China poised to break 5nm barrier — Huawei lists 5nm processor presumably built with SMIC tech, defying U.S. sanctions | Huawei and SMIC quietly rolled out a new Kirin 9000C processor.::Chinese foundry SMIC may have broken the 5nm process barrier, as evidenced by a new Huawei laptop listed with an advanced chip with 5nm manufacturing tech — a feat previously thought impossible due to U.S sanctions.
This kind of super high tech manufacturing is something that only a couple companies in the world can do, it is literally the most technologically complex thing humans have created. And they can only do it by using machines and technology from all over the, “western”, world. For example the taiwanese TSCM might use extremely specialized machines from the Netherlands or lenses from Switzerland, etc.
If China wants to replicate that, they would need to create everything from scratch, since they wont have access to the knowledge, technology, machines and manufacturing techniques the other(taiwanese, american and korean) companies have access to.
This is a matter of time and money. Obviously at some point China would succeed as long as there is political will and funding. But there is a difference between China succeeding within the next 3 years or within the next 15 years.
If these claims are true(and it is a big IF), China is way ahead than expected.
No other country in the world can do it alone. The US isnt producing high end chips. But thats because it didnt need to, since their allies are doing it. But because the situation in Taiwan is becoming hotter, both the US and the EU are inviting companies(tsmc and Intel) to create factories in their lands.
TSMC is kinda reluctant in creating a cutting edge fab outside of Taiwan, since having all cutting edge fabs there, provides Taiwan with a security advantage(increasing the chance the EU and US will come to Taiwan’s assistance in case China invades). However it seems they are willing to make “last gen”(still very high end in comparison to what China has) fabs outside of Taiwan.
Thank you for your perspective. Why is this a big IF? Wouldn’t China have seen the writing on the wall years ago? 20-30 years ago that their path was going to put them at odds with western countries? I get that developing new chips takes years, maybe decades, but hasn’t China had that time already? Is is possible that intel provided to western countries such as what the US currently knows of China could be behind to what they are building? The US has done great things in secret, developed a lot of technology under their military resources, is it too hard to believe that China, and maybe others have done the same and have been able to keep it a secret as well? After all, many new technologies could be considered national security. Maybe I’m just naive, dumb, or have been watching too many movies but i find it hard to believe that China has become a super power in many aspects, one of them their intelligence capital, yet western countries are still surprised at what they can achieve or produce.
This is a good take on the situation.