Posted on 10/28/2019 11:37:51 AM PDT by AdmSmith
China is making swift progress on its 200 billion yuan (US$29.08 billion) fund aimed at investing in home-grown semiconductor development, as the worlds second-largest economy looks to reduce dependence on foreign chips amid a tech war with the US.
New investment is likely to lean towards applications in the downstream supply chain, such as chip design, advanced materials and equipment areas, according to the report.
The fundraising progress comes amid an escalating tech war with the US, which has seen China tone down statements on its wider Made in China 2025 policy ambitions, after President Xi Jinping first called for a drive towards technological self-reliance last year. We [should] hold innovative development tightly in our own hands, Xi said in an address to the countrys top scientists and engineers at a conference in May last year. [We have to] put much effort into key areas where we are facing bottlenecks and make breakthroughs as soon as we can.
China does have an import dependence weakness though. Although the country is estimated to make more than 90 per cent of the worlds smartphones, 65 per cent of personal computers and 67 per cent of smart televisions, it has to source most of the chips that go into these devices from overseas. The value of Chinas annual chip imports has surpassed oil in recent years, surging to US$312 billion in 2018.
Incorporated in 2014, the Big Fund is aimed at leading national efforts to catch up in the global semiconductor industry by backing chip start-ups and research and development via the private and secondary markets.
I also believe only ONE word in TEN that the Chinese government says/prints.
China Securities Journal
Large funds can balance national strategic needs and market mechanisms. Tianfeng Securities believes that the large fund, as a major shareholder of the investment company in all aspects of the industrial chain, can work together to promote cooperation between upstream and downstream enterprises, and cooperate with the national science and technology major projects and special construction funds to support integrated circuits and projects, forming a prominent synergy. Effect and driving effect.
http://www.nbd.com.cn/articles/2019-10-27/1381515.html
And stolen technology.
State money + espionage to compete with Silicon Valley.
China state-owned company charged with stealing US tech trade secrets
The Justice Department announced a new initiative to stop these Chinese espionage efforts today as well
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/1/18052784/china-chip-stolen-trade-secrets-justice-department-semiconductor
China was involved in 90 percent of all economic espionage cases handled by the Department of Justice over the last seven years, according to a report submitted Wednesday to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“From 2011-2018, more than 90 percent of the Department’s cases alleging economic espionage by or to benefit a state involve China, and more than two-thirds of the Department’s theft of trade secrets cases have had a nexus to China,” the report stated.
On 28 June 2017, the National Peoples Congress passed the National Intelligence Law and outlined the first official authorisation of intelligence in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). Unlike its Western counterparts, the intelligence law does not specifically name Chinas intelligence services. Instead, the law describes the national intelligence work institutions as the intelligence organs of the state security and public security institutions, as well as military intelligence organisations. The laws vague definition of intelligence in the opening articles suggests intelligence includes both information collected and activities conducted in support of comprehensive state security. The national intelligence work institutions provide intelligence information to inform decision-making and undefined capabilities for action to support state security.
Chinese employees stole corporate secrets from Dutch semiconductor equipment maker ASML, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, Dutch financial newspaper Financieele Dagblad (FD) reported on Thursday.
It is ridiculous that we let these commies get away with this BS.
FreeTraitors are there enablers - from the time of admittance into WTO.
Chinese President Xi Jinping visited a rare-earth magnet factory in eastern China on Monday.
He was accompanied by Vice Premier Liu He, China’s top economic adviser, who has been leading trade negotiations with the US.
The highly publicized photo op suggests that China may be planning to weaponize the rare-earth industry to make the US back down in the ongoing trade war.
The US relies heavily on Chinese exports of rare-earth materials, which can be found in products ranging from batteries to smartphones, Teslas, and fighter jets.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trade-war-xi-jinping-rare-earth-factory-hint-cripple-us-tech-military-2019-5
You’ll never know if you’re going to get a little more on some of those Chinese chips than you expected! If you have a company that has propriety processes are you going to risk buying computers with Chinese made chips, I think not!
Greenland anybody???
this one?
Nested on the servers motherboards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much bigger than a grain of rice, that wasnt part of the boards original design. Amazon reported the discovery to U.S. authorities, sending a shudder through the intelligence community. Elementals servers could be found in Department of Defense data centers, the CIAs drone operations, and the onboard networks of Navy warships. And Elemental was just one of hundreds of Supermicro customers.
During the ensuing top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years later, investigators determined that the chips allowed the attackers to create a stealth doorway into any network that included the altered machines. Multiple people familiar with the matter say investigators found that the chips had been inserted at factories run by manufacturing subcontractors in China.
An electrical engineer has been found guilty of multiple federal criminal charges, including engaging in a scheme to illegally obtain integrated circuits with military applications that later were exported to China without the required export license. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney Nicola T. Hanna for the Central District of California and Assistant Director in Charge Paul Delacourt of the FBIs Los Angeles Field Office made the announcement.
After a six-week trial, Yi-Chi Shih, 64, a part-time Los Angeles resident, was found guilty on June 26 of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a federal law that makes illegal, among other things, certain unauthorized exports. The jury also found Shih guilty of mail fraud, wire fraud, subscribing to a false tax return, making false statements to a government agency and conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information. Shih was convicted of all 18 counts in a federal grand jury indictment.
A New York Times report published late this afternoon notes that Pentagon officials have been holding private discussions with tech industry executives to wrestle with a key question: how to ensure future supplies of the advanced computer chips needed to retain Americas military edge.
