As we know, there has been a trade war between the US and China for a long time, and not so long ago, the US tightened trade sanctions against China, namely in the areas of high technologies “The commerce department on Friday announced restrictions that will make it extremely hard for Chinese companies to obtain or manufacture advanced computer chips and will slow their progress in artificial intelligence.”FT. All this is being done to prevent the strengthening of China and at least slow down progress in the development of the high-tech industry. Also, as a result of sanctions, a huge number of highly qualified specialists from the United States also began to leave China. Now China is in a very difficult situation and Beijing is looking for ways out and solutions to the problem.
At the moment, some companies have already come up with methods to get around this problem, and today I will talk about some of them.
Let’s start with the fact that China has been trying to develop its own manufacturing industry for both chips and high technologies for a long time. To understand how much China wants to achieve this, you need to know that they will invest –1.4 trillion dollars in this space industry from 2020 to 2025 it is really huge amount of money. And all this in order to become less vulnerable and independent in terms of production, so as not to suffer from the sanctions on which they were imposed. However, at the moment China has not achieved full independence in this area.
What is important, it was modern chips that fell under the sanctions that can be used by Chinese scientific organizations and, worst of all, by the Chinese military. As we know, China has not increased its capacity in the production of powerful processors and chips, so they are highly dependent on third-party manufacturers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.
But as we know, Taiwan de facto does not belong to China, therefore, after the introduction of sanctions, TSMC, observing the sanctions, stopped all contacts with companies from the mainland that produce chips of a certain power.
“A person close to TSMC said Biren’s public presentations touting its processors had forced the contract chipmaker to halt supplies because the chips’ performance probably met the specifications banned by the US restrictions. “Unless they can prove that they are OK under the export controls, we will not be able to ship to them,” the person said. “Whenever there is a red flag, we will have to review.” Chinese engineers said figuring out what was compliant was complicated because of Washington’s unclear rules for calculating a key metric in the thresholds for chips called the bidirectional transfer rate, or the speed with which they send data to each other. The export controls cap chips at below 600(GB/s).”FT.
It was difficult to figure out this rate, but the Chinese specialists managed to do it “There are several ways in which [this transfer rate] can be calculated,” said a senior engineer at Biren, who asked not to be named. The company had begun to tweak its designs to reduce processor speeds in the hope of getting them manufactured by TSMC, the person said.”FT.
Well, if a component is known that can’t be exceeded, then the maximum can be avoided by a fairly simple solution. Deliberately decreseing the performance of processors and chips and reduce their functionality. For example, Biren “Archived versions of Biren’s website from before the US imposed sanctions show specifications for its first processor, the BR100, that would give it a transfer rate of 640 GB/s, exceeding the US limits. Now Biren’s site shows slower specs for the BR100 of 576GB/s, according to calculations from research group Bernstein.”FT.
How the Chinese are reducing processor power was detailed by “Dylan Patel, chief analyst at semiconductor research group SemiAnalysis, who first noticed Biren’s change of specs, said the company was attempting to slow down its processors by disabling part of the chip. “They are not changing the chip design, so it’s like saying ‘pinky promise we won’t re-enable it later on’ and it’s unclear if the [US] government will accept that,” said Patel.”FT.
However, how long China will use such solutions is not an easy question. But as far as one can judge, China is still quite advanced in the development of its own industry for the production of semiconductor components and systems, although not so much as to fully cover all needs, but there are already successes. For example, China produces its own processors using the 14nm process technology, it is expected to release chips according to the 7nm and 5nm process technology.
However, we must not forget that American technology is used almost everywhere, so if the United States acts tougher, it may well slow down China’s progress.
But you still need to understand that sanctions can at least slow down progress, but not completely stop development. Because Chinese companies a long time already not so mediocre to as not to be able to realize their own potential, for example, the well-known Huawei is implementing very ambitious projects, they began to build their own production plant modern chips.
In general, if you look at the whole picture, you can understand that the new sanctions are a tangible blow for China, but not a fatal one, and no matter how US tries to slow down Chinese the development of its own high technologies. You need to understand that China will be able to develop its own industrial high-tech base and not depend on anyone in the future. But the main question remains, how long will China need to implement these plans?
Write in the comments what do you think China will be able to become technologically independent despite the sanctions?
Sources
1.https://www.ft.com/content/7df13a5e-84e8-44af-b0d3-3e3efa6a8671
2.https://futuresupplychains.org/chinas-semiconductor-supply-line/
3.https://developingtelecoms.com/telecom-business/partner-spotlight/11775-chinese-14nm-chips-to-enter-full-scale-production-in-2022.html
4.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-21/china-s-top-chipmaker-makes-big-tech-advances-despite-us-curbs
5.https://www.huaweicentral.com/huawei-will-start-manufacturing-its-own-chipset-in-2022/