[tangotaylor]

I think it will be effective. This stuff is hard. There used to be many competitors capable of the best process technology: TI, GlobalFoundries, Intel, IBM, Samsung, TSMC.

Canon, Nikon, ASML all used to have competitive lithography machines.

Now it’s just TSMC and Samsung at the edge, and only ASML supplies the latest lithography machines.

China will probably catch up quickly but the pace will be nonlinear and illusory. They will hit diminishing returns just like everyone else has.

They’ve probably stolen every bit of semiconductor IP they can through economic coercion or espionage.

All they can do now is out-innovate everyone else and that will take a long time. But who knows, their pace of advancement since Mao died has been impressive.

[ac29]

> Now it’s just TSMC and Samsung at the edge

Intel 3 has been shipping since last year and is only very slightly behind TSMC N3.

TSMC is almost certainly doing far more volume on their leading node though.

[trm42]

One interesting detail is that the Chinese have been improving their photography lens production and quality in rapid pace and cheap price.

The legendary Zeiss is producing the lithography lenses for ASML, so it looks like China is pouring lots of effort to photography lenses to bootstrap their lithography lens capabilities.

I don’t know about the other parts needed for chip fabbing but I kinda expect then to encourage and subsidize other technological fields related to it as well.

[sciencesama]

Smic is led by the person who spear headed tsmc !