Gerald Yin Zhiyao is the Chairman and CEO of AMEC (Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment China), one of the largest Chinese companies specializing in the design and production of equipment involved in the manufacturing of integrated circuits. During a roundtable discussion held last week, this veteran executive predicted that China’s semiconductor supply chain has the capacity to become self-sufficient by the end of this summer.
Just a few months ago, a statement like this would have been very hard to believe, but today we cannot ignore the titanic economic effort that the Chinese State is making to support the work of its lithography equipment manufacturers. In fact, at the end of 2023, the Xi Jinping Administration gave its main companies dedicated to the manufacture of semiconductor production equipment no less than 41 billion dollars.
Much of the sanctions deployed by the US government are aimed at putting the most advanced chip manufacturing equipment available on the market out of the reach of Chinese companies. In this scenario, Gerald Yin argues something entirely reasonable: the US bans have accelerated the development of China’s semiconductor industry. If this expert’s prediction is confirmed and the country led by Xi Jinping reaches a basic level of self-sufficiency in the coming months, it will have scored a very important point. Even so, China still has a lot of work ahead of it.
Chinese teams are light years ahead of Western ones in sophistication
We are not the ones saying this. Gerald Yin admits it without any ambiguity. An important detail is that when we talk about “Western equipment” we are actually grouping together Dutch, Japanese and South Korean machines that use technologies of American origin, although, of course, the Japanese and South Korean ones are not strictly Western. In any case, and this is very important, Yin maintains that chip manufacturing equipment of Chinese origin is currently between 5 and 10 years behind its most advanced competitors in terms of quality and reliability.
“The joint effort of hundreds of companies over the past two years will allow us to achieve basic self-sufficiency by this summer”
It is important not to overlook the fact that the person who made this statement is one of China’s leading experts in the manufacture of semiconductor production equipment. However, Yin emphasizes the enormous effort that is being made Chinese companies in this sector“I thought it would take us at least 10 years to find a solution, but the joint effort of hundreds of companies over the past two years will allow us to achieve basic self-sufficiency by this summer.”
The veteran Chinese engineer has a long track record. Before founding his own company in China, he worked in Silicon Valley (USA) from 1984 to 2004 for companies such as Intel, Lam Research and Applied Materials. He clearly knows what he is doing. And his latest prediction seems reasonable at first glance: China could have chip manufacturing equipment that is comparable in every respect to the best foreign machines within five to ten years. During that time, competition will also have developed noticeably. In any case, time will tell whether Yin’s predictions are correct or not.
Image | TSMC
More information | SCMP
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