SMIC, China’s biggest foundry, is the linchpin of a Goldman Sachs projection that the country’s advanced chip supply gap will shrink from 92 percent of demand to 34 percent by 2035.
The bank, in research cited by Businesskorea on August 25, sees Chinese output of 7nm and below wafers expanding about 46 percent a year through 2035, powered by SMIC fab construction and yield gains.
Yield is the soft spot: Goldman notes TSMC’s 7nm lines have occasionally cleared 90 percent depending on the design, while SMIC’s remain the fragile variable in the forecast.
CXMT enters the picture on the memory side. The company, which just pulled $8.6B from its Shanghai listing, is projected by Goldman to be supplying half of what China buys in DRAM by 2028, and around 40 percent of the country’s high-bandwidth memory.
China’s overall chip self-sufficiency, measured by production volume, has risen from 38 percent in January 2010 to roughly 70 percent as of June, the bank estimates, and the buildout is feeding a domestic equipment market projected at $53B.
The rosier supply picture lands at a time when Washington is tightening export controls and pressing allies to curb chipmaking tool sales to China.
