The crucial words are in the very first sentence of the article: ".. has likely advanced its production technology ..". Reading the rest of the article it seems that they saw a product announcement from a company which happens to be a SMIC customer. It has not been confirmed that this product was actually made by SMIC. I'm not sure that it is possible to manufacture 7 nm products with sufficient yield without the use of ASML machines.
@HobbyTrading, FYI: many Chinese companies no longer announce their achievements b/c then the US sanctions these companies. Same happens with companies that build Chinese supercomputers... All caused by dumb US sanctions politics...
Do you really trust chips made in China? Security risks aside, do you really trust its quality? This is what goes into every single computer, network, medical equipment, robotic system, airplanes, fighter jets and even smart cars. Do you really want to drop from the sky 30K feet above because the plane malfunctioned due to chips made in China? Or your pacemaker stopped working because of chips made in China and you die of heart failure? It's great that China has made progress in its chip-making capabilities but being able to rely on them for usage in critical systems is another story. During the pandemic times, many of the masks that they produced for various countries' procurement weren't even up to the PPE standards. If they can't even make masks right, what makes you think they can make chips right?
Taiwan is not going to walk over to China. If it's going to belong to China, it would have to be taken over. PRC already realizes this.
I do trust chips made in/by China more than chips made by US company Intel... Such hi-tech processes are controlled and verified again by other hi-tech processes, so errors should be detected automatically... unless of course it's the c-rap US company Intel US products & services are nearly all weaponized by default, with a backdoor built-in for remote controlling/shutting down/sabotaging; nobody really wants freely use any US products anymore Here's proof for the US government backdoor (called CALEA) in US Telco products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act
Yeah China's chips won't have backdoor. LOL It's a country controlled by a dictatorship that doesn't give a shit about its own people and you are going to trust chips made by them? Oh well have fun using chips made in China then. You are going to realize "i told you so" when you are dropping from the sky due to the plane malfunctioning due to the usage of the chips made in China. Sincerely hope it doesn't happen to you. Then again even if it does, your loved ones won't even know the real reason why the plane failed. Has the Chinese government published the true cause of the China Eastern Airline disaster due to pilot sabotage yet? Anyway, we will stick with chips made by Intel and AMD and its subsidiaries. To each its own!
Last I heard Intel's GlobalFoundries still stuck at 10nm. 7nm is an amazing feat and puts China ahead of Intel. Only 2 companies can currently go sub 7nm and they're not American companies (TSMC Samsung). Which means America will soon fall behind China in chip-making! USA makes the light source for the advance lithography machines, but they can't or haven't mastered sub 10nm nodes, which is why Intel has to go to TSMC/Samsung to get 7nm/5nm chips made. Anyways, the best news I heard recently was Huawei gonna release phones with 3D-stacked 14nm chips with same performance as 5nm (but obviously not as heat/power efficient as a real 5nm chip). Imagine 3D-stacked 7nm...
These 7 nm chips are probably just prototypes. It's too early to see if these will be ready for mass production.
My conspiracy theory regarding this incidence is as follows: USA demanded from China not to support Russia in Ukraine, China said China is neutral and that Ukraine is the result of failed US and EU politics, incl. NATO. Then USA punished China via its backdoor in the US-made airplane... How does this theory smell?...
The monopolist for the lithography machines, Dutch company ASML, could sell at least 30 of its machines to China, but these European cowards bow to US dictates and sanctions...