Huawei’s chip supply cuts "stuck neck" and pushes hard
On September 15, the new US ban on Huawei came into effect.
After that, major component manufacturers such as TSMC, Qualcomm, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron will no longer supply chips to Huawei.
This means that Huawei may no longer be able to buy chips and memories produced using American technology.
Facing the predicament, Huawei is about to embark on a difficult path of exploration in the mobile ecosystem.
What will happen to Huawei after being "cut off"?
U.S. sanctions against Huawei severely disrupt the global chip industry chain
On May 16, 2019, the U.S. Department of Commerce included Huawei and its 70 affiliates on the "entity list" on the grounds of national security, and prohibited U.S. companies from selling related technologies and products to Huawei.
As soon as the banning order came out, the world was in an uproar.
One year later, on May 15, 2020, the US Department of Commerce issued an announcement strictly restricting Huawei from using US technology and software to design and manufacture semiconductors outside the US.
And just three months later, on August 17, the US government issued a new ban again, and the suppression of Huawei continued to escalate.
The core of this ban is that any use of US software or US-made equipment to produce products for Huawei is prohibited and requires a license.
The new ban cuts off Huawei's path to seek cooperation with non-US suppliers and further blocks the possibility of Huawei obtaining chips.
If you don’t make your own designs, you don’t buy what others produce, which directly forces Huawei into the predicament of "no core available".
"Using technological monopoly advantages to implement embargo measures that can put Huawei to death is beyond the scope of trade disputes and is an act of disrupting the rules of the game." said Xing Yuqing, a professor of economics at the National Policy Research Graduate School of Japan.
The US's ban and upgrade of Huawei also challenged the bottom line of the international supply chain and industrial chain.
Critics claim that the current round of US sanctions is not only a "capital punishment" on Huawei, but will also seriously disrupt the global chip market and related industries.
Chip design companies usually use electronic design automation tools developed in the United States, and in advanced semiconductor manufacturing plants, it is even more common to use chip manufacturing equipment that combines American technology.
The ban announced by the United States is mainly aimed at Huawei, but the impact far exceeds Huawei itself.
In August, the American Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and the International Semiconductor Industry Association (SEMI) successively issued statements against the ban, hoping that the ban would be postponed, and emphasized that the ban would harm the interests of the industry.
"We are still evaluating the rules, but the widespread restrictions on commercial chip sales will cause serious damage to the US semiconductor industry." On August 18, John Neuffer, Chairman and CEO of the American Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), said.
The International Semiconductor Industry Association stated in a statement that this US move will ultimately harm the US semiconductor industry and cause huge uncertainty and destruction in the semiconductor supply chain, thereby ultimately undermining US national security interests.
In fact, as early as when the US issued the Huawei ban in May, the International Semiconductor Industry Association had stated that the ban would inhibit the willingness of companies to purchase US-made equipment and software, and also caused nearly 17 million US dollars in losses for companies unrelated to Huawei.
And in the long run, "in addition to eroding the existing customer base of American products, it also exacerbates the mistrust of companies in the supply of American technology and encourages other companies to strive to replace American technology."
According to reports, the analysis of the analysis agency Gartner Corporation shows that in 2019, Huawei’s global semiconductor procurement expenditure reached 20.8 billion US dollars, ranking third in the world. This means that under the ban, the total revenue of the semiconductor industry may be reduced by 20 billion US dollars. about.
According to US media reports, US chip company Qualcomm is trying to lobby Trump to lift the restriction on selling chips to Huawei, otherwise it may give up a market worth as much as $8 billion to Qualcomm's overseas competitors.
Huang Zhezhou, executive vice chairman of the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association, said that since the current semiconductor industry system in South Korea is a development model of "large companies driving small and medium-sized suppliers", after the two giants cut off the supply of Huawei, if they cannot find a better one than Huawei With stable partners, the entire Korean chip industry will suffer the "test of life and death."
According to public reports, Samsung, SK Hynix, TSMC, MediaTek and other manufacturers have already submitted applications to the US Department of Commerce, hoping to continue to provide products to Huawei.
