Can a piece of cloth choke NVIDIA?
San Jose, California, USA.
When Jensen Huang boldly claimed that AI computing power would increase by a million times in the next decade, few noticed that what supports this computing power revolution is not just chips, but also:
A mysterious electronic cloth.
01 Japanese Enterprises' Hegemony
If an AI server is likened to a super sports car, the chip is the engine, and the electronic cloth is the chassis.
Without a chassis, even the most powerful engine is just a pile of scrap metal. Similarly, without electronic cloth, NVIDIA's Rubin architecture, no matter how advanced, is just a castle in the air.
Although called electronic cloth, it is not ordinary fabric but an electronic-grade glass fiber used in manufacturing PCB boards.
High-end electronic cloth, especially ultra-thin, low-dielectric (Low-Dk) electronic cloth, integrates various cutting-edge materials science and can be regarded as a collection of black technologies.
To date, in this field, the real controllers of the industry's lifeline are still little-known Japanese manufacturers such as Nittobo, Asahi Kasei, and Asahi Glass. These three companies alone occupy nearly 70% of the global high-end electronic cloth market, almost forming an oligopoly.
They don't produce AI chips, but they hold the key to AI computing power.
They control the most difficult and fundamental parts of electronic cloth production and can achieve mass production without setbacks for decades.
Although Chinese enterprises can also produce electronic cloth and have a considerable global share, they mostly compete in the mid - and low-end markets.
Why do Japanese manufacturers almost monopolize the high-end electronic cloth market?
The answer is the insurmountable moat they built with decades of patience.
Electronic cloth is woven from glass fibers, and its performance depends on the chemical formula of the fibers. Japanese manufacturers have mastered two glass materials with golden formulas in the industry - NE-glass and T-glass, whose dielectric constants are far superior to ordinary glass.
Don't underestimate these formulas; they are like Mount Everest in the field of materials science.
Developing a qualified electronic glass formula requires thousands of experiments, continuous adjustment, and control of various process parameters.
Take the NE-glass technology as an example. Nittobo started researching it in the 1990s and waited for more than 30 years for the industry to explode.
▲Source: Nittobo
Domestic enterprises didn't start to get involved until after 2010, lagging behind by nearly 20 years.
Japanese manufacturers with a first-mover advantage have woven an airtight patent network for latecomers. They have applied for patents not only for the core formulas but also for the entire industrial chain, from raw material purification, wire drawing technology to equipment manufacturing.
At the same time, they have also deeply bound themselves to chip giants.
In the past few years, Nittobo has carried out extensive cooperation with chip giants such as NVIDIA and AMD.
NVIDIA's latest Rubin architecture has put forward almost extreme requirements for electronic cloth, and globally, almost only Nittobo can meet these requirements.
Moreover, Japanese enterprises have formed a strong deterrent to competitors through huge irreversible investments.
Building an electronic yarn kiln starts at 500 million yuan, and high-end kilns cost more than 1.5 billion yuan. The production expansion cycle of high-end electronic cloth is more than two years, and the equipment investment for a single standard production line exceeds 500 million yuan. Ordinary enterprises simply don't have the ability and courage to enter the market.
Once a trial fails, all investments will be lost.
Through these three strategies, Japanese manufacturers have completed the implicit control of the global high-end electronic cloth market, and China's related industries have been restricted. However, with China's overall breakthrough in technology, this situation is changing.
02 Breaking the Deadlock from Multiple Points
In 2019, a domestic PCB enterprise wanted to purchase a batch of ultra-thin electronic cloth. When inquiring about the price from Japanese suppliers, they were quoted a price 10 times higher than that of ordinary electronic cloth, with additional conditions:
Prohibited from supplying to Huawei and ZTE!
This is the overbearing logic of Japanese manufacturers: High-end electronic cloth is their private territory. Chinese enterprises either have to be taken advantage of or be excluded from the high-end industrial chain.
