[2022-08-11] 华邮 - 中国让自己陷入了半导体困局 - 技術討論區

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[2022-08-11] 华邮 - 中国让自己陷入了半导体困局

Analysis by Tim Culpan | Bloomberg
August 10, 2022 at 7:09 p.m. EDT
Tim Culpan 分析 | 彭博社
2022 年 8 月 10 日晚上 7:09 美东时间

As Washington embarks on a multi-billion dollar, decade-long semiconductor development campaign, Beijing is reckoning with its own 20-year effort that’s largely failed to deliver. Both will need to grapple with wasted funds and misguided goals as they play catch-up to Taiwan and South Korea.
随着华盛顿开始一项数十亿美元、长达十年的半导体开发活动，北京正在考虑自己的 20 年努力基本上白费了。在追赶台湾和韩国的过程中，两国都需要解决资金浪费和目标错误的问题。

Architects of China’s ambitious efforts may be facing the music for having not produced world-beating technology, Bloomberg News reported this week. Multiple corruption probes announced by authorities stem from anger among the nation’s top leaders over an inability to develop semiconductors that could replace American components, it reported. Two of the most scrutinized areas are the $9 billion bailout of Tsinghua Unigroup Co., and the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund — known as the Big Fund.
据彭博新闻社本周报道，中国雄心勃勃的芯片设计师可能会因为没有创造出世界一流的技术而面临困境。据报道，当局宣布的多项腐败调查源于该国最高领导人对无法开发可以替代美国零部件的半导体的愤怒。最受关注的两个领域是对清华紫光集团公司的 90 亿美元救助，以及国家集成电路产业投资基金——被称为大基金。

For all intents and purposes, China has failed to achieve its semiconductor goals, and those tasked with realizing them are being brought to account. Beijing won’t be smarting at the loss of money — it’s been willing to burn cash — but at the lack of progress such expenditure was supposed to buy.
事实上，中国并未能实现其半导体的目标，而那些负责实现这些目标的人正在被追究责任。北京不会对金钱损失感到痛心——它愿意烧钱——但这种支出本换来的却是毫无进展。

Those looking at China’s achievements are mostly finding what they seek, and ignoring the rest. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co., for example, got a lot of attention recently when industry analysts TechInsights wrote: “SMIC has been able to fabricate features that are small enough to be considered 7nm.” That “nm” figure refers to nanometers, a metric for the size of connections within a chip (smaller is better), and these days is as much a marketing term as a scientific one.
那些看中国成就的人，大多是在寻找他们所寻求的，并不在乎其他的。例如，中芯国际半导体制造有限公司最近引起了很多关注，当时行业分析师 TechInsights 写道：“中芯国际已经能够制造出小到足以被认为是 7nm 的特征。” “nm”这个数字指的是纳米，这是衡量芯片内连接大小的指标（越小越好），如今，它既是一个营销术语，也是一个科学术语。

China chip cheerleaders see this as an incredible breakthrough, bringing the Shanghai-based firm closer to the capabilities of world leaders Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics Co. But it’s not, really. What SMIC appears to have done is produce a somewhat standard chip, used for bitcoin mining, and with little evidence it can churn these out with good yields or at scale.
中国芯片啦啦队认为这是一个令人难以置信的突破，使这家总部位于上海的公司更接近世界领先的台积电和三星电子公司的能力。但事实并非如此。中芯国际生产的似乎是一种标准芯片，用于比特币挖矿，几乎没有证据表明它可以以良好的产量或大规模生产这些芯片。

Any budding chef trying to make soufflé will eventually pull off a couple of good samples. But mastery can only be claimed when almost all attempts are successful (yield), and can be done consistently and in large quantities (scale). By contrast, TSMC and Samsung rolled out mass production at 7 nm four years ago — a demonstration that they’d nailed the process. The question of how SMIC managed this, while being cut off from Western manufacturing equipment, also remains. As TechInsights notes, it’s not impossible to make 7nm using older machinery, just a lot more complicated. And it’s an established fact that TSMC has in the past sued SMIC for stealing technology. The company has not been accused of wrongdoing with respect to 7 nm processes.
任何尝试制作蛋奶酥的初出茅庐的厨师最终都会做出一些好的样品。但是只有当几乎所有的尝试都成功（产量）并且可以始终如一地大量完成（规模）时，才能声称掌握了。相比之下，台积电和三星四年前推出了 7 纳米的量产——这表明他们已经掌握了这一工艺。在与西方制造设备隔绝的同时，中芯国际如何处理这一问题。正如 TechInsights 指出的那样，使用旧机器制造 7nm 并非不可能，只是要复杂得多。台积电过去曾起诉中芯国际窃取技术，这是既定事实。该公司并未被指控在 7 nm 工艺方面存在不当行为。

Whatever is behind this possible breakthrough, you could forgive Beijing for holding its applause. The government and numerous feeder funds haven’t spent the past 20 years and more than $100 billion to end up four years behind. It fully expected its semiconductor industry to not only catch up, but set the country on a path to technological independence. A single example of a chip that’s close to what others had a few years ago falls far short of that goal.
无论这种可能的突破背后是什么，你都可以原谅北京的掌声。政府和众多附属基金在过去 20 年中没有花费超过 1000 亿美元，最终落后了四年。中国曾期望其半导体产业不仅能迎头赶上，还能让国家走上技术独立的道路。仅靠一个才刚接近其他公司几年前水平的芯片个例是远远不达标的。

