Earlier quoted context omitted.
Europe is a has been. And it has been for at least 70 years. China is rising.
Europe is free, China is not.
China is competently run, Europe is not.
When It Comes to China, Google’s Experience Still Says It All
61–70 of 271 posts
Re: When It Comes to China, Google’s Experience Still Says It All
#62The West and China are playing a global chess game and have been for some time. An impoverished China was not in the West's interests and so they agreed to buy all kinds of lowish tech Chinese made goods. In return most jurisdictions enforced a balance of trade with China, with the exception of the US. On their end China insisted on joint ventures and technology transfer to the extent Western companies would comply.…
> China ended up with last generate tech we are way past that point. China has leap frogged pretty much everyone else in every aspect. It took China less than a year to build the worlds fastest supercomputer (unclassified) after US placed restrictions on related technology exports to China. China was building components for supercomputers over the past decade, they would show case a network, a small processor, coolin…
As someone who spends a lot of time studying computer architecture, I'm skeptical about this machine because of its interconnect design and memory bandwidth. It seems to be optimized specifically for LINPACK. Many people are critical of that benchmark and some labs refuse to participate in Top 500 because of it.
From [1]:
>However, as we know LINPACK does not tell the whole story. On the HPCG benchmark, Sunway TaihuLight reported only .371 petaflops, which is .3 percent of peak. Compare this with 0.580 petaflops on Tianhe-2 (1.1 percent of peak) and .322 petaflops on Titan (1.2 percent of peak). RIKEN’s K computer reports 0.460 HPCG performance, 4.1 percent theoretical peak.
1: https://www.hpcwire.com/2016/06/19/china-125-petaflops-sunwa...
EDIT: To be more blunt, this machine might have more PR value than scientific value.
Re: When It Comes to China, Google’s Experience Still Says It All
#63The West and China are playing a global chess game and have been for some time. An impoverished China was not in the West's interests and so they agreed to buy all kinds of lowish tech Chinese made goods. In return most jurisdictions enforced a balance of trade with China, with the exception of the US. On their end China insisted on joint ventures and technology transfer to the extent Western companies would comply.…
The US government is completely dysfunctional and corrupt at this point and is unable to muster any kind of coherent trade policy. This has allowed China to outmaneuver US repeatedly. This is most obvious recently in the Boeing deal where they are going to build a factory in China and give away all there knowhow after congress refused to reauthorize the U.S. Export-Import Bank, blocked by one senator. See here http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/business/international/a-s...
Re: When It Comes to China, Google’s Experience Still Says It All
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to me that China outplayed the West here by a wide margin. For some reason, the West has let China get away with extremely protectionist trade policies the likes of which no one else in the world would dare even attempt. I think this was a combination of fear that isolating China vs creating a high degree of economic interdependence could lead to war down the line, and a lack of control over Western companie…
> It seems to me that China outplayed the West here by a wide margin. Don't worry, the game is not over yet. >For some reason, the West has let China get away with extremely protectionist trade policies the likes of which no one else in the world would dare even attempt. Yes. But this could be changed by Trump in one day. (Sorry, I know that this is an extremely liberal board). Chinese don't believe in win-win. They…
> Because a lot of their decisions are irrational and it is extremely difficult to have an opponent that does irrational decisions.
While I disagree in general, I downvoted because of that statement. The decisions of the Chinese government make sense in context. They are not an irrational actor just because some of us don't understand their motivations, or because they don't align with western interests. The process is obscure, which makes it frustrating, but there is logic and grand strategy involved.
Re: When It Comes to China, Google’s Experience Still Says It All
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The political will in the West is lacking to move fast in recent decades and really support these kinds of projects. The CCP has something to prove, though, and right now they'll displace entire communities, disappear anyone who objects and destroy historic sites if that's what it takes for certain projects to get built.
That doesn't mean this isn't impressive. What's your point?
I think his point is that there are some boundaries over which we do not go, at least not easily. Meanwhile the disregard of Chinese governments for Chinese citizens can fill volumes :)
Re: When It Comes to China, Google’s Experience Still Says It All
#66Most successful nations today did protect their markets and relied on tight government coordination when they were doing catch-up after WWII: Japan, Korea, ,Taiwan, France, Germany, Finland, ...
The question we should ask is how much is proper and beneficial. Asking China to play the same game as already developed nations is not fair or realistic.
Re: When It Comes to China, Google’s Experience Still Says It All
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It seems to me that China outplayed the West here by a wide margin. Don't worry, the game is not over yet. >For some reason, the West has let China get away with extremely protectionist trade policies the likes of which no one else in the world would dare even attempt. Yes. But this could be changed by Trump in one day. (Sorry, I know that this is an extremely liberal board). Chinese don't believe in win-win. They…
> Yes. But this could be changed by Trump in one day. OH really? How will he do that?
Tell them: Look, you can play around with your currency in whatever way you want. But if the trade balance is not balanced, we charge a 10% import tax. Per day. Cumulative.
I think there are many countries that can produce cheap shoes, clothes and electronics. By now all this stuff can already be manufactured in the US again due to automation and robotics (see Adidas producing shoes in Germany AGAIN).
This would be a minor problem for the US but a big problem for China, Germany and Japan.
By the way, I live in China.
Re: When It Comes to China, Google’s Experience Still Says It All
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It seems to me that China outplayed the West here by a wide margin. Don't worry, the game is not over yet. >For some reason, the West has let China get away with extremely protectionist trade policies the likes of which no one else in the world would dare even attempt. Yes. But this could be changed by Trump in one day. (Sorry, I know that this is an extremely liberal board). Chinese don't believe in win-win. They…
> Because a lot of their decisions are irrational and it is extremely difficult to have an opponent that does irrational decisions. While I disagree in general, I downvoted because of that statement. The decisions of the Chinese government make sense in context. They are not an irrational actor just because some of us don't understand their motivations, or because they don't align with western interests. The process…
That is true (see infrastructure investments). The irrational decision makers are mainly in private enterprises. In my opinion because they are used to 10% growth. They will have to change or their companies will go belly up.
Many Chinese (both in Private and SOE) are complaining that there is a "downturn" right now. This is NOT a downturn. It will never be 10% growth. They have not realized that the game has changed.
Re: When It Comes to China, Google’s Experience Still Says It All
#69The West and China are playing a global chess game and have been for some time. An impoverished China was not in the West's interests and so they agreed to buy all kinds of lowish tech Chinese made goods. In return most jurisdictions enforced a balance of trade with China, with the exception of the US. On their end China insisted on joint ventures and technology transfer to the extent Western companies would comply.…
You left out the espionage part of the technology transfer equation.
You don't need much espionage when western companies are literally sending specs for their products to be manufactured in China.
Re: When It Comes to China, Google’s Experience Still Says It All
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Owning the fastest supercomputer in the world is mostly irrelevant these days, because the entire thing just gets partitioned into smaller chunks in actual use. It's just never in anyone's interest to run a job that utilizes all the resources. At the end of the day, most of these computers are just a pissing contest and are rarely cost effective, and are almost always a huge pain in the ass to use.
You're missing the point. The fact that they could achieve this so quickly is the impressive part.
As folks have mentioned, the evolution of the Top500 shows that "world's fastest supercomputer" is no longer an EE feat: it's an infrastructure feat, and not much of one, either.
If you think the Chinese military is going to be using quantum computers before the American military, then you've got my attention.