Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) has been making gains in the semiconductor market slowly but surely. Though the company suffered from the US imposed restrictions from using the countries’ technologies, SMIC faced several problems in their chip development. But recent gains of the company indicates that it is indeed making progress.
According to sources, SMIC’s shares gained during trading in Hong Kong after closing slightly lower over Friday’s price. The new gains can be attributed to its Co-CEO, Mr. Liang Mong Song, who was still performing duties under his company’s role.
Last year in December, when Mr. Liang announced his surprise resignment from the company’s board, it caused a huge loss for its share value. Not to mention that the United States government added the company to the Department of Commerce’s Entity List.
Later on, the company announced that the US Commerce Department is specifically targeting the manufacture of semiconductors on the 10nm and lower process nodes. The US is not only preventing the Chinese chipmaker from securing access to technologies required for 10nm and smaller chips, but it is also restricting their ability to secure extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology.
EUV is extremely crucial for producing chips using 10nm and fewer size nodes; they are critical when it comes to reducing transistor size due to the vastly smaller wavelength of ultraviolet light.
As the case, SMIC’s Asian competitors like TSMC and Samsung Foundry are in the works of procuring EUV for the production of their chipsets. If SMIC will be able to procure some for them remains to be seen.
