6/13/2024

Photon chips will bury American chip makers

 USA is losing the Chips War as well, as China is reported to have found initial success in 'photonic chip' innovation, said to use light instead of electrons. I do not have the technical know-how about how it works, but nevertheless it is a game changing innovation that is going to kill the Chips Alliance.

The hundreds of billions that TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix and USA chipmakers, like Intel, had poured into Arizona to create a chips hub monopoly in the USA is going to be all wasted investments, once China mastered the technique and starts mass producing these chips, said to be withing the next three years.

These photonic chips are said to be very much faster than silicon-based chips made with Lithography Machines. And it is a technology solely beyond the control of the USA. ASML will likely sink into the sewers together with all those chip makers now congregating in Arizona and opening big factories. Putting all the eggs in one basket is highly risky stuff.

But rest assured, Biden will continue to subsidize them until eternity. The question is how long can he be around, and will Trump pull the rug under those foreign chip makers? Remember that Trump wanted to make USA even greater again, not its allies. Nevertheless, all that is needed is for the printing machines to work overtime and the only cost is paper and ink. The problem is selling to who?

The chips sanction against China is backfiring really badly against the USA, Japan and South Korea chip makers. Huawei and SMIC are inventing new ways to make chips, coming out repeatedly with impossible innovations that the West had predicted can only be achieved 5 to 10 years down the road. China came up with 7 nm chips within less than a year, with 5 nm and 3 nm chips following that in about six months later. The rate of progress is un-nerving for the USA and its Chip Alliance members. It is not only raining but pouring on their parade.

Soon, they will come up with another war cry about China's overcapacity in chip production and is a threat to the rest of the chip makers of the world. Who instigated that to happen? The USA should have left the semiconductor manufacturing sector alone and still continue with their dominance and keeping the status quo of a win-win situation. But it chooses to use chip sanctions to destroy China. It is no use for the USA to cry over spilt milk now.

Anonymous

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

When you stir a hornet's nest, expect to be bitten. It is no use for Janet Yellen going around complaining that China is overproducing everything. Instead of taking up the challenge to compete for progress, the USA just wants to pull others down to their level of incompetence. This will benefit nobody.

The USA had, for most of the seven decades after WW2, been thinking that the whole world owed them a living and would have to produce for them to freeload, and all they have to do is keep the printing presses working day and night.

And they soon realized that it worked very well for them by just resorting to freeloading, it also led to their hollowing out of their industrial base, with companies shifting operations to other countries with cheaper costs, and China had all the slaves while the USA companies just have to pay 'slave wages' to produce the goods for their enjoyment.

After enjoying all the benefits for decades, they started the hubris that it was China that stole all their jobs. When they saw countries like India offering even lower slave wages, their companies started moving to India and it was time for them to demonize China using the jobs issue and slave wages hubris.