SMIC 14nm transistor density sits about halfway between Intel 22nm and Intel 14nm. Intels SRAM density was almost twice that of other 14nm processes putting SMIC much closer to Intel 22nm. I’d note Intel’s 22nm is 11 years old and their 14nm is 8 years old.

Last I checked, SMIC still wasn’t ramping up 14nm production until later this year.

I believe this was directly impacted to problems getting more equipment. High yields on not much equipment also doesn’t matter too much. If that equipment was easy to design and make, then everyone would be doing it. Even a year or two makes a huge difference in this market.

As a side note though, nodes have very little impact on weapons themselves. Most missiles and similar weapons use positively huge nodes because they are more reliable and less susceptible to interference.

We could land a rocket on the moon with 350 times less compute power than your highschool TI calculator possessed. A handful of 180nm chips are more than up to the task. Even ancient 600nm Pentium designs would be more than enough.

People tend to think about weapons, but the real consequences are in the design and implementation stages.