This kind of restriction has further stimulated the innovation and struggle of Chinese enterprises.
Facing the monopoly barrier woven by the Japanese over decades in the high-end fields of ultra-thin and low-dielectric products, Chinese enterprises have launched a collective charge.
Leading the charge is Honghe Technology.
For a long time, the supply of ultra-thin electronic cloth has been dominated by Japanese and American enterprises, and China has almost completely relied on imports.
In 2017, Honghe established a R & D team and an experimental factory in Shanghai, with only one goal: to develop ultra-fine yarn and conquer the 9-micron ultra-thin electronic cloth.
But at the very beginning, the R & D personnel hit the first critical threshold - wire drawing technology.
According to Li Jinlong, one of the team leaders, "For several months, the experimental machine couldn't draw ultra-fine yarn, and the yarn breakage rate was extremely high."
To solve the yarn breakage problem, the R & D personnel repeatedly innovated the existing bushing technology, tried hundreds of solutions, and optimized the glass formula at the same time, finally achieving a technological breakthrough.
In 2021, Honghe successfully mass-produced 9-micron ultra-thin electronic cloth, breaking the foreign monopoly at one stroke.
If the core of ultra-thin cloth is precision, the core of low-dielectric cloth is the formula.
The lower the dielectric constant, the faster the signal transmission speed and the smaller the loss. This is crucial for the rapidly advancing AI.
For a long time, the low-dielectric cloth market has been monopolized by Japanese enterprises such as Nittobo and Asahi Kasei.
To break the blockade, Li Zhiwei, the founder of Henan Linzhou Guangyuan, led the R & D team to start a second entrepreneurial journey in the place where the Red Flag Canal was dug.
The biggest technical difficulty of low-dielectric cloth lies in the coordinated breakthrough of material formula optimization and manufacturing process.
Li Zhiwei worked day and night for several years, overcoming more than 100 process difficulties, and finally achieved mass production of low-dielectric cloth in 2021.
This is the first domestic enterprise to achieve this, and it can be regarded as the earliest pioneer in the industry.
When someone asked Li Zhiwei if it was difficult when the company was just starting, he calmly replied, "Can it be more difficult than digging the Red Flag Canal? We people from Linzhou have never been afraid of difficulties!"
Li Zhiwei is not alone.
After Linzhou Guangyuan, Taishan Glass Fiber achieved mass production of the second-generation low-dielectric cloth in 2024. In the same year, Honghe also achieved a breakthrough in low coefficient of thermal expansion (Low-CTE) electronic cloth after the ultra-thin electronic cloth.
The high-end electronic cloth that the Japanese have controlled for decades has been torn apart by Chinese enterprises.
However, glass electronic cloth is approaching the performance ceiling in terms of dielectric loss and coefficient of thermal expansion. With NVIDIA's release of the latest Rubin architecture, the next-generation quartz electronic cloth has become the preferred choice.
This is not just an ordinary technological upgrade but a material revolution, which also provides an opportunity for Chinese enterprises to overtake on the curve.
Deng Jiagui, the founder of Feilihua, seized this opportunity.
This old man, who was once the director of Hubei Quartz Glass General Factory, has decades of experience in the quartz industry. In 2017, under his leadership, Feilihua started strategic R & D layout.
Over the eight - year period, Feilihua successively conquered core processes such as ultra-fine wire drawing and low-dielectric treatment, and finally successfully developed the M9 - grade Q cloth in 2025 and passed NVIDIA's official certification.
▲Source: Feilihua
This is also the current top - level electronic cloth, and the number of enterprises capable of mass - producing it globally is very limited.
Feilihua has broken the monopoly of giants such as Shin - Etsu Chemical in Japan, expanding space for the development of China's AI industry.
Moreover, Feilihua is one of the few global enterprises that have integrated the entire industrial chain from quartz sand, wire drawing to cloth weaving. It provides NVIDIA and the world with a second choice other than Japanese products.
