Rival superpowers race to boost microchip industries | DW Business

now it's becoming a major Battleground for rival superpowers the race is on to secure dominance of the world's supply of computer chips a global shortage of semiconductors has shown how important they are to the global economy and the US is determined to take control is the founder of cute it's a small startup birth from the labs at the University of Virginia in the U.S they're developing cutting-edge semiconductors also called chips the red box that's actually the laser that drive the entire system okay and then inside this chamber okay environmental chamber there is a very small chip the cool thing is that everything here is at room temperature and other than the chip you don't need anything Hui works with Hussein anxiety this is the CEO of qc82 zaidi says qc82's chips may be microscopic but can have a big impact that's because they'll be used for quantum computers these computers can do things like simulate the movement of atoms and molecules this can help lower the cost and speed of manufacturing drugs but much of the work that Hussein Suey and the rest of the qc82 team does is theoretical and it can be hard for a startup that's so future focused to get funding resource intensive initially time money labor intensive in the beginning but it also leads to much more scalable technology that has much more longevity but their Vision may be getting more support thanks to the chips and science act it's a 280 billion dollar technology package designed to grow the chips in high-tech industry in the United States the thing is though the Act was signed into law in August of last year funding hasn't actually been drawn down yet but it's still driving interest and investment in small semiconductor startups run out of research institutions just like qc82 Richard Chilla works on funding for many young high-tech startups suddenly we have companies whose technology is related to the semiconductor industry and suddenly they're finding a lot more investors wanting to talk with them interested about having conversations with them about funding their next round of Technologies the chips and science Act is already bringing in 200 billion dollars worth of private investment to the industry that's according to the U.S semiconductor industry Association semiconductor factories in Syracuse New York Intel is investing 20 billion dollars due to the same in Ohio the qc82 team produced their first chip prototype without billions of dollars it's an accomplishment that they're proud of regardless of what might come you're literally pushing the unknown a little bit further it's like of course we want to you know make the quantum Computing work eventually even if it doesn't happen as long as we push it to we push the technology to what human being can possibly push it to if it does work TSU Yi Hussein and the rest of the qc82 team want to take things even further one day they hope to design their entire range of products from start to finish on U.S soil that is if the chips and science act delivers on its promise well let's dig a bit deeper into the global ships race and speak to Richard Gordon who is semiconductors and electronics lead at the consultancy God no it's great to have you on the program Richard semiconductors have become a major focus of competition between superpowers haven't they now um why exactly is that though yeah um governments around the world have realized that semiconductors are critical to the global economy and are actually becoming a national security issue so what's going on at the moment with the industry the Strategic point of view is that the globalized nature of the industry is kind of unraveling and it's being rebuilt along sort of techno-nationalism lines so each each power block if you like the US Europe which kind of Etc are all trying to redevelop their semicultural Industries on a more kind of domestic or nationalized basis we're hearing how you know the U.S is investing hundreds of billions of dollars into boosting its domestic semiconductor industry over the next few years I mean its main Global rival these days is China of course how's China going to respond to that sort of spending uh yeah this is a probably the most critical uh or interesting thing in the industry right now is how are the the semic doctor industry investment and Technology roadmap is going to play out um you know up to now it's been as I said before fairly globalized but the US is trying to to regain technology leadership over China and trying to restrict technology into China so China has a couple of things it can do first of all in the short term it can invest in Legacy technology um where the US is not restricting access and longer term it can develop its own Leading Edge technology that's a much bigger challenge um there are some particular critical pieces of equipment that China needs to to have access to or to develop itself and that's going to take a long time you know 10 15 20 years to to develop that that domestic capability for China so the tasks ahead for the US and China are actually very different aren't they the semiconductor shortage that we've seen as a result of the coronavirus pandemic is but the reason why they've realized that it's so important to have you know a reliable supply of semiconductors and is that semiconductor shortage going to continue through 2023 are we nearing the end of it now yeah this gets to where we are in the industry cycle and as you mentioned you know the last couple of years we've seen shortages the social industry grew very strongly in 2021 from a revenue perspective this uh this last year 2022 that growth for slowing down rapidly the chip shortage is resolving I wouldn't say it's completely resolved yet there's still a couple of chips that are slightly problematic from a lead time availability perspective but it is resolving and the industry this year 2023 will actually decline in Revenue terms and that actually is quite an interesting for a timing point of view you know we talk about all this money being thrown at the industry by governments but the industry isn't ready to invest it yet in capacity because of where we are in the cycle so we'll probably see um them back pedaling a bit or or you know being less aggressive on on capacity editions until the industry kind of uh gets back into equilibrium equilibrium from a supply demand perspective as we know the global economy is heading into recession so that's having an effect on on demand yeah so the money's coming but the makers aren't necessarily ready for it just yet well Richard Gordon from Gardner has been very interesting speaking to you thank you very much thank you

Channel: DW News

Views: 194,232

Keywords: DW News

Id: QQxvOFsIkHg

Length: 7min 27sec (447 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 09 2023