On October 9, 2024, United States chip giant Nvidia suddenly announced that it would stop accepting new orders from Chinese customers, and the news smashed into the hearts of domestic technology companies.
Nvidia is not an ordinary chip company, in the field of artificial intelligence, it is like an indispensable "brain supplier", without Nvidia's chips, many AI projects are like sports cars without engines, and they can't run at all.
As soon as the news came out, the domestic science and technology circle suddenly became a mess, and some company bosses were directly dumbfounded, and sighed again and again: "What can we do now, isn't our AI project going yellow?" Some engineers wanted to cry without tears: "Without Nvidia's chips, wouldn't our code become decorations?" "
This reaction is not an exaggeration, NVIDIA's position in the field of AI chips is like the "Arctic Ocean" in the martial arts, dominating the leader, and its strong chip performance has become the standard configuration of many AI companies.
However, this situation has been foreshadowed for a long time, as early as 2022, United States began to impose a chip ban on China, when Nvidia was still thinking of ways to bypass the restrictions and launched a slightly weaker A800 chip specifically for the Chinese market, who would have thought that this time even this compromise would not work.
The competition in the field of chips has been a long time, in the 80s of the last century Japan semiconductor industry once surpassed the United States, occupying half of the global market, United States immediately offered the "301 Clause" to impose trade sanctions on Japan, as a result, the semiconductor industry Japan declined rapidly, and United States regained its seat on the dragon chair.
Now United States seems to be repeating this script again, but this time the opponent is replaced by China, but the situation is stronger than people, Chinese technology companies are not vegetarian, some companies have begun to look for alternatives, such as Huawei's "Ascend" chip has become fragrant, and some companies simply roll up their sleeves and do it themselves, ready to develop AI chips from scratch.
This attitude reminds people of the spirit of "two bombs and one satellite" in those days, when our country was poor and white, but we managed to build atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, and artificial satellites with all our strength, and now our conditions are much better than then.
However, chip research and development is not an easy task, this is not a simple "cat and tiger", but a high-tech field that requires long-term accumulation and huge investment.
Looking back at history, we can see the development trajectory of the chip industry, in 1947 Bell Labs invented the transistor, which is considered the origin of modern chips, to 1958 Texas Instruments' Jack · Kilby invented integrated circuits, laying the foundation for later chip mass production.
In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon · Moore proposed the famous "Moore's Law", predicting that the number of transistors on a chip would double every 18 months, and this law guided the development of the chip industry for a long time.
However, as the chip manufacturing process continues to shrink, the physical limit gradually emerges, and now chip manufacturing has entered the nanometer level, which requires extremely sophisticated equipment and processes, which has led to a high degree of concentration in the chip industry and formed a situation dominated by a few companies.
In this context, it is not easy for Chinese companies to catch up quickly, according to statistics, China's chip self-sufficiency rate is only about 15%, and there is still a long way to go from self-sufficiency.
Crises often breed opportunities, and although Nvidia's supply disruption has brought short-term difficulties to Chinese companies, it may also become a catalyst for the development of domestic chips.
Some experts pointed out that China has made a lot of progress in the field of chip design, taking Huawei HiSilicon as an example, its Kirin series chips can compete with international giants such as Qualcomm and Apple in terms of performance, although there is still a gap in the manufacturing process, but the gap is gradually narrowing.
At the same time, we also see some encouraging signs, in 2023, SMIC announced the successful mass production of 7nm chips, which marks a major breakthrough in China's advanced manufacturing process, although there is still a gap with TSMC's 3nm process, but the progress is obvious.
In addition, some emerging chip companies in China are also rising rapidly, such as Cambrian, Bitmain and other AI chip companies, are actively developing chips suitable for specific application scenarios, although the scale of these companies is not as large as NVIDIA, but in some segments have shown good strength.
Of course, the chip industry is a global industrial chain, and it is difficult to succeed alone, and Chinese companies need to maintain cooperation with international partners while pursuing independent innovation.
In this global chip industry chain, every link is crucial, from design, manufacturing to packaging and testing, and this industry chain is constantly improving, with new technologies and challenges emerging one after another.
