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Technicians oversee chip manufacturing at a technology company in Ganzhou, Jiangxi province. [Photo by Zhu Haipeng/For China Daily]
Experts: Washington steps up efforts to crack down on China’s startup industry
New U.S. export controls on advanced chip design software are abusing Washington’s political power to the detriment of other countries in a strategically important sector, experts say.
The comments came after the U.S. Commerce Department issued a directive to impose restrictions on four new technologies without the usual regulatory delay, including electronic computer-aided design software necessary to produce next-generation artificial intelligence chips. The rule went into effect on Monday.
The design software is known in the semiconductor industry as electronic design automation tools. Nicknamed the “Cradle” of integrated circuits, this software is widely used in the field and is critical to the entire chip design process.
Although the U.S. crackdown on Chinese chip companies has had limited short-term impact, it shows that the U.S. government is stepping up its efforts to keep China’s fledgling semiconductor industry from disappearing, ignoring the industry’s increasingly globalized trade principles. Especially on advanced chip design and manufacturing technologies, the experts added.
Bai Ming, deputy director of international market research at the China Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, said the latest development shows that “Rather than a single move or arbitrary restrictions, Washington has taken a series of well-calculated measures to curb the practice.” China’s fastest growing chip industry”.
This can be seen in the recently passed chip subsidy law to build a chip consortium that isolates the Chinese mainland from the semiconductor industrial and supply chains, Bai said.
Such efforts have severely disrupted the global semiconductor industry, which is struggling with disruption risks during the Covid-19 pandemic, and added uncertainty for thousands of chip companies around the world, Bai added.
Roger Sheng, vice president of research at U.S. market research firm Gartner Inc., said the export controls target the specialized electronic design automation equipment needed to design chips with today’s most advanced 3- or 2-nanometer technologies. In this world.
According to him, Chinese companies are still trying to achieve breakthroughs in 5 and 7 nanometer technologies.
“So the short-term impact on them is limited, but in the long-term, the move will hinder Chinese companies, especially AI chip companies, from expanding their chip design capabilities to 2 or 3 nanometers,” Sheng said. Export controls could affect the future of South Korean company Samsung’s 3-nanometer chip technology in the Chinese market.
Zhong Xinlong, a senior consultant at the China Information Industry Development Advisory Center, said the new export controls are a clear indication that the United States does not want China to make any progress in advanced chip technologies.
“Currently, we rely on American companies such as Cadence and Synopsys for high-end electronic design automation tools, but these companies see the Chinese market as a big customer. Synopsys, for example, gained 17 percent of its revenue from the Chinese market in the quarter ended April 30,” Zhong said.
“The export controls will prompt us to double our resources to achieve breakthroughs,” said a senior executive at China’s EDA Company, who asked not to be named.
Shares of Chinese companies involved in electronic design automation rose on Monday. Shenzhen-listed Imperial Technology Co and Shanghai-listed Primarius Technology Corp both rose more than 6 percent.
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