During this period, some interesting things have been happening.
The first thing is that on July 15th, the U.S. government lifted the ban on NVIDIA's H20 AI chip sales to China, but the Cyberspace Administration of China immediately held a meeting with NVIDIA on July 31st, requiring NVIDIA to explain and submit relevant proof materials regarding the security risks and backdoor issues of the H20 computing chips sold to China.
At the same time, on August 12th, foreign media, Bloomberg, reported that the Chinese government had sent a letter advising domestic enterprises not to use the H20.
On September 15th, the State Administration for Market Regulation announced that after preliminary investigation, NVIDIA had violated the "Anti-Monopoly Law of the People's Republic of China" and the "Announcement by the State Administration for Market Regulation on the Conditional Approval of the Merger of NVIDIA's Acquisition of Mellanox Technology Limited," and the administration has legally decided to conduct further investigations into NVIDIA.
Hmm, the H20 was deregulated in the United States, but China doesn't want to use it anymore, and even investigated NVIDIA.
The second event is that on September 4th, Huawei held the "Huawei Mate XTs Fei Fan Da Shi and All-scenario New Product Launch Event" in Shenzhen, releasing its second-generation triple-fold screen flagship phone - the Huawei Mate XTs Fei Fan Da Shi.
Yuchengdong, the Executive Director of Huawei and Chairman of the Terminal BG, announced that the phone is equipped with the Kirin 9020 chip. We all know that Huawei has not mentioned the chip model at its product launch events for a long time. To be precise, the last time Huawei announced the chip model at a mobile phone launch event was on July 29, 2021, when the P50 was released, which was four years ago.
At that time, Huawei released two models, the P50 and P50 Pro. The P50 was equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor and supported 4G networks.
The P50 Pro had two versions of processors, one being the Kirin 9000, also supporting only 4G networks (Kirin 4G Full Network Version), while the other was the Snapdragon 888 4G (Qualcomm 4G Full Network Version).
This is the return of the Kirin chip to Huawei's product launch event after four years.
The third event is a report from the Financial Times on September 17th, stating that SMIC is testing a domestically produced DUV immersion lithography machine developed by Yuliangsheng. This machine can produce 7nm chips and can produce up to 5nm chips at low volume. However, the report says it will take at least one year to stabilize mass production. Obviously, it is believed that this production line test will not go smoothly.
However, more interestingly, the report mentioned that a Chinese semiconductor equipment production company is developing an EUV lithography machine. This company likes to name its various semiconductor equipment after different mountains, and the internal code name for its EUV project is "Mount Everest." Honestly, seeing this project code name, I can feel a sense of determination.
The fourth event is that on September 18th, at the Huawei Shanghai Global Connect Conference, Huawei's rotating chairman Xu Zhijun released the three-year roadmap for Huawei's AI chip Ascend, clearly outlining the evolution of the Ascend chip from 2025 to 2028 (that is, three years later), and even specifying the parameters.
The Ascend chip will evolve from the current 2025 models 910B and 910C to the Ascend 970 in 2028.
I remember that Huawei hasn't officially launched the Ascend chip for many years. Even now, the 910B and 910C currently sold by Huawei haven't had any formal press release. In fact, after checking, the last official release of the Ascend chip by Huawei was in August 2019, when the Ascend 910 was released, which is the Ascend 910A chip. That was six years ago.
Now, not only has a three-year plan been released, but the model numbers of the Ascend chips, even the parameters, have been published in advance.
What is the reason that Huawei suddenly revealed everything from mobile phone chips to AI chips?
In short, these four events together are very interesting.
Let me mention another interesting thing. I like to do various data statistics. I found that in industrial development research, three years is a rather magical time. Usually, there will be a阶段性成果 (phase result) within three years.
Do you remember when the Huawei Mate60 Pro, which was equipped with a domestic chip, was released, allowing Huawei's flagship phone to return to the market, shocking the entire Chinese industry? It was in late August 2023.
Previously, the U.S. completely banned TSMC from manufacturing for Huawei in September 2020, and it was about three years until late August 2023.
Then, two more years have passed, and there were reports that the immersion-type DUV lithography machine has already been tested by SMIC. But is this news true?
I don't know, but according to the laws of industrial development, it is very likely to be true. That is, by next year, 2026, it would be exactly three years since 2023, and it's very possible that it will be resolved.
My theory may not be correct, but in my experience with industrial development research, I have indeed often found this phenomenon, that is, around three years, there is usually a news report about major progress.
I have also thought about it and think that there are probably two reasons:
1: In the Chinese context, one year, three years, five years are typical time points.
When Chinese companies make future development plans, due to intense competition and a large amount of capital investment, they usually cannot tolerate a plan that does not produce any results within three years. Such a plan generally won't pass.
In fact, in my experience with future strategic planning, the presentations usually paint big pies, reporting how much the performance will grow next year and how much it will grow in three years.
You can call it short-termism or not long-term oriented. Anyway, this is a common situation. Imagine you're the boss of a company, the shareholders and investors have invested a lot of money, would they tolerate three years without any stage results?
Even recently, Xu Zhijun of Huawei released the future development roadmap for the Huawei Ascend AI chip at the Huawei Global Connect Conference, which goes up to 2028, exactly three years ahead.
Looking at how our country makes development plans, even such a complex national-level plan has a five-year plan every five years.
2: When companies evaluate the performance of management, it is the same.
If a senior management team has no performance or technological achievements within one or two years, or no important stage results, their positions are usually in danger. Not to mention if it continues for three years. It can be said that three years is a critical threshold.
Therefore, any organization's management team will desperately try to show stage results to the behind-the-scenes shareholders within one or two years, at most three years.
Or in other words, even if your business and performance were excellent last year, the recognition from the higher-ups might only last for three years. If you don't produce results again, you'll be replaced.
Therefore, the management will also work hard according to this timeline to produce results.
So, according to the theory of a significant stage result every three years, we can expect something. Moreover, this news is happening along with other events, which makes it even more worth expecting.
Huawei's return to the market in late August 2023 was just a prelude. Once the shortest bottleneck in chip manufacturing is broken by China, enabling China to have the ability to mass-produce, it will bring a complete transformation to the global electronics industry. From various signs, it seems that the breakthrough is imminent.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7554075559437828671/
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