For example, with the rise of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, the demand for chips is also changing, and traditional general-purpose processors can no longer meet the needs of all scenarios.
This trend has given Chinese companies an opportunity to find breakthroughs in emerging areas rather than going head-to-head with the giants in areas that are already mature, and in fact we have seen some Chinese companies try to do so.
In 2022, a company called "Suiyuan Technology" in Shanghai launched an AI training chip, the performance of which is comparable to NVIDIA's A100, this news has caused quite a stir in the industry, although this chip has not yet been commercialized on a large scale, but it proves the potential of Chinese companies in the field of high-end chips.
However, design alone is not enough, manufacturing is equally important, and China still faces a lot of challenges in this regard, and the world's most advanced chip manufacturing process is currently in the hands of a few companies such as TSMC and Samsung, which continue to lead the process, making it difficult for chasers to catch up.
However, history tells us that technology monopoly is not eternal, in the 80s of the last century Japan the semiconductor industry once formed an overwhelming advantage over United States, but in the 90s United States through industrial policy and technological innovation, regained the leading position, this case may give us some inspiration.
According to market analysis, China is one of the important markets for NVIDIA, and the loss of this market will definitely have an impact on NVIDIA's performance.
And this approach may stimulate more countries and regions to accelerate the pace of chip independent research and development, which may weaken United States' dominant position in the global chip industry in the long run.
This is undoubtedly a difficult time for Chinese companies, but as the old saying goes, "Hardship is a success." "This may be an opportunity for China's chip industry to achieve leapfrog development.
Of course, this requires the joint efforts of the government, enterprises and scientific research institutions, a large amount of capital investment, the training of a large number of high-quality talents, and the creation of a good environment for innovation.
In this protracted war, we must not only pay attention to the progress of technology, but also pay attention to the construction of industrial ecology, a healthy chip industry needs the close cooperation of upstream and downstream enterprises.
For example, chip design companies need to work closely with fabs to ensure that the chips they design can be mass-produced, while fabs need equipment suppliers to provide advanced production equipment, each of which cannot be overlooked.
The reason why United States has been able to maintain a leading position in the chip field for a long time is largely due to its complete industrial chain, from design giants such as Intel and Qualcomm, to equipment suppliers such as Applied Materials and Kelei, and then to foundries such as GLOBALFOUNDRIES, United States have strong players in every link.
In contrast, there are still some shortcomings in China's chip industry chain, especially in terms of high-end equipment and materials, the dependence on foreign countries is still relatively high, which is why once we face a supply cut, we will feel so passive.
However, the situation is gradually improving, in recent years a number of domestic companies focusing on chip equipment and materials have emerged, in the field of lithography machine Shanghai Microelectronics is trying to catch up with Netherlands' ASML, although the gap is still very large but at least the first step.
At the same time, we have also seen some gratifying changes, in the past, many outstanding chip talents chose to go abroad for development, but now more and more overseas Chinese engineers have begun to return to China to start their own businesses, and they bring back not only technology, but also advanced management experience and international vision.
Data from 2023 shows that there are more than 1 million employees in China's semiconductor industry, and a considerable number of them are young people who have only joined the industry in recent years, which has injected fresh blood into the long-term development of the industry.
For example, with the popularization of new energy vehicles, the demand for vehicle-grade chips has increased significantly, which provides new development opportunities for chip companies.
The rise of the metaverse concept may drive the demand for AR/VR chips, and these emerging fields may become opportunities for Chinese chip companies to overtake in corners.
In the face of Nvidia's supply cut-off, some Chinese companies have begun to take action, some are stepping up research and development of alternatives, and some are seeking cooperation with other international chip giants, although they may encounter some difficulties in the short term, but in the long run, this may promote the diversification of China's chip industry.
Although Nvidia's supply cut has brought challenges to Chinese technology companies, it may also become a turning point to promote the development of domestic chips, and every crisis is an opportunity to reshuffle, which may be the best time for China's chip industry to achieve corner overtaking.
What do you think of Nvidia's supply cut? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.
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