Korean Media: China's Self-Sufficiency Rate in AI Chips Exceeds 40%!

On May 20, South Korea's Seoul Economic Daily published an article stating that although South Korea, led by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, holds a leading position in the global semiconductor market, increasing competition from China makes it difficult for South Korea to ensure future competitive advantages. Especially under the shortage of NVIDIA GPUs, China has focused on meeting its rapidly growing domestic demand for AI computing. As a result, China's self-sufficiency in AI chips has significantly improved. Experts unanimously agree that South Korea must adjust its over-reliance on memory chips and restructure its industrial model to enhance competitiveness across the entire semiconductor industry, including AI chips.

Data released by market research firm IDC shows that Chinese companies captured 41% of the domestic AI chip market share last year. Huawei accounted for 20%, while Alibaba, Baidu, and Cambricon shared the remainder. The market share of global leader NVIDIA in China has dropped to 55%. Recently, U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley forecasted that by 2030, China’s self-sufficiency rate in AI chips could reach 76%, doubling the current level.

In fact, Huawei recently completed construction of an AI computing cluster in Shenzhen, equipped with 10,000 Ascend 910C chips. Cambricon chips, whose performance reaches 89% of NVIDIA’s, have been dubbed the "NVIDIA of China." After nine years since its founding, the company achieved its first profit last year.

Meanwhile, South Korea has set a goal to increase local AI data center localization to 20% by 2030 through the adoption of domestically produced chips. According to Harvard University’s Belfer Center at the Kennedy School, which released its report titled The Index of Emerging and Key Technologies last year, "South Korea’s market share in system semiconductors was 3.1% in 2022 and is trending downward," ranking South Korea’s semiconductor competitiveness fifth—behind the United States, China, and Japan.

Experts point out that if South Korea wants to maintain its leadership in next-generation semiconductor competition, it must expand its business beyond memory chips into system semiconductors, including AI chips. Although South Korea dominates the memory market, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), the size of South Korea’s memory chip market reached $223.1 billion last year—only 28% of the total semiconductor market. There are concerns that if the boom in the memory market ends within one or two years, it could severely impact South Korean enterprises’ performance. In contrast, logic semiconductors—which China is vigorously developing—account for the largest market share, reaching $301.9 billion.

Original source: toutiao.com/article/1865707829329178/

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