• The United States restricted measures to benefit Chinese semiconductor equipment manufacturers

  • Wallopedic factory selects equipment made in China

  • China's technical progress is faster than expected

  • The light carved machine is still a pain point

Illustration/Florence Lo

As the United States tighten the restrictions on the Chinese semiconductor industry, Chinese chip manufacturing equipment manufacturers have benefited from it. In recent months, orders from Chinese agents have continued to increase.

Studies have shown that as chip manufacturers have replaced foreign equipment with domestic equipment, domestic equipment manufacturers' bidding ratio of bidding in Chinese agencies is much higher than in previous years.Shangzhong Micro Semiconductor (AMEC).

Huatai Securities analyzed 182 bidding last month, from January to August 2023, in all mechanical and equipment bidding of Chinese foundries, the proportion of local manufacturers accounted for nearly half, reaching 47.25%.

Huatai Securities analysts said that from July to August 2023, the bid rate of Chinese suppliers was 62%, which was only 36.3%from March to April.

This marks a turning point in the industry, reflects that everyone accepts the United States' restrictions on technology imports, which is unlikely to relax and may become stricter. Self -reliance is the direction of progress.

The United States Biden government said on Tuesday that it plans to prevent the more advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip designed by companies such as NVIDIA (Nvidia) such as China.Part of the measure.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed his resolute opposition on Wednesday and had proposed to the United States solemnly, saying that it violated the market economy and fair competition principles.

A person who heard the briefing of these companies told Reuters: "Before the implementation of sanctions, China's top fabry will use a small amount of equipment produced by Chinese suppliers, but only when new production capacity will be tried, they will tryUse new equipment " "Now, foundries are testing the equipment made in China for each foreign equipment they own. If they find that domestic equipment meets their needs, they will replace all foreign equipment," he said."They want to use foreign equipment as little as possible."

He added that China Micro Semiconductor and Northern Huachuang received more orders from SMIC and Hua Hong Semiconductor.

China Micro Semiconductor, Northern Huacchuang, SMIC, and Hua Hong did not immediately respond to the comment request.

** Sales soaring **

According to a report from Cinno Research, in the first half of 2023, the related revenue of equipment manufacturers in the top ten domestic equipment manufacturers increased by 39%year -on -year and sales reached 2.2 billion US dollars.

Chinese companies have been stocking and equipment made from foreign countries in Japan and the Netherlands, but as these countries are expected to follow the United States to promulgate restrictions in the next few months, these channels will also be closed.

Analysts say that the production capacity of Chinese manufacturers in the fields of etching and cleaning is getting stronger and stronger. In these areas, companies such as the American Applied Materials and Lam Research (Lam Research) have launched global competition.Essence

According to the China Micro Semiconductor in the financial report, some of the company's equipment has entered an advanced chip production line with 5 -nanometer technology.Its etching equipment is used to remove excess materials from the surface of the silicon wafer.

A semiconductor analyst in China who is unwilling to disclose names said that the quality of Chinese chip -making equipment is increased faster than he expected, and it is estimated that it has been two years earlier than his original estimate.

He said: "From the strong revenue growth data, it can be seen that China's semiconductor equipment field has undoubtedly made great progress."

But there are still some pain points, especially the optical technology, which requires extremely complicated optical and process accuracy.China has been unable to purchase the extremely UV (EUV) lithography machine required to manufacture the most advanced chip, and the United States is even prohibited from some less advanced deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography systems into China.

The report of Huatai Securities shows that from January to August 2023, only one optical equipment bidding for bidding for bidding for bidding for many photoresters.

The challenges of the light carved technology have not prevented Chinese companies from making some breakthroughs.Analysts believe that Huawei and SMIC have made advanced chips for the Mate 60 Pro mobile phone by improving the DUV machine that can still be purchased from Aismore.

White Oak Capital Investment Director Nori Chiou said: Chinese companies "still lack the ability to supply a full set of equipment, such as EUV." He said that Chinese manufacturers focus on mature production equipment.

"To achieve the localization of advanced semiconductor equipment, there is still a long way to go."