{"id":19957,"date":"2021-08-17T16:51:04","date_gmt":"2021-08-17T08:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ljdevice.com.tw\/?p=19957\/"},"modified":"2021-08-17T16:51:04","modified_gmt":"2021-08-17T08:51:04","slug":"water-chips-semiconductors-water-scarcity-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ljdevice.com.tw\/es\/water-chips-semiconductors-water-scarcity-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Water With Your Chips? Semiconductors and Water Scarcity in China"},"content":{"rendered":"
By\u00a0Elizabeth Wishnick\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>August 13, 2021<\/div>\n
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Everyone knows it\u2019s a bad idea to spill water on a cell phone, but did you know that it takes more than\u00a03,000 gallons of water to produce\u00a0one<\/a>? Water is needed for mining the metal, making the glue and plastic for assembly and packaging, and then diluting the wastewater used throughout the process. This amount is 10 times the average per capita daily water consumption in China.<\/p>\n

Semiconductors, the tiny circuits known as chips that power all of our electronic devices \u2014 including your phone \u2014 are particularly thirsty. Each 30 cm integrated circuit board that holds the chips in your phone requires at least\u00a02,000 gallons of H2O<\/a>\u00a0to produce. This is because each chip needs to be rinsed with ultrapure water (UPW) \u2014 water so pure that is considered an industrial solvent \u2014 to\u00a0remove debris<\/a>\u00a0(ions, particles, silica, etc.) from the manufacturing process and prevent the chips from becoming contaminated. It takes\u00a01,400-1,600 gallons of tap water<\/a>\u00a0to make 1,000 gallons of UPW.<\/p>\n

Semiconductors are now a key focal point of China-U.S. geopolitical competition. If data is the\u00a0new oil<\/a>\u00a0and artificial intelligence (AI) is the new electricity, then it make sense to view semiconductors as a global\u00a0resource<\/a>\u00a0generating risks in the same way as any other resources. We also need to keep in mind the water resources that are required to manufacture them.<\/p>\n

While China only accounts for\u00a07.6 percent<\/a>\u00a0of semiconductor sales, its planned massive investment in the sector ($150 billion from 2014 to 2030) has raised concern about a\u00a0\u201cSputnik moment\u201c<\/a>\u00a0over China\u2019s determination to achieve technological greatness. Despite this surge in funding, water availability represents an important constraint, as semiconductor production requires considerable water resources which China lacks, especially in areas where chip manufacturing is concentrated.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s Risk<\/b><\/p>\n

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The water requirements of semiconductor production thus far have not been raised as a key concern in China, which has been focused on developing domestic technologies to reduce reliance on global supply chains. Even before China-U.S. trade tensions heightened during the Trump administration,\u00a0China\u2019s 2025 initiative<\/a>, announced in 2015, outlined steps to develop a domestic semiconductor capability sufficient to meet 70 percent of domestic production needs. While a relative latecomer to the sector, a\u00a0July 2021 study<\/a>\u00a0by the Semiconductor Industry Association notes that China is catching up fast thanks to government funding, subsidies, and tax benefits for the sector. The newly released 14th Five Year Plan (2021-2025) identified semiconductors as one of the top priority \u201cfrontier technologies,\u201d which the\u00a0Chinese State Council<\/a>\u00a0outlined a whole-of-government approach to develop.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, even with $150 billion committed under the 2014 National Integrated Circuit Plan, China faces\u00a0significant technological hurdles<\/a>\u00a0to produce the high-end chips needed for mobile phones, laptops, and other high-tech goods. Experts foresee\u00a0mixed success<\/a>\u00a0for China \u2014 its companies will lag in certain areas such as cutting-edge foundry process technology and materials while achieving competitiveness in outsourced assembly and testing (OSAT) and chip design.<\/p>\n

Fuente:Water With Your Chips? Semiconductors and Water Scarcity in China \u2013 The Diplomat<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Elizabeth Wishnick\u00a0\u00a0August 13, 2021<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[274],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-centro-de-noticias-es"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ljdevice.com.tw\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ljdevice.com.tw\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ljdevice.com.tw\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ljdevice.com.tw\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ljdevice.com.tw\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19957"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ljdevice.com.tw\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19960,"href":"https:\/\/ljdevice.com.tw\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19957\/revisions\/19960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ljdevice.com.tw\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ljdevice.com.tw\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ljdevice.com.tw\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}