this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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The PRC chip industry doesn't need to develop exponentially. TSMC is not developing exponentially either.
Monopoly pricing is not just broken when w 1-for-1 peer competitor at the same price appears. Monopoly pricing can be broken by a less performant alternative at a cheaper price that is suitable for the vast majority of applications. You can see this in a number of industries where incumbent players are being displaced by new Chinese suppliers who don't quite make cutting edge stuff but can sell at a fraction of the price.
Hell, you can see it now with older chips at bigger physical nodes where China is now a significant portion of global production.
Will the PRC chip industry face many challenges? Of course it will. However, the PRC's track record of going from nothing to 5nm in a few years cannot be ignored by TSMC.
I don't mean to underestimate or playdown China's potential. Being from the former (russia-occupied) USSR, I think both the west and global south severely underestimate and misunderstand the nature of China/Russia (and how to deal with them).
What I am saying is that there are also inherent weaknesses to their economic and political systems that are often completely ignored; typically because they tend to be more medium/long term in nature.
Genuinely curious if you have any data on this.
This is one example of "western" misinterpretation/misunderstanding of a regime such as China. While one should not casually dismiss their achievements, one should also be critical about their PR statement regarding 5nm.
To my understanding their 5nm approach has yet to be delivered (show me a product with a 5nm chip) and its fundamentally unsuitable for mass scale production.
It is reasonable to evaluate the role of "5nm" as a PR move and not as a working product.
I would speculate even their "7nm" chips may be less competitively viable than one would think based on their use in Huawei's smartphones. I could be wrong though, it's difficult to find good information on this topic.