Tiger sniff mentioned before, China’s development of the chip industry is not easy and requires a lot of Talents, capital, and huge risks before embarking on this path of self-research. Nevertheless, in recent years, China-US trade disputes have entered a fierce stage, and the United States has even included some Chinese companies on the entity list.
But Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a well-known American analyst, Instead, think that South Korea may surpass the United States to become the world’s semiconductor leader within a few years. China can gain a long-term lead, why?
We take SMIC, a well-known Chinese fab, as an example to analyze the various opportunities behind the current crisis in China’s chip industry.
SMIC and advanced processes
Before knowing the company SMIC, let’s review some of the main types of fabs: General fab business will also be divided into two categories of business: “mature process” and “advanced process” .
The smaller the production process of the core, the better the chip performance, and the lower the power consumption and heat dissipation. Therefore, many high-end equipment are willing to pay a higher price and find fabs to produce chips with better process technology. Therefore, The foundry that specializes in the production of logic chips constantly develops more advanced processes in order to increase competitiveness, but strives for newer “advanced processes”, although the profits are higher, but the development costs are extremely high However, the production capacity has become lower because the technology is not mature enough.
However, with the rapid development of science and technology, no matter how advanced the process is, there will be a day behind. However, these old process technologies are becoming more mature and bringing better yields. The production process is gradually stabilizing the old process, and it is also easier to bring cash flow; more importantly, the development cost is lower, for fabs with relatively insufficient funds , Less operating pressure. Therefore, so these fabs will also keep behind, and produce some low-end, low-end chips for customers, which is called “