Applied Materials: Currently not licensed to supply SMIC

On June 2, Bernstein Research, an independent asset research company in the United States, held the 37th Bernstein Strategic Decisions Virtual Conference. Stacy Rasgon, a senior analyst at Bernstein Research, hosted the meeting, and Gary Dickerson, chairman and CEO of Applied Materials, was one of the main guests of the conference.

During the meeting, Stacy Rasgon asked how Applied Materials views the company's future development strategy in China and how it will respond to challenges from emerging semiconductor equipment companies in mainland China such as AMEC.

Gary Dickerson replied that since the United States launched sanctions against SMIC in the second half of last year, Applied Materials has not been able to obtain a supply license to SMIC. Facing the challenges of local Chinese peers, the key is to improve their own competitiveness. Applied Materials has its own core competitiveness in the fields of new chip materials, new structures, new ways to connect chips together, and application-specific computing architectures. For example, 3D DRAM technology and advanced packaging can reduce wiring by 50%, greatly improving chip performance.

Gary Dickerson also pointed out: "It is a good thing that semiconductor equipment companies have national top-level design promotion, but not all countries can incubate competitive equipment companies, such as South Korea. For more than 20 years, you have seen that the South Korean government has strongly supported local semiconductor equipment companies, but no competitive company has emerged yet."

Gary Dickerson believes that technology and innovation are the core for many semiconductor equipment companies, and Chinese semiconductor equipment companies still have a long way to go.