When people use their mobile phones to surf Microblogs, Douyin, or play large games and follow popular TV series on the computer, they all sigh at the magic of artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing, and feel proud of being in such an era of rapid development of science and technology. But many people may not know just how big a role chips play.
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Chips are everywhere in our daily life. Chips are not only installed in computers, but also in our mobile phones, TV sets, air conditioners, water heaters and even remote controls.
The US had banned ZTE from buying or selling any products, software or technology subject to US export control regulations for seven years.
The move has pushed ZTE to the edge of a cliff. Zte’s core components such as mobile phone chips, baseband chips, memory chips and optical components are all from us tech giants such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, Intel and Xinfei Com. It is difficult to find a substitute with comparable performance in the short term, or even impossible to replace at all. Zte is one of The largest telecom equipment companies in China, but it will take a long time to replace its reliance on U.S. chip technology. Zte incident reflects the serious “lack of core” problem in the domestic communication industry.
China’s chip market demand accounts for more than 50% of the world, some chips account for 70%~80%, and 90% rely on imports, domestic chips can only supply about 8%. Obviously, the demand for chips in China is very large
In fact, the move, more than ZTE. Take Huawei for example. Huawei’s P50, which was just released last year, is equipped with its own Kirin chip only Pro series. As for the rest, In order to retain the Chinese market, Qualcomm allowed huawei to export chips, but only 4G chips. So, huawei’s new phone in addition to its own chips, almost said goodbye to 5G.
Chips, are they really that hard to make? A chip, also known as a microcircuit, is a piece of silicon containing integrated circuits. It is very small and is an important part of a computer or other electronic equipment, which is also known as the central processing unit, CPU. When it comes to core making, there’s a term that’s bound to come up: lithography. Photolithography, as the name implies, the so-called photolithography machine, with light as the media, depicting micro nano in the square inch, to achieve a variety of micron or even nano level of graphic processing. At present, the most advanced lithography machine can process the smallest line is 13 nanometers. Our human hair is between 50 and 70 microns in diameter, so photolithography can carve lines that are only 1/5,000 of the diameter of a human hair. Isn’t that awesome?
China, a great country, can’t even make a lithography machine? Why will domestic chip technology be “stuck”? The ZTE incident has brought to light China’s difficulties with communications technology. Integrated circuit practitioners know that China’s lack of indigenous innovation in the high-end chip industry is a time bomb for the industry. There are many domestic home appliance manufacturers, the demand for chips is very large, although the domestic research chips can be supplied, but most power plants will choose higher high-end chips abroad. So we have to admit that China’s chip technology is not very mature. Experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have also said that China’s current chip technology, compared with the world’s giants, there are still many shortcomings, if China is still so dependent on imports, it means that China’s artificial intelligence technology, also under the control of others.
How to break through the industry bottleneck, from a chip power to a chip power, has always been a thorny problem for the Chinese government and industry. Some Chinese enterprises have made some attempts at independent innovation, but they have not achieved success. The development of high-end chips requires long-term accumulation of technology and talents, and independent innovation in the short term will face huge challenges. Remarkable achievements have been made in Cambrian science and technology and the Qilin in the Sea. They have made great contributions to the development of Chinese chip technology. Thank them!
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