The White House held the CEO summit of the semiconductor industry chain: to form a semiconductor alliance to contain mainland China

On the afternoon of April 12, local time in the United States, the White House held a video summit for CEOs of the semiconductor industry chain. 19 major global semiconductor and technology manufacturers including TSMC, Samsung, GF, Intel, Google, and General Motors were invited to attend. Although U.S. President Joe Biden stated that the summit is to directly understand the impact of chip shortages from the enterprise side, and to understand what can be most effective to help the supply chain overcome the shortage crisis.

But in the opening speech of the summit, Biden clearly expressed the priority of strengthening the U.S. semiconductor industry and protecting the U.S. supply chain.

Biden said the U.S. semiconductor industry once enjoyed a first-mover advantage. After the production side was gradually transferred to Asia and the local focus on research and development, the supply side is now “choked by the throat”. Biden emphasized at the meeting that his $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan would “focus on building U.S. domestic semiconductor production (capacity).”

Biden also took out a wafer to emphasize, “This is also infrastructure!”.

　　

“I have been stressing that China and the world are not waiting, and the United States has no reason to wait,” Biden urged during the open session to the media. What we do, we must do too.”

According to the industry’s interpretation, the United States’ China policy has gradually become clear, and it will form a global semiconductor alliance to contain the rise of China’s semiconductor power, which is quite a “Xiangzhuang dances the sword, intends to be in Peigong”.

The U.S.-China trade dispute continues, and former U.S. President Trump’s strategy of cracking down on Chinese companies has changed significantly since the current President Joe Biden took office. According to industry analysis, the Biden administration has inherited the U.S. past practice of containing Russia in military diplomacy. As semiconductors have become a battleground in global geopolitics, it has become a challenge to win over the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers to contain the rise of China’s semiconductor power. The general direction of the United States in the next few years.

At the summit held by the White House, Biden repeatedly mentioned the importance and priority of American manufacturing, and emphasized that the Chinese government has stepped in and invested huge funds to support the semiconductor industry. There is no reason for the United States to sit still.

Therefore, while understanding the global chip shortage problem, Biden also changed the conversation, hoping that the 19 large international companies participating in the meeting could support the US semiconductor policy, which is to strengthen the US semiconductor industry and protect the US supply chain.

As the leader of the U.S. semiconductor national team, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger pointed out before the summit that U.S.-made semiconductors currently account for about 12% of global output, and he hopes to reach one-third of the goal in the future. Prior to this, Intel has announced the launch of a plan to invest $20 billion in the construction of a wafer fab in the United States, and in the foundry part, it has begun to discuss chip foundry with car manufacturers to alleviate the problem of shortages.

TSMC and Samsung, the two largest semiconductor companies in Asia, both expressed their support.

Samsung said it would increase its investment in the Austin, Texas plant and push the process up to the 5nm and 3nm generations.

Liu Deyin, chairman of TSMC, personally attended the meeting and said that the 5nm advanced wafer fab to be built in Phoenix, Arizona is expected to be mass-produced in 2024, with a planned monthly production capacity of 20,000 12-inch wafers, and an investment of about $12 billion. Estimated to create more than 1,600 high-tech professional jobs, it will be one of the largest foreign direct investment projects in U.S. history, and will succeed with a bipartisan partnership with the U.S. government.

A recent research report by Bank of America pointed out that although American companies surpass other semiconductor manufacturers in the world in terms of revenue, Asia has the largest market share in the field of wafer foundry, and more than 70% of the world’s new wafer manufacturing comes from Asia, of which China Taiwan and South Korea have the highest proportions, and Taiwan ranks first, represented by wafer foundries such as TSMC, UMC, World Advanced and Power Semiconductor.

At present, TSMC and Samsung Electronics have entered the advanced process. They have all entered the 5nm process and are moving towards the 3nm process. Although the US semiconductor giant Intel will not lose to the first two in terms of transistor density, it faces problems in the production process and capacity. huge hindrance. Therefore, Intel recently announced that it has entered IDM 2.0, and will be an independent wafer foundry business unit, and fully adopts extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology, but is still willing to cooperate with TSMC on advanced processes.

Eurasia Group analyst Paul Triolo said that the U.S. government realizes that its dependence on Asia is too high, and hopes to encourage domestic and foreign semiconductor manufacturers to strengthen their production capacity in the United States, reduce their dependence on production areas with high geopolitical risks such as Taiwan, and make more efforts in the United States. Create more high-paying jobs.

Daleep Singh, deputy national security adviser of the United States, also believes that semiconductors are critical to most emerging technologies, and the use of chips can range from civilian to military fields. All the most advanced semiconductors are produced in Asia, and more than 90% are produced by one company (TSMC). , is a critical vulnerability.

In this regard, CLSA analyst Sebastian Hou pointed out in an interview that it is difficult for the United States to give up its dependence on Taiwan’s semiconductors, and mentioned that there is a 9-year gap between SMIC’s technology and TSMC.

According to CNBC, Hou Mingxiao pointed out that Apple, Amazon, Google, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, AMD and other US companies are quite dependent on Taiwan’s chip manufacturers, and up to 90% of their chips come from Taiwan, China. The U.S. government wants U.S. companies to diversify their semiconductor supply chains. In fact, this is a rather difficult goal. This also depends on how long it takes to develop the technology for chip manufacturing.

Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives believes that the content of the semiconductor summit may change the semiconductor industry in the next three to five years, but for now, there is no way to alleviate the chip shortage.

Industry analyst Ma Jihua believes that this meeting highlights the malicious intent of the U.S. government, which intends to exclude China from design, manufacturing, and application in the semiconductor industry. He said bluntly that if the United States also intends to exclude China this time, relevant multinational companies will again be forced to make choices, resulting in the suspension of investment in expanding production.

It is worth noting that after the summit, the United States and Japan will also hold a meeting in the near future to discuss a new model of semiconductor cooperation. From this point of view, the United States will form alliances with semiconductor companies outside mainland China. In addition to increasing the proportion of semiconductor manufacturing in the United States, it will also build higher technology and production capacity thresholds in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, and suppress the global semiconductor industry’s investment in China. .