The gap between Chinese chips and the world

The British Financial Times reported that China’s chip manufacturing capabilities are still ten years behind the world. In this regard, some scholars believe that our Chinese chips as a whole lag behind the international level by a generation gap. As long as we accept it with an open mind and catch up, this generation gap can be reversed in a few years. However, some people believe that China's Huawei has already produced Kirin chips. In fact, the gap between China and the world's chip manufacturing is not as big as reported by the British media.

However, we believe that China’s chip manufacturing capabilities are ten years behind the international level, and may have overestimated the actual situation, because the British media has listed TSMC, Zoomlion Technology, etc. The capabilities of Taiwan's chip manufacturers are also taken into account. In fact, our mainland's chip design capabilities are not much different from the international advanced level, but compared with Samsung's, it is not an exaggeration to say that our chip manufacturing capabilities are ten years behind, because after all, mainland China currently does not have the capacity to produce batches and large-scale products. Chip production capabilities. (Recommended study: PHP video tutorial)

So, why does China’s chip manufacturing capacity lag behind the international market for ten years?

First of all, China did not pay enough attention to its chip manufacturing capabilities and believed that chips that could not be produced domestically could be imported from abroad. It was only after the ZTE incident in 2018 that the Chinese thought of catching up and truly felt a sense of crisis. SMIC is currently conquering the 14nm process, but Samsung has already achieved this in 2014.

Furthermore, China has always underinvested in chip manufacturing, and there is a severe shortage of talents in the chip field. In terms of research and development, in addition to Huawei's relatively large investment, SMIC is far behind not only compared with South Korea's Samsung, but also compared with TSMC. TSMC’s R&D expenses in 2018 were US$2.9 billion, and SMIC’s were US$550 million. In terms of engineers, the income of TSMC's R&D personnel is six times that of SMIC.

Finally, international chip manufacturing companies such as Samsung and TSMC cannot scale and grow by relying solely on the needs of their own regions and companies. Samsung and TSMC rely on the large number of chip manufacturing orders issued by European and American countries to enable these chip manufacturers to spread low costs, achieve profits, and continue to engage in research and development. In China, Huawei only manufactures chips for its own mobile phones, and its sales of mobile phones are still very limited. If it continues to engage in chip manufacturing, it may not even be able to recover the cost. Unless the whole country is mobilized to promote its development.

Judging from the current situation, it is difficult for Chinese chip companies to shorten the generation gap between themselves and the world's highest level through overseas mergers and acquisitions, technology transfer and other means. Because some countries in Europe and the United States prohibit the sale of related companies or technologies to China. Therefore, we should strive to eliminate international prejudice against China and join in international chip technology exchanges. At the same time, the country encourages international students in related fields to return to China and start businesses to serve the motherland.

British media said that the gap between Chinese chips and the world level is ten years, which refers to the time it takes for the British to shorten this gap. For us in China, the gap in chip design is only five or six years, and the gap in chip manufacturing may be more than ten years. However, this cannot prevent China from trying to catch up at all costs and using the strength of the whole country. By then, like this The gap may be shortened to three or four years. In the eyes of foreign media, there is a big generation gap between China and the world's chip powers, but the Chinese have always had the miracle of overtaking in corners, so this is also unknown.

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