Let's talk about the last two plans, which basically revolve around building our own chip production system and realizing independent research and development, independent manufacturing and independent production of advanced chips. At first glance, I feel that hope has come again, and our national industry and technology brands will continue to make great achievements, but those who know about this industry must know that there is an insurmountable threshold-Wassenaar Agreement.
During the Cold War after World War II, in order to prevent the Soviet Union from developing high-end weapons, at the initiative of the United States, 17 countries, including the United States, Britain, Japan, France and Australia, set up an organization called the Paris Coordinating Committee (Batumi for short) in Paris in November 1949, with the aim of restricting member countries from exporting strategic materials and high technology to socialist countries, including military weapons and equipment, cutting-edge technology products and rare materials. With the end of the Cold War, the Batumi organization was dissolved in 1994.
in July 1996, 33 countries, mainly western countries, signed the Wassenaar Arrangement in Vienna, Austria, and decided to implement the new control list and information exchange rules from November 1.
"Waxie" contains two control lists: one is a list of dual-use goods and technologies, covering nine categories, including advanced materials, material processing, computers, electronic devices, sensors and lasers, navigation and avionics, telecommunications and information security, ships and maritime equipment, and propulsion systems; The other is the list of military products, covering 22 categories of weapons, ammunition, equipment and combat platforms, including all the high and new technologies you can think of.
The main countries of the Wassenaar Agreement are all in the western developed countries such as Europe and America, and China and some other developing countries are in this restricted list.
although the tile association allows member countries to control their own technology exports on a voluntary basis, in fact, the United States always takes the global security strategy into consideration, which makes member countries deeply influenced by the United States in important technology export decisions and hinders the export of high and new technologies to China.
Let's talk about Huawei's independent chips, even other potential enterprises. The whole semiconductor field is limited by Wassenaar Agreement, and we can't get the latest foreign technology from chip design and production. The best wafer foundry in the world is TSMC. TSMC's production process comes from mask aligner of ASML Company (ASML) in the Netherlands. It is mass-produced at 7nm and under development at 5nm. China's SMIC actually uses ASML's mask aligner, but now it can only produce 28nm\14nm. Due to the "tile association", the advanced level is several generations behind.
in 217, SMIC successfully booked an EUV mask aligner order with a process of 7nm from ASML. Due to the obstruction of a big country, this mask aligner has not been delivered to SMIC until today.
since mask aligner is so important, can we make it? Let's take a look at the 1, parts of ASML mask aligner, which come from global suppliers. According to the suppliers published by ASML before, the top 17 suppliers are mainly concentrated in Europe, the United States, Japan and Taiwan Province, China, among which the United States accounts for 9, Taiwan Province 4, Japan 3 and Germany 1. Among the suppliers involved in mask aligner's core components, the lenses and light sources are from Europe and the United States (the lenses are from Zeiss in Germany and the light sources are from cymer in the United States).
restricted by Wassenaar Agreement, domestic wafer foundry enterprises such as SMIC can't buy advanced mask aligner and produce mask aligner independently, so it's basically impossible for parts department to buy the latest ones. It will be a difficult process for parts and components to be completely replaced by domestic ones, which involves many aspects of technology accumulation. I believe that through the passage of time and the hard work of technicians, we will be able to make our science and technology walk in the forefront of the world!
do you think that through the efforts of Huawei and other technology companies, our chips can be produced independently and overtake in corners?