.
In addition, the process specification of the chip also has an indicator, which is the gate length.
However, through scanning, the company found that the gate length of Huawei's chip far exceeded 7 nanometers. Could it be that Huawei cheats?
Non also!
In the past, if the chip was 7 nanometers, the gate length was 7 nanometers. However, as technology continues to advance, gate length is no longer the only primary measure of chip manufacturing.
For example, TSMC's 7nm chip has a gate length of 56 nm, while a 3nm chip has a gate length of 22 nm.
From this, the company concluded that Huawei has mastered the production technology of 7nm process chips and has put such chips into large-scale production.
At this moment, the United States, which can still pretend to be calm, is completely unable to sit still.
Today, only ASML in the Netherlands can produce lithography machines, and in fact, ASML can only produce 20% of the components in the lithography machine. Other components need to be produced by suppliers in dozens of countries. Therefore, the lithography machine is the product of international collaboration.
Moreover, the various raw materials required to produce chips are also the product of the international division of labor. Japan, for example, has a patent for photoresists.
It is precisely because of this that the United States judges that the mainland cannot produce the world's top lithography machine on its own, let alone the chip.
But now the emergence of Huawei's mobile phone has smashed the wishful thinking of the United States. This means that Continental has conquered the entire production process and process of high-end chips.
With the continuous rise of production capacity, let alone the blockade of the mainland by the United States, whether domestic companies in the United States can carry the massive high-end chips that the mainland has flooded into the market is a problem.
Soon, what the United States feared really happened.
duel
Recently, Huawei announced that it will increase shipments of new mobile phones to 20 million. At the same time, Apple announced a reduction in shipments.
In the stock market, the stock prices of Apple, Qualcomm and TSMC all fell, and Wall Street is ready to short these companies. There is no other reason, only because Huawei killed back.
Soon, Aunt Raimondo announced that she would export billions of dollars of chips to the mainland. However, the most cutting-edge ones are not included.
What does this mean?
In 2022, the mainland imported more than 540 billion chips, with a total value of more than 410 billion US dollars! However, compared to 2021. The mainland has imported nearly 100 billion chips.
The main reason is first, because of the impact of the epidemic, and second, the mainland's breakthrough in low-end chips. Although the current import volume is still very large, with the emergence of Huawei's 7nm chip, the number of imports in 2023 may be further reduced.
Moreover, with the climb of production capacity, according to the current decreasing trend, it will no longer be surprising that the import volume of less than 100 billion units will not be surprised in less than 5 years.
In this way, those enterprises in the United States will not cry to death.
The United States' current containment of the mainland in terms of chips not only does not restrict the development of the mainland, but also starves its own domestic enterprises to death. Several major chip manufacturers such as Intel are very dissatisfied with the US government.
Just a few days after Biden announced a blockade of the mainland in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other aspects. Intel announced the establishment of a research and development laboratory in the mainland.
It may seem like a business practice of one company, but it means that the bosses behind the scenes of the US government are unhappy.
Therefore, the US government must increase exports now. Moreover, the chips exported by the United States this time are likely to include 7nm process, which is also a preventive strike.
At present, Huawei's 7-nanometer chip production is in the climbing stage, although 20 million seems to be very large, but compared with the hundreds of billions of imports, it is still a drop in the bucket. The United States wants to take advantage of the fact that it is not too late to crush the entire industrial chain of the mainland by exporting a large number of goods.
On the other hand, the United States still does not spit on the export of chips of this level of artificial intelligence, and its containment policy remains unchanged.
In this regard, the mainland Ministry of Commerce also responded, summing up, that is, five words: harm to others and not to oneself.
This is really to the point.
The mainland's approach is actually diametrically opposed to that of the United States, which has always opened its arms to cooperation with the whole world, hoping to cooperate with other countries in the world for win-win results, and mainland enterprises are the same.
At the beginning, Musk's Tesla has become a junk stock in the United States, with a market value of only $20 billion. But after investing in the mainland, Tesla directly jumped to the car company with the highest market value, and he also became the richest man in the world.
The mainland has proved with practical actions that investing in and cooperating with the mainland is beneficial to any enterprise.
But now the US government is like taking the wrong script, like a broom cherishing itself, holding on to the cutting-edge chip. Even the American media commented that the only effect of this approach was to stimulate Chinese companies to develop alternative products as soon as possible.
And other countries are increasingly impressed with the United States, or have less and less confidence. Huawei is just a mainland private enterprise, which can get the United States to impose sanctions with national strength, and in the end it has not succeeded. This only reflects the declining national strength of the United States today.
At the same time, Huawei has also set a shining example for countries and enterprises around the world, that is, the US sanctions are not terrible, the United States is not a god, and the United States can be defeated.
And other countries will also wonder, if China confronts the United States with national strength, will the United States still have a chance of victory?
This is the deadliest blow to the United States.
It is a pity that the United States itself does not see this, but goes further and further down the wrong path. This only proves one truth: good words do not persuade damned ghosts.