Lagging in semiconductors, China sees a chance to overtake the US with AI chips as 5G ushers in new era
- This is the final part in a series of in-depth articles examining China’s efforts to build a stronger domestic semiconductor industry amid rising trade tensions
- Here we look at whether the coming shift in computing from mobile to the internet of things is the break that China needs to close the technology gap
Today’s iPhone has 100,000 times the processing power of the Apollo computer that landed humankind on the moon 50 years ago while costing a tiny fraction of the Nasa machine. This is down to Moore’s Law, the observation by one of the founders of Intel, a chip maker, that computing power doubles every two years.
That this correlation has held for five decades helps to explain China’s position on the proverbial hamster wheel – never quite catching up in semiconductor technology. As a relative latecomer to the chip industry, experts reckon China is somewhere between five to 10 years behind the cutting edge in the technology to design and produce integrated circuits (IC).
This is important because ICs go into everything from smartphones to spacecraft, and despite pouring funds into research and development, China has struggled to catch up to global leaders like US-based Intel, South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), all of which are investing billions of their own money into pushing the boundaries of physics and materials science.
But with Moore’s Law slowing down as it challenges physical limits, many in China see this tapping of the brakes as the once-in-a-lifetime chance for the country to close the gap, maybe even to overtake, as computing shifts from smartphones to everyday objects, powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
In this new data economy, the argument goes, China has an edge because of its huge population and application of AI on a large scale in many areas, from facial recognition used in law enforcement to finding the best route for a meal delivery. Or as venture capitalist Lee Kai-fu put it, if data is the new oil, then China is the Saudi Arabia of data.
In theory, this should translate into an advantage in designing so-called AI accelerator chips to suit each different application. And because AI chips will be custom-built for the specific application, they can offer superior performance over conventional ICs even when manufactured using older (and cheaper) technology and equipment that are widely available in China, a boon to the country’s push for self-reliance in core technology.
