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EXPLAINED: Smic | Vintage Vibes

Chinese fabs import record volumes of US chipmaking equipment via Singapore and Malaysia — homegrown tool makers booked record 2025 revenues as price competition squeezes margins

2025 was a bumper year for Chinese chipmaking equipment firms Naura, AMEC, ACM Research, and Piotech, with each posting record revenues.

Tom’s Hardware

China has spent 3.6 times more than the US on chipmaking subsidies over the past decade — $142 billion and counting, easily outweighs CHIPS Act

Semiconductor industrial policy spending in China totaled around $142 billion between 2014 and 2023, roughly 3.6 times higher than the $39 billion committed in the United States over the same period.

Tom’s Hardware

China intensifies efforts to poach semiconductor talent from Taiwan, claims report — international restrictions motivate illicit efforts to obtain talent and equipment

Taiwan's National Security Bureau claims that China is intensifying efforts to steal semiconductor process technologies and other chip-related know-how from Taiwan as international restrictions get more severe.

Tom’s Hardware

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US lawmakers aim to ban export of DUV chipmaking and etching tools to leading firms in China — bipartisan proposal would ban lithography equipment for Huawei, SMIC, and others

Bipartisan group of U.S. senators propose to impose blanket ban on export of advanced DUV lithography and etching tools to Chinese companies known to have worked with China's military, such as CXMT, Huawei, SMIC, and YMTC.

Tom’s Hardware

Business Brief (March 30): China Launches Trade Barrier Probes Against U.S.

BYD’s annual revenue tops 800 billion yuan for first time

Caixin Global

SMIC sent chipmaking tools to Iran's military, Trump administration officials say — report claims exchange began a year ago, 'almost certainly included technical training on SMIC's semiconductor technology'

The officials said the collaboration "almost certainly included technical training on SMIC's semiconductor technology."

Tom’s Hardware

China's top chip execs claim ASML alternative 'small, fragmented, and weak' — Chinese industry titans call for national effort to invest in advanced chipmaking tools

China's most senior semiconductor executives issued a public call this week for a consolidated national effort to build a domestic alternative to Dutch lithography giant ASML.

Tom’s Hardware

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China to increase leading-edge chip output by 5x in two years, report claims — aims to lift 7nm and 5nm production to 100,000 wafers per month, targeting half a million monthly by 2030

Chinese foundries looking to increase 7nm and below capacity to 100,000 wafer starts per month in one or two years, says Nikkei.

Tom’s Hardware

Applied Materials to pay $252 million penalty for selling chipmaking tools to banned Chinese firm — settles over alleged 56 tool exports to chipmaker SMIC following Entity List designation

Applied Materials must pay a $252 million civil penalty to settle allegations that it illegally exported semiconductor manufacturing equipment to SMIC subsidiaries.

Tom’s Hardware

Memory hoarding and skyrocketing prices hit entry-level electronics demand, foundry orders — China's top chipmaker points to supply chain pressures squeezing out consumers

Rising DRAM and NAND prices driven by AI megatrend and amplified by memory overbooking are hitting sales of inexpensive consumer electronics and smartphones, which affects orders of entry-level processors to foundries, according to SMIC.

Tom’s Hardware

Huawei's latest mobile is armed with China's most advanced process node to date despite using blacklisted chipmaker — Huawei Kirin 9030 mobile SoC made on SMIC N+3 process, but can't compete with 5nm node

TechInsights says Huawei's Kirin 9030 is built on SMIC’s N+3 process: an incremental, DUV-based extension of its 7nm-class technology that pushes density without EUV but falls well short of true 5nm nodes amid rising yield challenges.

Tom’s Hardware

Server memory prices to double year-over-year in 2026, LPDDR5X prices could follow — 'seismic shift' means even smartphone-class memory isn't safe from AI-induced crunch

A worsening commodity DRAM shortage could be amplified by Nvidia's huge LPDDR5X demand and push memory prices even higher as server RDIMMs are poised to get 2X more expensive in 2026, according to Counterpoint Research.

