After the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) released a new round of export control policies for China’s advanced EDA software and ultra-wide-bandgap semiconductor substrates, industry experts believe that successive U.S. containment measures are unlikely to substantially affect the development of China’s semiconductor industry, but will hinder technological innovation in the United States and its allies.

Karl Breidenbach, deputy director of the Boston Consulting Group, said in an interview with industry media that U.S. multilateral export controls will bring additional burdens to the development of the highly interdependent gallium oxide and diamond-based semiconductor industries, and European and Japanese companies are developing special process innovations such as MOCVD which may be slowed down.

TechInsights analyst Dan Hutcheson said that the restrictions on EDA tools used in GAAFET design and manufacturing mainly affect American companies such as Ansys, Cadence, and Synopsys. From past experience, strict export controls will stimulate the accelerated development of local design tools in China. The industry experts who communicated believe that China’s domestic EDA tools have strong competitiveness in the 28nm and above nodes. Hutcheson judges that Chinese EDA manufacturers will reach the forefront of the industry within three to four years.

Paul Triolo, senior vice president of China at Albright Stonebridge, believes that the goal of the United States is to make China two to three generations behind the West in the field of semiconductor manufacturing, but as long as Chinese IC design companies can still manufacture products through TSMC, Samsung, and Intel in overseas foundries, it can still participate in the global market competition.

Triolo also pointed out that the rules restricting advanced EDA design tools are still to be clarified. Whether related functions can be separated from the overall software package is still uncertain, and the same is true for semiconductor manufacturing equipment. The Cold War-style export control system is hard to adapt to a highly developed global supply chain for civilian industries.