中國追求科技“自力更生”，增加全球不安 (2/2)

China pursues tech 'self-reliance,' fueling global unease (2/2)

JOE McDONALD

Mon, December 27, 2021, 7:27 PM PST

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Even companies such as Alibaba that can design chips likely will need Taiwanese or other foreign foundries to make them. Alibaba's Yitian 710 requires precision no Chinese foundry can achieve. The company declined to say which foreign producer it will use.

“My country still faces a big gap in chip technology,” said industry analyst Liu Chuntian of Zero Power Intelligence Group.

China accounts for 23% of global chip production capacity but only 7.6% of sales.

Packing millions of transistors onto a fingernail-size sliver of silicon requires some 1,500 steps, microscopic precision and arcane technologies owned by a handful of U.S., European, Japanese and other suppliers.

They include KLA Corp. in California for super-precise measurement and Japan’s TEL for machines to apply coatings a few molecules thick. Many are covered by restrictions on “dual use” technologies that can be used in weapons.

China “lags significantly” in tools, materials and production technology, the Semiconductor Industry Association said in a report this year.

Washington and Europe, citing security worries, block access to the most advanced tools Chinese chipmakers need to match global leaders in precision and efficiency.

Without those, China is falling farther behind, said Bain’s Hanbury.

“The TSMC horse is sprinting away and the Chinese horse is stopped,” he said. “They can’t move forward.”

Washington stepped up pressure on Huawei last year by barring global foundries from using American technology to produce its chips. U.S. vendors can sell chips to the company, but not for next-generation “5G” smartphones.

For its part, the European Union said it will review foreign investments after complaints China was eroding Europe’s technology lead by purchasing important assets such as German robot maker Kuka.

Alibaba’s Yitian 710 is based on architecture from Britain’s Arm, highlighting China’s enduring need for foreign know-how. Alibaba said it still will work closely with longtime foreign suppliers Intel, Arm, Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

T-Head’s first chip, the Hanguang 800, was announced in 2019 for artificial intelligence. Its second, the XuanTie 910, is for self-driving cars and other functions.

In November, Tencent Holding, which operates the WeChat messaging service, announced its first three chips for artificial intelligence, cloud computing and video.

Beijing says it will spend $150 billion from 2014 through 2030 to develop its chip industry, but even that is a fraction of what global leaders invest. TSMC plans to spend $100 billion in the next three years on research and manufacturing.

China is trying to buy experience by hiring engineers from TSMC and other Taiwanese producers. Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of its territory and has threatened to attack, has responded by imposing curbs on job advertising.

Beijing encourages smartphone and other manufacturers to use suppliers within China, even if they cost more, but officials deny China wants to detach from global industries.

“We will never go back in history by seeking to decouple,” Xi said in a speech by video link to a November meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders in Malaysia.

The latest conflict is over photolithography, which uses ultraviolet light to etch circuits into silicon on a scale measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter.

The leader is ASML in the Netherlands, which makes machines that can etch transistors just 5 nanometers apart. That would pack 2 million into a space one centimeter wide.

China’s SMIC is about one-third as precise at 14 nanometers. Taiwan’s TSMC is preparing to increase its precision to 2 nanometers.

SMIC wants to upgrade by purchasing ASML’s latest machine, but the Dutch government has yet to agree.

“We will wait for their decision,” said an ASML spokeswoman, Monica Mols, in an email.

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即使是像阿里巴巴這樣可以設計芯片的公司，也可能需要台灣或其他外國代工廠來製造。阿里巴巴的倚天 710 對精度的要求是中國代工廠無法達到的。該公司拒絕透露將使用哪家外國生產商。

Zero Power Intelligence Group的 行業分析師 Liu Chuntian 表示, “我國在芯片技術方面仍存在較大差距” 。

中國占全球芯片產能的23%，但銷售額僅佔7.6%。

將數百萬個晶體管組裝到指甲蓋大小的矽片上需要大約 1,500 個步驟、微細精度和神秘的技術現在由少數美國、歐洲、日本和其他供應商擁有。

它們包括位於加利福尼亞的用於超精密測量的 KLA Corp., 和用於生產可以做出幾個分子厚塗層的機器的日本 TEL。許多都受到可用於武器的“雙重用途”技術的限制。

半導體行業協會在今年的一份報告中稱，中國在工具、材料和生產技術方面 “明顯落後” 。

華盛頓和歐洲以安全擔憂為由, 阻止中國芯片製造商去取得需要在精度和效率方面與全球領先者匹敵的最先進工具。

Bain 的 Hanbury 說，如果沒有這些，中國就會更落後。

他說: “台積電的馬在衝刺，中國的馬被攔住了”; “他們無法前進” 。

華盛頓去年加大了對華為的壓力，禁止全球代工廠使用美國技術去生產華為芯片。美國供應商可以向該公司出售芯片，但不能用於新一代 “5G” 智能手機。

就歐盟而言，在有人抱怨中國通過購買德國機器人製造商 Kuka 等重要資產, 侵蝕歐洲的技術領先地位後，歐盟表示將審查外國投資。

阿里巴巴的 倚天710 是基於英國 Arm 的架構，凸顯了中國對外國技術的持久需求。阿里巴巴表示，它仍將與外國的長期供應商英特爾、Arm、Nvidia Corp. 和 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. 密切合作。

平头哥(T-Head) 的第一款芯片含光 800 於 2019 年發布，用於人工智能。它的第二款玄鐵910用於自動駕駛汽車和其他功能。

在11 月，運營微信消息服務的騰訊控股發布了其首批用於人工智能、雲計算和視頻的三款芯片。

北京表示將從 2014 年到 2030 年斥資 1500 億美元發展其芯片產業，但即便如此，這也只是全球領導者投資的一小部分。台積電計劃在未來三年內斥資 1000 億美元用於研發和製造。

中國正試圖通過聘請台積電和其他台灣製造商的工程師來購買經驗。被北京聲稱是其領土的一部分並威脅要發動襲擊的台灣的回應是限制招聘廣告。

北京鼓勵智能手機和其他製造商使用中國境內的供應商，即使它們的成本更高，但官員否認中國希望脫離全球產業。

習近平在11月在馬來西亞舉行的亞太領導人會議上,通過視頻鏈接發表講話時說: “我們永遠不會重復歷史地去尋求脫鉤” 。

最新的爭持點是關於光刻技術，它使用紫外光將電路蝕刻到納米或十億分之一米大小的矽中。

領先者是荷蘭的 ASML，該公司製造的機器可以蝕刻僅相距5 納米的晶體管。這將把 200 萬個晶體管裝進一個 1 厘米寬的空間。

中國的中芯國際的精度約為其三分之一,即相距14納米。台灣台積電正準備將其精度提高到相距2納米。

中芯想通過購買ASML的最新機器進行升級，但荷蘭政府尚未同意。

ASML 發言人 Monica Mols 在一封電子郵件中說: “我們將等待它的決定” 。

         So, to help make China into a self-reliant “technology superpower,” the ruling Communist Party is pushing the world's biggest e-commerce company to take on the tricky and expensive business of designing its own processor chips. It is an ambitious plan and I am interested in knowing the result of this effort.

Note:  T-Head Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (平头哥) was founded on September 19, 2018 and is a wholly-owned semiconductor chip business entity of Alibaba Group.  T-Head possesses the terminal-cloud integrated full stack product series such as AI chip, CPU Processor IP, etc., covering end-to-end chip design process.