Semiconductors are a critical part of almost every modern electronic device. In electronics, a chip refers to a small piece of semiconductor that contains electronic circuits that store and process information. Today they can contain billions of microscopic switches on a chip smaller than a fingernail.
The Center for Security and Emerging Technology (ETO) at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., publishes the Research Almanac which tracks global trends in research across critical technology domains, mapping growth trends and identifying leading companies, research institutions and companies. Recently ETO took a high-level look at chip design and fabrication.
According to the latest data from the Research Almanac, China produces by far the most chip design and fabrication research publications of any country:
- China produces by far the most chip design and fabrication research publications, with more papers from 2018-2023 than the next three countries combined.
- China leads in top-cited chip publication output, with half of the top-cited articles featuring authors from Chinese organizations and universities.
- Most recent growth in published chip design and fabrication research came from China and India, while research output from most other countries actually shrunk over time.
- Nine of the top ten biggest producers of chip research between 2018-2023 are Chinese research institutions, led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with 14,387 articles released between 2018 and 2023. (This counts only English-language articles – the Chinese total would be higher still if Chinese-language articles were included.)
- When only highly cited articles are counted, Chinese organizations hold the top 8 spots. By the metric used here – number of recent publications in the top decile, by citation count, of all chip design and fabrication papers from the same period – the world leaders are the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Tsinghua University.
Source: ETO Research Almanac, Mar 3, 2025. https://www.eto.tech/blog/state-global-chip-research/
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