However, some legal experts pointed out that unless there are special circumstances, obtaining permission "may be quite difficult."
Why chips are so important, why can't we make high-end chips
"Because there is no Chinese chip manufacturing industry to support, we are facing the problem of not having chips available." At the 2020 Huawei Developers Conference, Huawei Consumer Business CEO Yu Chengdong said frankly, "The only problem now is production. Huawei has no way to produce. Chinese companies are in Only design is done in the process of globalization, which is also a lesson."
It is precisely because there is no independent chip manufacturing that Huawei appears so passive.
Why are chips so important and why can't we make high-end chips?
Chips (also called microcircuits, microchips, integrated circuits) refer to silicon chips containing integrated circuits.
As the core component of smart appliances, the chip has always played the role of "brain".
From computers and mobile phones, to cars and drones, to artificial intelligence and brain-computer interfaces, chips are ubiquitous.
The chip is small in size but extremely complicated to manufacture.
Take the core processor of a mobile phone as an example. Under a microscope, tens of billions of transistors are integrated on a chip the size of a fingernail, like a miniature world.
The current largest AI chip WSE produced by semiconductor manufacturer Cerebras Systems is based on TSMC’s 16-nanometer process and integrates 1.2 trillion transistors and 400,000 AI cores.
The 16-nanometer process means that the smallest wire in the chip can be as small as 16 nanometers.
If the manufacturing process is reduced, more transistors can be packed into a smaller chip, and the performance of the chip can be improved more obviously.
It can be said that chips are important in the era of information technology, similar to coal and oil in the industrial era.
The chip industry includes a large and complex industrial chain, which can be divided into four major links: design, manufacturing, packaging, and testing.
In terms of packaging and testing, China is already a world leader.
Relying on the huge downstream market, China has also developed rapidly in the field of chip design in recent years.
However, the software EDA necessary to design electronic chips is highly monopolized by three American companies Synopsys, Cadence, and Mentor.
According to statistics, these three companies collectively monopolize more than 95% of the Chinese chip design market, while China's largest EDA manufacturer only accounts for 1% of the market.
The most serious "stuck neck" in China is in chip manufacturing.
The chip structure is extremely precise, and it also has extremely high requirements on the complexity of the manufacturing equipment.
In the global lithography machine market, the Dutch ASML company undoubtedly occupies a dominant position.
The EUV lithography machine produced by ASML is extremely difficult to manufacture. It requires the cooperation of top companies in multiple countries and fields, and it almost represents the highest achievement in all fields of industrial manufacturing.
EUV optical lens and mirror system are very difficult to manufacture, and the accuracy is measured in picometers (one trillionth of a meter).
The president of ASML once introduced that if the area of the reflector is the size of Germany, the highest protrusion cannot exceed 1 cm.
However, ASML is only one link in the technology chain.
The lens of the EUV lithography machine is almost monopolized by Zeiss of Germany. The laser technology is in the hands of Cymer of the United States. The core technology of ASML only accounts for less than 10% of the lithography machine.
It is precisely because of the global division of labor and the cooperation of various countries that the lithography machine and the entire semiconductor industry can be achieved.
New China realized the huge potential of the semiconductor industry early on and invested resources to establish a primary semiconductor industry.
Take the lithography machine as an example. In 1978, China developed a semi-automatic lithography machine with a 5-micron process. Since then, the 45 Institute of the Ministry of Electronics Industry, the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Mechanics, the Institute of Optoelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Shanghai Microelectronics have continued to launch multiple versions of the lithography machine. .
Compared with itself, China's chip industry has not stagnated. In 2019, the production of integrated circuits was 20.82 billion, an increase of tens of thousands of times in the past 40 years.
However, due to insufficient basic scientific research capabilities related to chip manufacturing, after the process has gone from micrometers to nanometers, China cannot keep up with the development of the world's top companies, lacking sufficient market competitiveness, and the gap is gradually widening.
Regarding the current chip predicament in China, Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said: "my country's chips are controlled by others, and the biggest reason is our industrial foundation-including the backwardness of precision manufacturing, fine chemicals, and precision materials."
