Just over a year ago, the US government proposed forming the Chip 4 alliance consisting of the US, Japan, South
Governments of Japan, South Korea and Taiwantraditionally maintain good relations with the United States, and companies from these countries work closely with their partners from America. But South Korean companies like Samsung are reluctant to share their trade secrets with Taiwanese counterparts like TSMC, the FT reported. In addition, South Korea has political tensions with Japan, no one wants to support the R&D efforts of US Intel and Micron, and everyone is worried about China's reaction to the new coalition.
Japanese companies produce 3D NAND memory,used in China, as well as various high-purity raw materials sold to chip and LCD manufacturers in South Korea and Taiwan. Japan is fighting to revive its semiconductor industry, so the government has brought TSMC to the country and is building a research and development center to train scientists and engineers. However, it is doubtful that Japanese Kioxia will want to develop even fundamental technologies with South Korean Samsung or SK Hynix, since it will have to share specific know-how with its competitors.
Samsung Foundry in South Koreais concerned that its technologies, such as materials or transistor design, may be used by competitors TSMC (Taiwan) or Intel (USA), who will instead not share their knowledge with competitors. Meanwhile, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix are unlikely to be interested in their research capabilities to contribute to the development of the Japanese or Taiwanese computer memory industry. Moreover, they also compete fiercely with each other.
Taiwanese manufacturers of logic chips andmemories are far ahead of their competitors from mainland China (SMIC, Hua Hong, Yangtze Memory, etc.). However, they buy a lot of raw materials from China and would not be happy if the Chip 4 alliance forbade them from doing so for supply chain security reasons.