The talks, some of which predate the Trump administration, recently took on an increased urgency, according to people who were involved or briefed on the discussions. Pentagon officials encouraged chip executives to consider new production lines for semiconductors in the United States, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks were confidential.
The discussions are being driven by the Pentagons increased dependence on chips made abroad, especially in Taiwan, as well as recent tensions with China, these people said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/technology/pentagon-taiwan-tsmc-chipmaker.html
The Chinese government has made semiconductors a key pillar of its so-called Made In China 2025 plan, an initiative to boost the production of higher value products. China aims to produce 70% of the semiconductors it uses by 2025, and that drive is backed by billions of dollars of investment by the government.
On top of that, the U.S. has recently threatened key Chinese technology firms like Huawei with being cut off from American products, so thats sharpened Beijings focus on cultivating its domestic chip industry, analysts have told CNBC.
Analyst firm China Renaissance estimates that SMIC is about 17 quarters behind TSMC when it comes to 14nm and 16nm chips.
If Chinese foundries are not able to manufacture the latest chip sizes, that means companies like Huawei, which design their own chips, have to go to rivals. For example, Huaweis Kirin series of processors for its smartphones have a 7nm design and are manufactured by TSCM.
Currently, only 16% of the semiconductors used in China are produced in the country, and only half of those are made by Chinese firms, according to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. There are signs, however, that the ratio could change.
Chinas semiconductor production capacity is growing at the fastest in the world, according to industry body SEMI.
Still, experts have told CNBC that China wont close the gap with other countries for at least a decade.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/06/smic-chinas-biggest-chipmaker-is-still-years-behind-its-rivals.html
If something would happen to Taiwan we have a problem.
If the Chinese want a certain technology, they will pursue it at all costs. But there may be a hitch:
Semiconductor Engineer:
The problem of US dependence on foreign manufactures turned first up on displays on which I worked in the US
Flat panel displays were invented in the US.
What I learned working on military displays
The “kill ratio” of fighter plane pilots depends critically on the quality of the displays that feed information to the pilot. As the fighter turns the display alternatively goes from deep shadow to bright sunlight - and instantaneously has to adjust its brightness to feed the pilot crucial information.
You may be annoyed that you can not read the screen of an Iphone in very bright sunlight. At 20 000 ft, not able to see your fighter display might kill you.
For about a decade the Pentagon kept two display manufacturers in the US alive. It then gave up.
There is no US manufactures of displays left.
Eric R Fossum:
I have co-founded and led several “fabless” semiconductor startups, including the one that enabled a camera in every pocket. TSMC is a great company, but I wish TSMC had a state of the art trusted fab in the US. Perhaps Apple and other cash-rich high tech giants can partner with TSMC and the US government to make this happen. Increased support for training US students in micro and nano electronics is also needed. As the fabs left the US,so shrunk university activity in this area in our country as well as ready access to state of the art technology. There are also other elements of the ecosystem that need strengthening. We can rebuild it if we have the will. Investment really isn't that expensive in the big picture and will probably pay for itself many times over. How much has been invested (using that term loosely) in US farmers in the past 18 months?
Walkman
I and many others in engineering saw this situation coming 25 years ago and tried to warn about it, but our political leaders refused to listen, due to some combination of ignorance about technology and manufacturing, and greed for donations from investors looking for a quick profit from offshoring.
The US government must require that all electronic circuitry, including integrated circuits (chips) used in any security related application, especially in defense and vital infrastructure, be manufactured in secure facilities in the US, and should finance as necessary the construction of the required production facilities and their necessary supply chains. The US defense budget is over $700 billion annually, a small fraction of which, say 5%, spent as direct investment or set aside as underwriting, would be money well spent to ensure that our military hardware wont be rendered useless by a lack of secure electronics. Also, the requirement for US manufacture would ensure a market for US plants large enough to support a self- sustaining supply chain.
The US government must act quickly to fix this problem or it could become unsolvable sooner than anyone expects. The risk of inaction is catastrophic.
Pfeiffer Vacuum, a provider of vacuum solutions for the semiconductor, industrial, coating, analytical and R&D markets, has celebrated the expansion of its facility in Wuxi, China.
Double its original size, the new, expanded facility marks a significant milestone in Pfeiffer Vacuum's development in China, as it allows the company to better respond to local customers’ needs while supporting its strategic growth in the local coating and semiconductor market.
This is part of our new growth strategy which includes a global investment program of 150 million, said Hugh Kelly, representative of the management board, In addition to providing after-sales service, the bigger facility will now also allow for the production of dry pumps and our new leak detection systems ATC, as well as the assembly of pumping stations. With the introduction of industry-leading technologies and equipment, Pfeiffer Vacuum is better poised to react to the needs of local customers.
At the 2019 annual general meeting, Pfeiffer Vacuum shared eight strategic pillars of the company, with Eric Taberlet, CEO of Pfeiffer Vacuum Technology highlighting the importance of the Chinese market to the company's development. As one of the key cities in the Yangtze River Delta region, Wuxi has been receiving strong government support to develop its semiconductor, electronics and solar industry. The expanded facility not only strengthens Pfeiffer Vacuum's presence in China but also enables closer proximity to its customers in China as well as the wider Asia market.
https://compoundsemiconductor.net/article/109155/Pfeiffer_Vacuum_Opens_New_Plant_In_China
DARPA Electronics Resurgence Initiative has to be expanded and given more resources.
https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/electronics-resurgence-initiative
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