The shortcomings of China's chip technology and industry will eventually need to be solved by the Chinese people in steadfast innovation
"Don't stop, don't pause, work hard together!"
At the 2020 Huawei Developers Conference, Huawei revealed meaningful information with this kind of opening remarks.
According to Wang Chenglu, president of Huawei's consumer business software department, the chip issue has given companies reflection, and no choice is the best choice.
Restrictions instead give everyone a very good opportunity. Crisis and opportunities coexist.
"There must be difficulties, but I prefer to see the positive side of it. It is precisely because of such restrictions that I believe that all industries in China should be sober. I have been working on software for more than 20 years and have a heartfelt feeling. We It cannot be said that China’s high-tech industry is not prosperous, because so many so-called high-tech companies have entered the world’s top 500, but if you really look at it, such “blooming leaves” are very dangerous and can be overthrown in an instant. Why? Because? We don't have a'root'. So from this perspective, chip sanctions give the Chinese industry an excellent opportunity to rebuild. No choice is the most correct choice." Wang Chenglu said.
On September 1, the Huawei Xinsheng Community released the minutes of the meeting between Huawei’s rotating chairman Guo Ping and the new employees entitled "Don’t waste an opportunity in a crisis."
At the chip level, Guo Ping said that the front end also has chip manufacturing processes, manufacturing equipment and raw materials, which is where the United States restricts Huawei.
"For us, we will continue to maintain our investment in HiSilicon, and at the same time, we will help our front-end partners to improve and build up our own capabilities. I believe we will have a stronger HiSilicon in a few years."
The chip fate is an "opportunity" if it can survive, and it is a "danger" if it fails.
Earlier, people familiar with the matter said that in response to the US technical suppression and blockade of Huawei, Huawei had quietly launched a project called "Nanniwan".
The project is intended to avoid the application of American technology in the process of manufacturing end products in order to accelerate the "de-Americanization" of the supply chain.
The person familiar with the matter also revealed that the deep meaning behind Huawei's name for the project "Naniwan" is that it "hopes to achieve self-sufficiency in production during the difficult period."
At present, Huawei has made certain progress in "de-Americanization".
According to reports, after the U.S. sanctions were announced last year, the domestic production rate of Huawei's first flagship mobile phone device was less than 30%, while the P40 flagship machine released this year has a domestic production rate of over 86%.
During the sanction period, Huawei has completed the transformation from launching Hongmeng OS and HMS to iterating to Hongmeng OS 2.0, and HMS has grown into the world's third largest mobile application ecosystem.
After the "cut off", Huawei's low-end models can use other chips to replace Kirin chips.
For example, SMIC already provided Huawei with a low-end mobile phone chip Kirin 710A in May this year, and applied it to the Honor Play 4T mobile phone.
However, it is worth noting that SMIC may also be affected by the US ban.
Some foreign media reported that the US government is considering putting SMIC on the trade blacklist, which has hit SMIC’s production.
According to Nikkei News, SMIC is testing the production capacity of non-U.S. equipment and is expected to trial-produce 40-nanometer chips without using U.S. equipment at all by the end of this year, and plans to produce more advanced 28-nanometer chips within 3 years. .
"At one time, in many aspects, we hoped to solve the problem in a more labor-saving way. The so-called'buying is worse than buying, and renting is worse than buying'. Practice has proved that core technology cannot be bought. China's chip technology and industry's "shortcomings" In the end, the Chinese people need to be practical and innovative to solve it.” Ni Guangnan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a researcher at the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that in this sense, the Huawei incident is a “warning agent” for the whole people and has a positive side.
In Ni Guangnan's view, China's current shortcomings are mainly chips, operating systems, industrial software, and large-scale basic software.
If we can integrate domestic resources and make good use of talents and market advantages, it will not take long to break through these shortcomings.
However, Ni Guangnan also pointed out: "The development of the integrated circuit industry requires long-term mental preparation and investment. We cannot expect to get a return in just a few years. The real development of the integrated circuit industry will probably take another 10 to 20 years. We must have determination and determination, fill up the shortcomings of the industry, and stick to it."