03 The Battle of Materials
Honghe, Taishan Glass Fiber, and Feilihua are just examples.
The breakthrough of domestic high - end electronic cloth is a collective charge of the entire industrial chain. Many enterprises are involved, from upstream high - purity quartz sand and special slurries to mid - stream manufacturing equipment and downstream PCB boards.
For example, Dongcai Technology and Shengquan Group have achieved domestic substitution in upstream electronic - grade PPO resin, making it possible for Feilihua to produce high - end electronic cloth.
Downstream giants such as Shengyi Electronics have completed the mass production of M9 boards and launched them into the market.
This inspiring industrial breakthrough battle is the inevitable path for Chinese manufacturing to leap to the high - end, and it also reveals a cruel industrial logic: The foundation of the science and technology industry war is the material revolution.
Many people think that materials are just basic industries without much technical content.
This is the biggest misunderstanding of materials science.
The R & D difficulty of some high - end materials even exceeds that of chips and algorithms. The reason is simple: Chip R & D can rely on large - scale investment to speed up progress and improve processes, and algorithm optimization can rely on the inspiration of genius minds.
However, materials R & D involves precise manipulation of atoms and molecules in the microscopic world, which requires time and luck, and repeated attempts. Each breakthrough requires thousands of failures.
It is precisely this kind of success after repeated failures that continuously promotes the progress of human society.
From the industrial revolution to the information revolution, every shift of the global science and technology center has been accompanied by the change of materials hegemony.
During the first industrial revolution, the UK mastered the hegemony of steel materials through coke iron - making technology, which directly supported the mass production of steam engines and the laying of railways.
After World War II, the reason why the US was able to overtake Germany in the aviation field was that it broke through the hegemony of aviation aluminum alloys and semiconductor materials.
Today, the reason why Japan leads in the high - end electronic cloth field is also that it has mastered the hegemony of electronic materials.
In addition to the M9 - grade Q cloth, Japan also has strong strength in photoresists, target materials, and packaging materials for chip manufacturing, and even has a monopoly in some fields.
These materials largely determine the hegemony of computing power.
Without the solid foundation of the M9 - grade Q cloth, NVIDIA's Rubin architecture's ten - fold increase in computing power would be just empty talk.
This is also the terrifying part of materials hegemony: It is hidden at the bottom of the industrial chain, invisible and intangible on a daily basis, but once it restricts, the entire industry will stop moving forward.
Understanding the essence of materials hegemony, when we look back at the breakthrough battle of high - end electronic cloth:
This is by no means a simple substitution but a self - revolution of domestic high - end manufacturing and an epitome of the upward leap of Chinese manufacturing.
In addition to electronic cloth, Chinese enterprises are experiencing similar material breakthroughs in many fields such as aerospace, new energy, chips, and nuclear power. Each breakthrough marks a new step forward for Chinese high - end manufacturing.
But the battle is far from over.
When we cheer for the soaring computing power and chip breakthroughs, we should also remember that behind all this are the countless material researchers who have endured numerous failures and persevered in laboratories and workshops.
This silent and great material revolution is not to replace anyone but to take control of our own destiny and contribute to global industrial security.
When Chinese enterprises can independently produce M9 - grade Q cloth, T1100 - grade carbon fiber, and high - end photoresists, Chinese scientific and technological innovation can go further and stand taller, and the global science and technology industry will not be restricted by a single country.
References
[1] "Li Zhiwei: A Technological Pioneer by the Red Flag Canal" Procuratorial Daily
[2] "This Company Solved a Technical Problem by Drawing Ultra - Fine Yarn from Glass" Changjiang Daily
[3] "The Material Revolution in the AI Infra Upgrade Wave" BOC International
This article is from the WeChat public account "Huashang Taolue" (ID: hstl8888), author: Huashang Taolue, republished by 36Kr with authorization.