Intel CEO on the status of China’s semiconductor: the existing tools to produce up to 7nm chips backward 10 years

According to foreign media reports, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, asserted that China's semiconductor development will lag ten years behind leading countries due to U.S. sanctions on key chip-making components.

Gelsinger explained that China's existing tools are currently only capable of producing 14nm and 7nm chips, and that the U.S. isn't stopping China alone, but rather uniting the cooperation of allies Japan and the Netherlands.

In contrast, companies like TSMC, Samsung and Intel are gearing up to produce 3nm, 2nm and even more sophisticated semiconductors using more advanced processes in the coming years.

TSMC's 2nm chips are expected to be used in the iPhone 17, which will be available in 2025.

According to Gelsinger, decades of industrial policy have concentrated chip manufacturing in Asian countries, a trend that the US is now trying to reverse with the Chip Act. This legislation aims to increase the technological self-sufficiency of the United States.

The U.S. believes it can begin producing and packaging state-of-the-art semiconductors within a decade. In contrast, NVIDIA's CEO believes this goal could take 10 or 20 years.