Arm China, the Chinese subsidiary of the British chip company owned by Japan’s SoftBank, has become a key player in Beijing’s quest for tech self-sufficiency and, in a move likely to alarm the U.S., has developed codes that enable Chinese semiconductors to run state-approved cryptographic algorithms, the Nikkei Asian Review has learned.
Huawei, the Chinese telecom gear maker that Washington has accused of spying, is among the company’s biggest customers after Arm China took over the Chinese business of its larger U.K parent last year.
“The goal of Arm China is to help all Chinese chip developers and other product makers to use Chinese-controlled technologies — not only for the domestic market but for global markets,” said William Liu, Arm China’s vice president of product development.
“In the future, these China-developed technologies could even become world leaders and have a say on the global stage,” he added.
https://www.digitalmunition.me/beijings-latest-tech-ally-in-us-clampdown-arm-china/
Japan lost out to Korea as Japanese chip engineers spent their time off on weekends in Korea, making a few extra Yen by transferring know how and secrets to brand new , start up, Korean DRAM manufacturers. We are likely at the beginning of China entering the memory market to eventually displace the existing Korean dominance. China has bought, begged, borrowed or stolen memory technology to get there
Many currently say it will never happen, or it will take too long or China will never get the technology or the manufacturing right but those statements have been heard before in the US and Japan (just before they lost their chip dominance at the time…) and we know how the movie ended…
One key factor that must be understood is that a new entrant to a market (in not just the chip market..) is not driven by profitability but by market share and total revenue even at the expense of profits…..
Existing players want to maintain profitability and will cede market share to try to maintain profitability. We have seen this before and see it every day in other “commodity like” markets that memory emulates.
China’s initial production of memory chips has nothing to do with profitability and everything to do with self-reliance in chips and the long game of market share and eventual market dominance. China certainly has the resources and deep pockets to sell at a loss for a very long time in order to gain more than a foothold in the memory chip market.
In other words it really doesn’t matter if China can make memory chips on a cost competitive basis, it only matters that it can make them (which it seems to be doing)
Manufacturing at a profit can come later…much later
If we take away semiconductor equipment sales to China the semiconductor equipment industry would be down, not up as it is now.
However, all that equipment that the US and others have sold to China has not been put to good, efficient use, as it has in Korea, Taiwan or the US. A lot of China bound equipment has wound up in start up fabs or trailing edge fabs that are not turning out as much value in wafers.
If all the equipment currently being sold to China were fully utilized the industry would be flooded with capacity.
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