This "war" may be the beginning of the nirvana of China's chip industry
On the afternoon of September 11, General Secretary Xi Jinping hosted a symposium of scientists in Beijing and pointed out some practical problems: In agriculture, many seeds are heavily dependent on foreign countries, agricultural non-point source pollution and heavy metal pollution in cultivated land are serious in some areas; in industry, there are some key issues. The core technology is controlled by people, and some key components, parts, and raw materials rely on imports... These are all stuck in the field of technological innovation, or restricted by people, or restricted by our own technical shortcomings.
Researcher Shi Qian, director of the Shanghai Institute of Science, believes that General Secretary Xi Jinping’s judgments on the root causes of many "stuck necks" are very profound.
Since the reform and opening up, my country’s industrial chain has been actively integrated into the global industrial chain and has made great economic achievements. However, the layout of the innovation chain is relatively lagging, and there is a shortcoming of insufficient original innovation.
“We don’t have to deny the past for this, because this is determined by the historical stage of my country’s economic and social development.” Shi Qian explained that for a long time in the past, my country was in the middle and lower reaches of the global industrial chain. Therefore, there is less investment in the upstream of the innovation chain.
Nowadays, some frontier fields in our country have begun to enter the stage of parallel running and leading. In order to take the initiative in international competition and cooperation, we must put the original innovation ability in a more prominent position.
Under the background of successive US sanctions on Huawei, the importance of accelerating the development of its own core technology has become prominent.
On August 4, the State Council issued "Several Policies to Promote the High-Quality Development of the Integrated Circuit Industry and Software Industry in the New Era", emphasizing that the integrated circuit industry and software industry are the core of the information industry and are the key force leading a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation .
It is reported that the government will give higher priority to the development of the third-generation semiconductor industry until the independence of my country's semiconductor industry is truly achieved.
According to relevant data released by the State Council cited by CCTV Finance on August 19, China's chip self-sufficiency rate will reach 70% by 2025, while my country's chip self-sufficiency rate in 2019 is only about 30%.
In addition to national policy and capital support, Chinese companies have also begun to increase their investment in semiconductor research and development.
SMIC announced on May 15 that SMIC, its 14-nanometer and below capacity platform, will receive capital injection, and its registered capital will increase from 3.5 billion US dollars to 6.5 billion US dollars; Alibaba has acquired two chip companies and invested in five chip companies Enter the chip field... With the joint efforts of all walks of life, China's integrated circuit industry is developing rapidly.
According to Professor Zhang Weiwei, Dean of the China Research Institute of Fudan University, there is indeed a certain gap between China and the United States in chip production, but not in all areas.
He pointed out that in the field of national defense and security, China uses almost all domestic chips, such as Beidou-3 satellite navigation system, Taihuzhiguang supercomputer, J-20 high-performance aircraft, and Chang'e-4 chips and systems.
"Relatively speaking, China's chips are weaker in commercial applications, such as mobile phone chips." Zhang Weiwei said.
And now, thanks to China's vast market and application areas, China's commercial chip industry is showing strong development momentum and potential.
The most important thing is that under the combined effect of the external environment and the internal technology improvement, domestic chips have accelerated trial and error, transformation, and improvement, and have changed from "unavailable" to "basically usable" and then "easy to use".
In the past, only aerospace, supercomputers, high-speed rail, satellite navigation systems, etc. used "Chinese core"; now, mobile phones, notebook computers, smart wearable devices, etc., have also partially used domestic chips.
Practice has proved that the key core technology cannot be bought or bought.
Only by mastering key core technologies in our own hands can we fundamentally guarantee national economic security, national defense security, and other security.
Right now, the Chinese chip industry is engaged in a war without gunpowder.
The outcome of this battle will be evaluated in ten years or even longer.
We must not doubt Huawei's determination to overcome difficulties, and we must not underestimate the ability and resilience of Chinese scientists.
For Huawei, this is undoubtedly a painful and difficult time, but this may also be the beginning of the Nirvana of Huawei and the entire Chinese chip industry.
(Our reporter Li Yunshu)