It absolutely is because they managed to get to this point in only a few years, people were predicting that China would be stuck at 28nm even just a few months ago. Obviously China isn’t just going to be sitting still now that they reached 7nm, and they’ll likely get to the point where they can make 3nm chips in a few years. Meanwhile, we’re reaching the limits of what’s possible to do with silicon, and western chip makers are basically hitting that limit already. The way forward after that will be to use a different substrate and it looks like China is making the most progress there as well.
Another thing to note is that majority of chips produced aren’t bleeding edge chips. 7nm is good enough for vast majority of applications. As we see with Mate 60, it performs just as well as latest iPhones using the latest and greatest western chips.
It absolutely is because they managed to get to this point in only a few years, people were predicting that China would be stuck at 28nm even just a few months ago. Obviously China isn’t just going to be sitting still now that they reached 7nm, and they’ll likely get to the point where they can make 3nm chips in a few years. Meanwhile, we’re reaching the limits of what’s possible to do with silicon, and western chip makers are basically hitting that limit already. The way forward after that will be to use a different substrate and it looks like China is making the most progress there as well.
Another thing to note is that majority of chips produced aren’t bleeding edge chips. 7nm is good enough for vast majority of applications. As we see with Mate 60, it performs just as well as latest iPhones using the latest and greatest western chips.