Tom’s Hardware

Tech Brief (Nov. 17): Robot-Maker Unitree Steps Closer to China IPO

Nexperia’s Dutch headquarters blamed its China unit for any failure to stabilize wafer shipments to customers, three Chinese astronauts returned safely to Earth after making an emergency switch to a backup spacecraft

Caixin Global

China's largest chipmaker testing first homegrown immersion DUV litho tool — SMIC takes significant step on road to wafer fab equipment self-sufficiency

SMIC is testing a domestically built immersion DUV lithography system developed by Yuliangsheng and capable of 28nm-class process technology. But while it is said that the tool could be used to make 7nm or even 5nm-class chips with multipatterning, it remains to be seen whether this is going to happen…

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Benzinga

Alibaba And SMIC Power Beijing's Bid To End Reliance On Nvidia And ASML

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (NYSE:BABA) shares advanced in premarket trading Wednesday after reports that the company secured China Unicom as a major client for its artificial intelligence chips.

Benzinga

China's SMIC Pilots Domestic Lithography Machine To Push 7nm Chips As Beijing Turns Regulatory Heat On Nvidia

China's leading chipmaker is testing its first domestically produced advanced lithography machine for 7nm chips, even as regulators intensify scrutiny of U.S. rival Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA).

Tom’s Hardware

U.S. gov't revokes TSMC's authorization to ship tools to its fabs in China — special export license to be pulled by end of 2025

The U.S. will revoke TSMC’s special export license for its Nanjing Fab 16 by the end of 2025, potentially disrupting its 16nm and 28nm-class operations and shifting Chinese customer demand toward rivals like SMIC and HuaHong. However, SMIC vows to ensure uninterrupted operations of its Chinese fabs.

Benzinga

Trump's First-Term Ban On EUV Tools Stalled Huawei, SMIC, Cambricon — Now China's Chip Factories Are Roaring Back, Warns David Sacks

White House-appointed “Crypto Czar” David Sacks warned Wednesday that Chinese semiconductor manufacturers are surging back despite previous export controls, citing new production data showing China’s chipmakers planning to triple artificial intelligence processor output.

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Benzinga

Nvidia Faces Growing Threat As China Accelerates Chipmaking Push

Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) faces mounting pressure in China as Beijing accelerates domestic chip production, with Huawei, SMIC, and AI startups ramping capacity and optimizing systems around local hardware, threatening a market that once accounted for more than 13% of the U.S. chipmaker's revenue.

Tom’s Hardware

Huawei's Kirin 9020 integrates 5G modem, China-made 5G FEM — chip symbolizes resilience to U.S. sanctions

Despite U.S. sanctions, Huawei's Kirin 9020 is built by SMIC on a 7nm-class process and integrates a fully in-house 5G modem supported by a domestic FEM.

Euronews

Trump reverses course on Intel CEO amid US-China chip showdown

Just days after demanding that Intel's CEO step down over alleged conflicts tied to China, Trump met with him in the White House — a whiplash reversal that sent the company's stock soaring.

Benzinga

Nvidia, AMD Export Restrictions Ease, But Chinese Chipmaker SMIC Says That Growing Domestic Demand 'Perfectly' Replaces Foreign Rivals

While the U.S. recently eased export restrictions on advanced semiconductors by firms like Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., a leading Chinese chipmaker has declared that its domestic market is already substituting foreign alternatives.

Tom’s Hardware

U.S. legislators criticize decision to resume Nvidia H20 GPU shipments to China — demand new export rules for AI hardware

Legislators criticize the U.S. government for allowing AMD and Nvidia to sell AI GPUs to China again, but instead of reinstating the ban, they call for new export rules based on what China can build itself.

Tom’s Hardware

Zombie fabs plague China's chipmaking ambitions, failures burning tens of billions of dollars

China has made progress in advanced chipmaking, but many ambitious fab projects failed due to lack of expertise, poor planning, and U.S. export restrictions — leaving behind numerous costly but unused 'zombie fabs' across the country.

Tom’s Hardware

China vows to retaliate against Taiwan for blacklisting Huawei, SMIC from chip tech — "Such despicable acts are utterly contemptible" says China spokesperson

Taiwan's blacklisting of 601 Chinese firms, including Huawei and SMIC, over national security concerns have provoked fierce condemnation from Beijing, which threatened retaliatory measures.

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