How the latest U.S. sanctions on China might impact ASIC miners

I just checked out a piece on Aljazeera that talked about this: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/10/7/us-aims-to-hobble-chinas-chip-industry-with-sweeping-new-rules Haven't gone through the original U.S. report yet, but seems like these new sanctions are pretty broad and could hit a bunch of Chinese companies. The article also mentions that Taiwan is gonna be the first to take these sanctions seriously. But what I'm wondering is, are ASIC miner manufacturers gonna feel the pinch from these sanctions? I can totally see a scenario where we wake up one day and companies like Bitmain, Canaan, and MicroBT might just run out of chips and, in turn, miners. What do you think, is that likely?

Nope. The aim of the restrictions is primarily to slow down the evolution of China home-grown microprocessor & memory production, both of which have military applications. China has recently finally built a Foundry that can produce chips at what was the 10nm node which is about as far as they can easily go without relying on advanced double-patterning lithography and for that they will have to design & build their own systems and create their own in-country supply chain for all the materials used. Even them attempting the 7nm node will be one helluva challenge considering that all advanced lithography gear is made by a handful of companies in the West. As for nodes under 7nm which requires using EUV - only 2 companies make it so China is screwed on that.

Add to it the fact that there are already foundries producing the chips elsewhere that are being used in miners that are assembled in China so it really is not that big a deal. I don't see as much money going into mining chip design in the current cycle at the moment. There seems to be a push for larger, liquid cooled miners at the moment then there are for smaller more efficient chips. We may have hit the limit of what is commercially viable for chip manufacture at the moment and it may last a couple of years. Take a look at the latest CPU offerings by AMD and the new 4xxx series of GPUs by Nvidia. Hot power hungry monsters. Yes, I know it's a bit of apples to oranges comparison, but if they can't make them smaller and more efficient with their budgets, what hope does Bitmain have? -Dave

Good point. Although a cpu drawing 100 or even 200 watts say the Amd Ryzen 9 7950 below https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-9-7950x-ryzen-9-7000-series/p/N82E16819113771? Is a lot less than a miner pulling 3400 watts on a single c19 plug https://shop.canaan.io/products/canaan-avalon-miner-a1246-93t?VariantsId=10003 I can see why a cpu maker intel or amd think they can get away with a 170watt TDP cpu. Toss in 2 nvme .2 ssd's Toss in a Nvidia 3090 ti some good ram a set of 4 32gb sticks You have a monster pc pulling under 1000 watts While the Avalon does 3420 watts at the plug. The mentality is a bit different for a killer pc and a good miner. Having dealt with both,  I see whatsminer doing the m53 as a top seller sooner  or later. https://microbt-whatsminer.com/product/whatsminer-m53/

Yes, after the imposition of new sanctions on China, this will not allow it to purchase equipment from ASML, but it became known that Huawei is behind a startup from Shenzhen PXW for the production of chipsets, which managed to order equipment for the production of chips from abroad in order to build a semiconductor manufacturing plant https://finance.yahoo.com/news/secretive-chip-startup-may-help-230000785.html. But the big question is whether the Netherlands will now deliver the ordered EUV lithographic devices. China's largest SMIC foundry claims that it is able to produce basic 7-nm chips without the EVU lithographic apparatus, but it will be difficult to switch to a process below 7-nm without it. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/china-chipmaker-smics-7nm-process-is-reportedly-copied-from-tsmc-tech

I don't think this is possible but it is possible that we see a hike in the price of miners due to shortage and difficulty in getting materials for it, chips included. Because I believe serious companies will keep seeking ways to survive until there's no way.