As I was saying last week, there is a chip shortage and it is going to get
worse. This will affect manufacturing at all levels and may well continue into
the foreseeable future. Considering that Taiwan is a producer of advanced
chips, this is a potential motivator for China to get more actively
belligerent. It has been said that most wars are based on resources, no matter
how the opponents paint them. Cars are already backordered.
There is a link to the full article a little way down. Eric
Congressmen ask Biden admin to keep chip design software away from China
And no fab should use American tools to sell advanced chips to China, they add.
TIM DE CHANT<https://arstechnica.com/author/tim-de-chant-2/> - 4/16/2021, 12:09
PM
[Congressmen ask Biden admin to keep chip design software away from China]
Enlarge<https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/china-supercomputer.jpg>
Congressmen ask Biden admin to keep chip design software away from China | Ars
Technica<https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/china-shouldnt-get-us-semiconductor-design-software-congressmen-say/?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=pol&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_mailing=thematic_ballot_042121&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bdb88056c28c77dca1bf158&cndid=38673810&hasha=9f822f7dd6cd888950b7565b75cff64c&hashb=10c30b66c9b02fad8ae01cbfe0413e306bfd6f36&hashc=01cf5ab6c97a4a8d081a28ce58bb02337a98bfcf66354d1b2408631f0bcdd07e&sourcecode=thematic_ballot&utm_content=Final&utm_term=Thematic_Ballot_Subscribers>Congressmen
ask Biden admin to keep chip design software away from China | Ars
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ask Biden admin to keep chip design software away from China | Ars
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[https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/china-supercomputer-760x380.jpg]<https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/china-shouldnt-get-us-semiconductor-design-software-congressmen-say/?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=pol&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_mailing=thematic_ballot_042121&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bdb88056c28c77dca1bf158&cndid=38673810&hasha=9f822f7dd6cd888950b7565b75cff64c&hashb=10c30b66c9b02fad8ae01cbfe0413e306bfd6f36&hashc=01cf5ab6c97a4a8d081a28ce58bb02337a98bfcf66354d1b2408631f0bcdd07e&sourcecode=thematic_ballot&utm_content=Final&utm_term=Thematic_Ballot_Subscribers>
Congressmen ask Biden admin to keep chip design software away from
China<https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/china-shouldnt-get-us-semiconductor-design-software-congressmen-say/?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=pol&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_mailing=thematic_ballot_042121&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bdb88056c28c77dca1bf158&cndid=38673810&hasha=9f822f7dd6cd888950b7565b75cff64c&hashb=10c30b66c9b02fad8ae01cbfe0413e306bfd6f36&hashc=01cf5ab6c97a4a8d081a28ce58bb02337a98bfcf66354d1b2408631f0bcdd07e&sourcecode=thematic_ballot&utm_content=Final&utm_term=Thematic_Ballot_Subscribers>
And no fab should use American tools to sell advanced chips to China, they add.
arstechnica.com
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Don’t let American companies sell semiconductor design software to Chinese
firms, two members of Congress are asking the Department of Commerce.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R- Ark.) and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) yesterday requested
that electronic design automation (EDA) tools be designated as “foundational
technologies” by the Department of Commerce. The label would require companies
to obtain export licenses if they want to sell EDA tools to Chinese companies.
The congressmen also requested in their
letter<https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-mccaul-ask-administration-to-restrict-sale-of-chip-making-software-to-china>
to Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo that any fab worldwide that uses
American tools be prevented from selling 14 nm or better chips to Chinese
companies.
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The current leading edge in semiconductors is the 5 nm node, and currently,
only Samsung and Taiwanese semiconductor company TSMC are producing chips
commercially at that node. Restricting Chinese companies to 16 nm or larger
could possibly keep them four generations off the leading edge.
Semiconductors are incredibly important to China, which imported more than $300
billion worth of chips last year. That’s more than the country spends on
imported oil.
If the US government were to cut Chinese companies off from EDA tools, it would
be a significant blow to the country’s already lagging semiconductor industry.
Chinese semiconductor manufacturers are almost entirely reliant on foreign
tools and software, and the country’s own EDA software is eight to ten years
behind. There are EDA companies based outside the US, but American firms are
particularly dominant, with companies like Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys
controlling around 90 percent of the market, according to some estimates.
Stuck behind
The Chinese semiconductor market has always been behind the leading edge,
though it has caught up in recent years as companies like SMIC have recruited
heavily from TSMC and Samsung. The company has been producing chips at 14 nm in
decent numbers, and last year it announced its “N+1”
node<https://www.eetimes.com/smic-graduating-from-14nm-to-something-sort-of-akin-to-7nm/>,
which it says is 57 percent more efficient and 20 percent faster. But yields
on that new process are reportedly low, and it likely represents a dead-end
unless SMIC can obtain an extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machine from
photolithography company ASML.
EUV is all but required to produce semiconductors at 5 nm or below. The
technology uses 13.5 nm UV light to etch features on a wafer. Existing deep
ultraviolet tools (DUV) use 193 nm light. Even with the clever hacks the
industry has implemented to make DUV work at smaller nodes, yields below 7 nm
using DUV would be too low to be commercially viable.
It’s unlikely that SMIC will ever get its hands on ASML’s most advanced
machine, though. SMIC placed an order for an EUV machine in 2018, but that
order has been held up by government officials in the Netherlands, where ASML
is based. The US government began pressuring Dutch officials to halt the sale
almost immediately after the order was placed, and a year and a half ago, the
US, the Netherlands, and Japan (where Canon is another potential supplier of
advanced lithography tools) entered into an ad-hoc
agreement<https://www.thewirechina.com/2021/02/07/the-chip-chokepoint/> not to
sell advanced chipmaking equipment to China.
Cotton and McCaul’s request to bar China from obtaining advanced EDA software
would further stymie China’s ambitions. As semiconductor manufacturing has
grown ever more sophisticated, the tools required to produce chips have
advanced apace. Barring China from obtaining EUV likely would set the country
back a decade or more. The Chinese government is spending over $1 trillion to
catapult its semiconductor industry to the leading edge, but it still faces
headwinds. For example, it took ASML more than a decade before its EUV tools
were ready to be inserted into customers' production lines. Restricting Chinese
companies’ access to EDA tools would only add to their already significant
challenges.
ARS VIDEO
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SITREP: DOD's New Long-Range Air-to-Air Missile Aims to "Outstick" China
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TIM DE CHANT<https://arstechnica.com/author/tim-de-chant-2>Tim De Chant is a
journalist and editor who covers tech policy for Ars Technica. He is a lecturer
in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing and has written for The Wire
China, the Chicago Tribune, NOVA Next, and Wired magazine, among others. De
Chant was awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT in 2018, and he
received his doctorate in environmental science, policy, and management from
the University of California, Berkeley, and his bachelor’s degree in
environmental studies, English, and biology from St. Olaf College.EMAIL
tim.dechant@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:tim.dechant@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> // TWITTER
@tdechant<https://www.twitter.com/tdechant>
