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China To Spend $47 Billion In Bid To Become 3rd-Largest Global Chip Manufacturer (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In an interview with Reuters, the head of China's Tsinghua Unigroup has revealed they will invest 300 billion yuan ($47bn) over the next five years with the ambition of becoming the world's third largest chip-maker. The state-backed company, also the technological investment arm of Tsinghua University, is in talks with an unnamed U.S. company (most likely Micron) though Zhao discounts the possibility of buying a controlling share as politically insensitive.
from the article
"Currently, Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) holds the No.3 position in the global chip rankings, behind Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) and market leader Intel Corp (INTC.O), which has a market capitalization of $151.5 billion."
who where what when now?
Qualcomm doesn't manufacture chips though: they design them. They're a fabless semiconductor company.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I think it's getting to be time for public companies to have an upper limit on the nature of compensation bonuses for top management. Stop it with the golden parachutes and define the rules where their stock options given as bonuses cannot be exercised until so many years have passed and then must be cashed-out when they have matured, such that management has incentive to do what it takes to leave the company healthy even as they exit it.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If you read the article or look at wikipedia you'll see that Intel is easily #1 (by revenue.)
Consider that they design and manufacture most processors in laptops and desktops and that those chips are a lot more expensive than generic ICs.
Then it's Samsung, Qualcomm (who doesn't actually fab their own stuff), and Micron. I don't think they're including foundries but even if you included those TSMC would probably only be #3 (or a very close #4.)
No other foundry even comes close to top 10 semiconductor company revenue.
China's current top foundry is probably SMIC and they don't even have a semiconductor company in the top 20 revenue list. You'll see lots of USA, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan (more so in foundries), and a few European companies instead.
China has infiltrated the networks of most major US companies, so in all likelihood all of the schematics and blueprints from Intel are available to them, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. China is far and away the world leader in computer espionage, certainly in terms of the relentless volume of constant attacks and probably also in the sophistication of their best attacks. Some companies block all of China's IP space from accessing their networks because the daily attacks are relentless.
We can assume that any technology US or European companies have is in the hands of the Chinese government, or soon will be. Keep in mind too this electronics company is part of the Chinese government - the same organization that employs armies of hackers. So if not a question of if the government will provide this IP to the company- the government -is- the company and company is the government.
of existing chips of course.
Their Wikipedia page says nothing about their EE department. I took a quick look at their EE dept. faculty page and, while large, don't seem to be doing much in chip design or fabrication.
Can someone with more knowledge of the University provide some insight on its relationship to the Chinese military and national government? Has anybody here worked with current Tsinghua University faculty?
Actually, we need to roll back the regs that reagan removed.
After the great stock market crash, a reg was put in place that required that all executives not own any stock in the industry that they were working in. As such, they made correct choices for the company and not for themselves. Since reagan rolled that back, the executives have shifted from being paid wages (with normal taxation), along with a bonus for profit performance, to paying themselves with massive stock options in which they pay little to nothing in taxes. Worse, they put their own interests above the the company's long-term interest.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.