Santa Clara, CA – During an interview yesterday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang expressed skepticism about the idea that the US semiconductor industry could fully cut ties with China within the next decade.
“The idea that we can decouple from one of the largest parts of the world is unrealistic,” Huang said. “China is an incredible market, an incredible manufacturing capability, and a huge portion of the world’s population.”
Huang’s comments come at a time when the US government has been exploring ways to boost domestic chipmaking capabilities and reduce reliance on Asia for semiconductor supplies. The CHIPS and Science Act passed earlier this year aims to incentivize more advanced chip fabrication plants to be built in the US.
However, Huang believes it will take much longer than 10 years for the US achieve independence from places like Taiwan for advanced chipmaking technologies and infrastructure. “The ecosystem is interconnected globablly…It just can’t happen overnight,” he said.
Taiwan currently dominates as the world leader in foundry capacity for making advanced computer chips, accounting for 92% of the global market. Intel and other US companies have relied on Taiwanese foundry TSMC for cutting-edge chip fabrication.
While supportive of government initiatives to support US chipmakers, Huang preached patience and realism about the timelines for establishing completely domestic, end-to-end chip fabrication capacities detached from Asia suppliers.
“This idea that we can suddenly just develop our own supply chains and have the world decouple…I think is unrealistic,” Huang reiterated. For the foreseeable future, the technology industry will retain interdependencies across global regions.
