Without these sanctions, China will likely soon develop chip design talent that's at the cutting edge, but they'll fab with TSMC (and thus use the entire Western-dependant supply chain). This means that China's chip manufacturing ecosystem will remain poor, unpopular and underdeveloped.
With these sanctions, China's chip design talent can't fab cutting edge chips. But China's manufacturing ecosystem suddenly gets the market incentive to develop. I don't think they will reach EUV any time soon, and that hurts. But dominating the mature chip manufacturing sector in the mid term is an achievable goal, and mature chips are still absolutely essential even if they're not "sexy". Whereas before sanctions, there was no way they could dominate in chip manufacturing (nobody wanted to fab with Chinese manufacturers or wanted to buy Chinese chip manufacturing equipment), only in chip design.
What these sanctions did was trading one thing (cutting-edge chip design) for the other (mature chip manufacturing). The short-term blow to China sounds sexy, but they've created a long-term problem. Is this trade worth it? I wonder whether policymakers even realize they're making this trade.
Without these sanctions, China will likely soon develop chip design talent that's at the cutting edge, but they'll fab with TSMC (and thus use the entire Western-dependant supply chain). This means that China's chip manufacturing ecosystem will remain poor, unpopular and underdeveloped.
With these sanctions, China's chip design talent can't fab cutting edge chips. But China's manufacturing ecosystem suddenly gets the market incentive to develop. I don't think they will reach EUV any time soon, and that hurts. But dominating the mature chip manufacturing sector in the mid term is an achievable goal, and mature chips are still absolutely essential even if they're not "sexy". Whereas before sanctions, there was no way they could dominate in chip manufacturing (nobody wanted to fab with Chinese manufacturers or wanted to buy Chinese chip manufacturing equipment), only in chip design.
What these sanctions did was trading one thing (cutting-edge chip design) for the other (mature chip manufacturing). The short-term blow to China sounds sexy, but they've created a long-term problem. Is this trade worth it? I wonder whether policymakers even realize they're making this trade.