Analysis: The $100 Billion Question: Can China Deliver Datacenter AI Performance Without NVIDIA?

Analysis examines whether expanded SMIC capacity and advanced packaging could enable China to offset export‑driven compute limits and compete in AI chips.

As US export controls tighten and China's access to TSMC's cutting-edge nodes becomes increasingly limited, China might fully commit to achieving silicon dominance. This strategy could involve foundries like SMIC doubling their wafer production capacity and Huawei employing advanced semiconductor packaging techniques to offset its process node limitations. A smaller die with advanced packaging would enable domestic datacenter AI chip companies to attain reasonable yields, large volumes, and commercial viability. Will that suffice for China to compete globally and offset the restrictions on compute performance caused by export controls? This analysis looks at SMIC's expected wafer capacity, the importance of die yield, and the calculations involved in FLOPS production to answer that question.