If the Big Fund’s aim was to provide a solid financial return — like any mutual, hedge or venture capital fund — then we might conclude that it did its job. It invested in at least 23 chip companies between 2014 and 2019, and then started selling down after massive rises in their share prices.
如果大基金的目标是提供稳健的财务回报——就像任何共同基金、对冲基金或风险投资基金一样——那么我们可能会得出结论，它完成了它的工作。它在 2014 年至 2019 年期间投资了至少 23 家芯片公司，然后在股价大幅上涨后开始抛售。

But there’s little evidence that the Big Fund itself, or the huge prestige of being associated with a state-backed organization, actually accelerated industry development. SMIC had been in business for 15 years before it announced in 2015 that China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund would buy 4.7 billion new shares for a total of almost $400 million. At the time it trailed TSMC, but not by much. In December 2014, it had built its first Snapdragon processor for Qualcomm Inc. using 28-nm technology, a little more than three years after TSMC achieved a similar feat. It’s convenient to compare SMIC to Intel Corp., the US goliath that has struggled in recent years and also fallen behind TSMC and Samsung, but the harsh reality is that SMIC’s gap on the leaders has barely narrowed.
但几乎没有证据表明大基金本身，或者与国家支持的组织相关的巨大声望，实际上加速了行业发展。中芯国际已经经营了15年，2015年才宣布中国集成电路产业投资基金将以近4亿美元的总价购买47亿股新股。当时它是落后于台积电，但并不落后太多。 2014 年 12 月，它使用 28 纳米技术为高通公司制造了第一款 Snapdragon 处理器，这比台积电实现类似壮举的才晚了三年多一点。将中芯国际与近年来苦苦挣扎、落后于台积电和三星的美国巨头英特尔相提并论很方便，但残酷的现实是，中芯国际与领先企业的差距几乎没有缩小。

Then there’s Tsinghua Unigroup, whose name alone benefited from association with one of China’s most prestigious academic institutions. Although it attracted much fanfare for both itself and chairman Zhao Weiguo, it did little to make the nation less dependent on foreign technology. Among Zhao’s biggest moves was to buy up established local players — including Spreadtrum Communications Inc. and RDA Microelectronics Inc. — for a combined $2.6 billion. An attempt at a venture with Western Digital Corp. failed when the US government vetoed an almost $4 billion investment.
然后是紫光集团，其名称本身就得益于与中国最负盛名的学术机构之一的联系。尽管它本身和赵卫国董事长都是大张旗鼓，但它并没有让国家减少对外国技术的依赖。赵的最大举措之一是以总计 26 亿美元的价格收购了包括展讯通信公司和 RDA 微电子公司在内的本地老牌企业。当美国政府否决了近 40 亿美元的投资时，与西部数据公司合资的尝试失败了。

Unigroup’s big win was backing Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., a company that’s slowly climbing up the ranks of global memory-chip players. But if the goal is to wean China off foreign technology, YMTC serves largely as a PR win. Memory chips are a commodity product — the silicon equivalent of a filing cabinet — which merely stores information rather than the number-crunching performed by processors. If China wants semiconductors that can conduct artificial intelligence or guide missiles, then it’ll need to do a lot better than boast about memory chips.
紫光集团的一大胜利是支持长江存储技术有限公司，该公司正在慢慢攀升至全球存储芯片厂商的行列。但如果目标是让中国摆脱外国技术，长江存储在很大程度上起到了公关胜利的作用。存储芯片是一种商品——相当于文件柜的硅片——它只存储信息，而不是处理器执行的数字运算。如果中国想要能够进行人工智能或引导导弹的半导体，那么它需要做得比吹嘘存储芯片要好得多。

Yet this was a problem of China’s own making. Money alone is not enough to be a semiconductor leader. If that were the case, then Intel and UAE-backed GlobalFoundries Inc. would be further along. Instead, both China and the US need to learn the importance not only of developing your own technology, but building trust among industry peers so that they’ll freely collaborate. Neither TSMC or Samsung became leaders with a go-it-alone attitude. They lean heavily on suppliers of equipment, software and materials — many of whom are in the US, Japan and Europe — instead of taking on a solo mission to pursue technological independence.
然而，这是中国自己制造水平的问题。仅靠金钱不足以成为半导体领导者。如果靠钱就能行的话，那么英特尔和阿联酋支持的 GlobalFoundries Inc. 早就走得更远。相反，中国和美国都需要了解不仅要开发自己的技术，还要在行业同行之间建立信任，以便他们能够自由合作。台积电和三星都不是以单打独斗的态度成为领导者。他们严重依赖设备、软件和材料的供应商——其中许多位于美国、日本和欧洲——而不是独挑追求技术独立的大梁。

If China’s goal is to build up its prowess and cut itself off from the world, then it will fail at the first and surely succeed at the second. The US, if it spends billions of dollars with a similar independence-minded attitude, has every chance of repeating the same mistake.
如果中国的目标是增强实力然后与世界隔绝，那么它首先会失败，然后一定会成功。如果美国以类似的独立态度花费数十亿美元，那么它完全有可能重蹈覆辙。

标红字体均为楼主更改，与原文作者无关。

连科普都做不到的国家，除了偷，实在是搞不懂还能怎么搞技术？

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