Currently, the most advanced regions of the chip industry are obviously Asia and the United States, especially the chip manufacturing part. The three most advanced companies in the world are TSMC in Taiwan, Samsung in South Korea, and Intel in the United States. Among these three companies, TSMC and Samsung have begun mass-producing 3nm chips, and they also have plans for 2nm chips; and even Intel, which can only mass-produce 7nm chips for the time being, has proposed technical specifications similar to 2nm processes early.
Relatively speaking, there are no manufacturers with such technical capabilities in other regions of Asia and Europe, so companies that can design chips in the world are highly dependent on these manufacturers on advanced chips. However, the shortage of semiconductors and chips in the past two years has also sounded a wake-up call for everyone. Relying too much on these foundries in advanced processes may not be a good thing for the entire semiconductor industry.
Before, in order to get rid of its dependence on TSMC and Samsung, the Japanese semiconductor industry formed an eight-strong alliance, and formed a new chip company with eight Japanese companies jointly investing 1 billion yen each. The Japanese government will also invest huge amounts of money, hoping to establish a chip production line below 2nm in 2027 and start providing foundry services to other chip companies around 2030. Obviously, this is to allow Japanese companies to produce chips without relying too much on companies such as TSMC.
Now it seems that in addition to Japan, Europe has also taken action. In April this year, the European Commission proposed the EU Chip Act, aiming to solve the problem of the shortage of EU semiconductor supply and the decline in semiconductor investment over the years, increasing Europe's share of global chip production capacity from the current 10% to 20%. Recently, the EU countries agreed to a 45 billion euro chip production plan, which is actually an investment behavior stimulated by the EU Chip Act.
From the current point of view, the EU Chip Act should be passed in the first half of 2023. According to the bill, the bill will work in three directions. The first direction is to support large-scale technical capacity building and innovation in cutting-edge chips. Specifically, this direction is to build a network of semiconductor research, semiconductor test production lines, standards, chip energy efficiency and safety certification, skills and semiconductor professional centers. This includes advanced chip manufacturing processes, such as the development of 2nm nodes and the development of quantum chips .
Of course, the EU's chip bill is not a solution limited to the EU region. It is still relatively open. For example, if Intel and TSMC want to build factories in the EU, they can also enjoy the preferential policies of the bill. If a company has chip innovation in the EU, such as chip processes with better performance, basic materials, etc., it can also obtain assistance from the EU or European countries and directly obtain about US$30 billion in EU funds and national funds for new factories construction.
In addition, it should be noted that although the EU's chip bill seems to hope that the EU can have more autonomy in the semiconductor industry, under the trend of global economics, a single region cannot undertake all industries from top to bottom in the chip industry. For example, the raw materials part must still need to cooperate with third-party countries. For example, my country's rare earth resources and semiconductor raw materials are both major export countries. If the EU wants to develop its own chip industry, it will inevitably deepen cooperation and trade with relevant Chinese companies.
Of course, both the EU and the United States want to gain a key position in future chip production. The United States hopes to achieve the grand occasion of the 1990s, that is, chip production accounts for 37% of the world's global chip production, while the European Union hopes to obtain 20% of the world's global chip production. If these two regions really achieve their goals, it is conceivable how much pressure will be faced by manufacturers such as TSMC and Samsung. Don’t forget that Japan is also a force that cannot be ignored in the chip industry.
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