Chang Jun Feng warned against three misunderstandings in view of the upsurge of semiconductor investment in various occupations across the mainland. First of all, the investment should not be large and complete; second, the investment should be prevented from fleeting; third, it is not easy to overtake on the bend, Chinese enterprises can break the key points in the 5G communication chip planning and other areas, make up for chip information, equipment and manufacturing, and fight a long war. That is, to spend 5-10 years to narrow the chip planning distance, and to spend 10-30 years to narrow the chip data and equipment distance.
Along with the coming of the AI era, it seems that the chip industry in China has been brought new opportunities for change. China’s chip is brave to do innovation and create China’s “chip” era when it is strong in the outside world and weak in the inside, does this mean that China’s “chip” road have passed through the most difficult early obstacles of material supply?
Samsung has been the exclusive manufacturer of series-A processors for Apple iPhone and iPad products. However, as competition and legal disputes between the two companies intensified, Apple began to turn to TSMC. Since Samsung lost Apple’s chip order, it has been tested to retake chip orders from TSMC.
In a June report, Digi Times said Samsung also wants to take a slice of the cake from TSMC in 2019 and win back orders for some A13 chips. Previously, Samsung was also developing In-FO (fan-out) packaging skills, and claimed that the advanced EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) technology at 7 nm nodes have went beyond TSMC. However, Apple seems to prefer the In-FO skills of TSMC, and all orders for A12 chips have been handed over to TSMC.
Earlier before, TSMC had shown that its In-FO skills were superior in reducing chip packaging thickness and were able to work together to improve chip functionality and efficiency, which was one of the reasons why TSMC kept winning Apple’s exclusive orders.
TSMC’s lead in chip skills has also brought them opportunities other than Apple’s, and EE Times analysts note that TSMC has won new business opportunities for the company because of its dominance in 7 nm skills.
Some time ago, a Bloomberg article pointed directly at Chinese chips, caused a great disturbance in the scientific and technological circles. As the rumors on Internet, many technology giants have been embedded China’s “spy chip” in the back door, including Apple, Amazon and other companies. Today it has been confirmed that this is a big oolong. The so-called spy chip is actually a signal coupler.
In its article, Bloomberg claimed that the Chinese military had designed a microchip smaller than rice grains and had secretly implanted it on the motherboard made by hardware vendor AMD to act as a “hidden door on the network”, which could provide “long-term invisible reading” for connected systems. It was estimated that nearly 30 companies were affected by irregularities, but only Amazon and Apple were mentioned in detail in the article. Both companies subsequently issued tough denials, and Apple described the report as “erroneous and misleading”.
According to Bloomberg, spy voice recorder chip are integrated into another component that looks like an inconspicuous signal dispatch coupler. Robertson says many sources of audio have proved this message. Fitzpatrick distrusts this and points out in an e-mail that while most BMC hardware can easily accomplish so-called backdoor intrusions like running software through remote modifications, inexperienced people often misinterpret hardware such as RAM and microcontrollers as hardware implants But Robertson couldn’t provide photographic evidence for the chips and claimed that the source of the information he portrayed should be maintained. But according to Fitzpatrick, Robertson consulted him in September about what a “signal amplifier or coupler” is, and he responded to Robertson with a very small picture of a signal coupler sold by Mouser Electronics.
“It turns out that the picture of the spy chip used in Bloomberg’s article is the picture of the signal coupler,” Fitzpatrick expressed. And he argues that similar chips have no accounting power, and that it is impossible to accomplish the offense depicted, and that the signal coupler is not a standard device for the server motherboard. And that if there is such a chip incredibly, it will be suspected.
As for the spy voice chip, the Trump government is not eager to make a stand, but it is understood that the United States has long been a list of unofficial skills components and suppliers. If it represents the US government’s acquisition of products or services, it is absolutely prohibited to pick these parts and suppliers, which are found in the supply chain. Gimmicks and companies will always be on the blacklist.
