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Samsung may spend $200 billion on 11 Texas fabs over 20 years
TAP TIMES -13- NOVEMBER 2022
Memory (from 12)
The Chinese would love to capture even
a tiny part of the export memory market,
but now, thanks to the new U.S. export
controls, that’s become a longshot.
More sanctions
On October 7, the U.S. Commerce Dept.
announced new sanctions against Chinese
semiconductor makers (See 33). These
sanctions have cut-off China’s access to Samsung currently operates two fabs in Austin, Texas which pro-
advanced chip-making equipment. duce mainly logic chips. Samsung says it will place additional
fabs at this location using a 5nm EUV process. (Samsang)
Industry pundits view the new import rules Despite this mandate to expand the Chi-
as devastating to the growth of China’s nese semiconductor industry, according to
domestic chip industry — which is essen- TechStream, growth of the Chinese chip
tially memory products. industry has been mostly unchanged from
2014 to 2020.
Decades behind
Chinese players, notes TechStream, re-
main “decades behind in some of the most
important manufacturing areas, such as
lithography and software design tools.”
There has been some progress, however,
especially in chip packaging and software
development. China’s share of the back-
end has nearly doubled since 2015 to 40%
due to acquisitions.
In memory, Samsung is the big pachyderm in the room, dwarfing
its competitors. (Pixabay)
This growth is also true for fabless design,
Made in China which has nearly doubled thanks to HiSili-
In 2014, hoping to deflect the continuing con, the semiconductor operation of Hua-
import of foreign semiconductors — chiefly wei, the communications giant.
U.S. and Korean — the Chinese govern-
ment announced a “Made in China” policy China’s share is minimal
for semiconductors. In a Forbes article (Oct. 27, 2021), author
George Callahan says, “One might expect
This pollicy, according to TechStream, to find a stronger Chinese presence” in
published by the Brookings Institution, memory chips. “But China’s share in this
was for China to acquire chip technology low-barrier-to-entry market is minimal.”
by M&A from overseas companies. China The new sanctions, according to Benzinga
also was to woo investment from private (October 14) reported that “one round of
equity funds, such as Tsinghua Unigroup. next page
