chips can be called high-precision products. A chip as big as a fingernail can accommodate tens of billions of transistors , playing a crucial role in electronic products in various industries, but for a variety of reasons, we mainly rely on imports.
Therefore, the US regards chips as a tool of sanctions and repeatedly imposes restrictions on us, while also hurting their own chip companies. Recently, chip data has been released, and many US chip giants have become anxious. Foreign media said: The situation is clear!
chip data was officially released
Recently, my country's import and export data for the first 8 months were released. Among all imported commodities, chips still surpass oil and become my country's largest imported commodities. It can be seen that external dependence is still very large. However, the import volume has decreased significantly.
According to data, the number of chip imports in the first eight months of this year was 369.53 billion. In the first eight months of 2021 last year, the number of imported chips was 424 billion. If this is the case, a total of 54.5 billion chips were imported in the first eight months of this year.
Judging from the chip import data, my country's chip import volume has been declining since this year, and order cuts have continued to increase.
In addition, although the number of chip imports decreased in the first eight months, the import amount increased by 3.1%, and the average unit price of chips was 4.83 yuan per chip. This shows that the chips we imported are mainly high-end chips, and they also rely on high-end ones.
, and the number of chip exports in the first eight months reached 186.3 billion, and the export amount increased by 8.7% year-on-year. This shows that our mid- and low-end chip manufacturing capabilities are constantly improving. Not only has the production capacity increased, but the chip grades are also improving. The continued growth of the number of chip orders cut by
, coupled with the increase in chip export volume, shows that restrictions cannot stop us from making progress at all.
US chip giants are anxious
There are roughly three reasons for the above situation. First, the overall chip situation is downward. Since the beginning of this year, the global chip shortage situation has changed, the demand for chips such as mobile phones and PCs has decreased, and many chips have begun to lower prices, and some chips have experienced an oversupply.
US company Nvidia felt the most obvious. The second quarter financial report showed a straight offline, and the inventory was severely planned to lower the price and ship. Qualcomm Snapdragon flagship chips have also been cut many times, Intel revenue did not meet expectations, AMD and others have lowered their revenue expectations.
Second, mainland manufacturing capacity has increased. In recent years of chip rules modification, mainland manufacturers have increased their efforts in chip autonomy.
SMIC invested more than 170 billion yuan in four consecutive times to expand 4 chip factories, continuously improving chip production capacity. Huahong Semiconductor focuses on special processes and has grown to the sixth place in the world. Other companies have increased their efforts in self-development of chips to reduce external dependence.
Third, the US restrictive measures intensify. The US has not stopped limiting the development of our chips, but is constantly increasing its investment, planning to limit processes of 14nm and below, and directly issued requirements for the high-end product to cut off the supply of to Nvidia and AMD.
This directly made Nvidia anxious, because once the restrictions were implemented, they would directly lose $400 million in revenue.
The situation has become clear
So, recently, news came out that Nvidia will, like TSMC before, make full use of the "buffer period" before the restrictions began and place an order of 5,000 "super urgent items" to TSMC, to complete shipments before the restrictions began.
As the situation in the chip industry is entering a cold winter, the chip development situation has begun to become clear. There are mainly three points:
first, and the importance of the mainland is more prominent. In recent years, the revenue share of US chip giants in the mainland has continued to increase. Among them, in 2021, , Qualcomm, accounted for 67.1%, Intel was 26.8, Nvidia was 26.4%, and AMD was 24.9%.
This shows how much they depend on the mainland market. No wonder Intel directly refused to move the factory out of the mainland. In the future, the mainland, as the world's largest semiconductor consumer market, will continue, and who will be willing to bear such a large market?
Second, the losses of US companies will fight back. According to well-known institutions, if the United States continues to increase shipment restrictions on US companies, US chips will lose 18% of its market share and 37% of its revenue, and will also reduce about 40,000 high-skilled jobs.
The ones who hurt the most are of course these American chip giants. They will definitely unite to resist and put pressure on to change the corresponding restrictions.
3, the limitations accelerate our development. U.S. restrictions have promoted our pace of chip autonomy. Among the 20 fastest growing chip companies in the world, 19 are from the mainland. We should make good use of this opportunity and strive to achieve a breakthrough.
Judging from the current situation, the US chip limit is almost equivalent to limiting one's loneliness, and there are not many measures to take!
