Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Two startups tried to catch up to makers of advanced computer chips, and failed

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 98 posts

Re: Two startups tried to catch up to makers of advanced computer chips, and failed

#11

Post by hguant »

bsedlm wrote: post #7
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #4

Economical and performant chip and jet turbine production are two areas where China can't really take any shortcuts. They have to put in a lot of time and resources to rediscover closely guarded secrets that are almost impossible to reverse engineer. They are dumping in the resources, so I'm sure they will eventually get there, but it might be a few decades (in both fields, they can already do performant or economica…

> They have to put in a lot of time and resources to rediscover closely guarded secrets that are almost impossible to reverse engineer yes, they have to repeat all that work, they have to solve all those solved problems again because companies that solved the problems won't share their solutions.

>they have to solve all those solved problems again because companies that solved the problems won't share their solutions.

...because those solutions are the company's competitive advantage that China has tried to steal for years on end now? Not to mention in many instances those 'solutions' are owned by or access controlled by the parent country of said company, many of which view China as at the least a bad faith actor, and at the worst an inevitable opponent?

Pretending China hasn't engaged in the world's largest industrial espionage campaign over the last two decades, and then victim blaming the companies involved for not "sharing their solutions" with China is a perverse form of logic.

Re: Two startups tried to catch up to makers of advanced computer chips, and failed

#12

Post by ivan_gammel »

bvaldivielso wrote: post #8
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #4

Economical and performant chip and jet turbine production are two areas where China can't really take any shortcuts. They have to put in a lot of time and resources to rediscover closely guarded secrets that are almost impossible to reverse engineer. They are dumping in the resources, so I'm sure they will eventually get there, but it might be a few decades (in both fields, they can already do performant or economica…

Interesting. What about hiring people from the leading companies? Isn't that how a lot of knowledge transfer happens in all industries? Are non-competes enforceable internationally?

I doubt it is that easy thing to do. What would motivate some key researcher to move from USA/Europe to China to work on stuff that they have already done instead of exploring new frontiers? Hardly any money can buy that. Ego? Maybe few people from the wishlist will take a new job title, but you need the entire list.

Re: Two startups tried to catch up to makers of advanced computer chips, and failed

#13

Post by carabiner »

bvaldivielso wrote: post #8
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #4

Economical and performant chip and jet turbine production are two areas where China can't really take any shortcuts. They have to put in a lot of time and resources to rediscover closely guarded secrets that are almost impossible to reverse engineer. They are dumping in the resources, so I'm sure they will eventually get there, but it might be a few decades (in both fields, they can already do performant or economica…

Interesting. What about hiring people from the leading companies? Isn't that how a lot of knowledge transfer happens in all industries? Are non-competes enforceable internationally?

Stuff like this isn't just trade secrets, in the US it's often ITAR-controlled and requires a security clearance. There are CFD algorithms that are classified. If you possess this information and plan to move to (or even visit) China, I imagine US immigration will look at you very closely and not simply allow you to leave to go work for Chengdu Aerospace Corporation.

Re: Two startups tried to catch up to makers of advanced computer chips, and failed

#14

Post by tablespoon »

bvaldivielso wrote: post #8
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #4

Economical and performant chip and jet turbine production are two areas where China can't really take any shortcuts. They have to put in a lot of time and resources to rediscover closely guarded secrets that are almost impossible to reverse engineer. They are dumping in the resources, so I'm sure they will eventually get there, but it might be a few decades (in both fields, they can already do performant or economica…

Interesting. What about hiring people from the leading companies? Isn't that how a lot of knowledge transfer happens in all industries? Are non-competes enforceable internationally?

> Interesting. What about hiring people from the leading companies? Isn't that how a lot of knowledge transfer happens in all industries?

Maybe it's not that easy. I have no knowledge of semiconductor manufacturing (let alone advanced semiconductor manufacturing), but it strikes me as one of those areas that might have thousands of very specialized crazy hard problems that all need to be solved just right to get things working. If you hire away some guy from a leading company, at best he might have a thousandth of that company's solution (and maybe that thousandth of a solution is only valuable in a path-dependent context with all the other solutions that leading company followed).

> Are non-competes enforceable internationally?

Doubt it. Though I suppose in some cases disclosing trade secrets for advanced technology my violate other laws.

Re: Two startups tried to catch up to makers of advanced computer chips, and failed

#15

Post by chx »

spamizbad wrote: post #5

Not surprised: $2.3B is chump change in semiconductor manufacturing especially if you're starting from scratch. Double that, add a zero, and wait 5-7 more years.

So 50B? That's nowhere near what you need. Last year both TSMC and Intel announced they are spending a hundred billion each on new fabs (TSMC in April, Intel in July) and they have all the R&D already and good relationship with ASML (and both own a few percent of it, too).

But the US banned ASML from selling to China so you need to catch up with ASML and Intel/TSMC at the same time. Now, I don't know when ASML started researching EUV but they were certainly working on it in 1998 -- which doesn't mean it'll take twenty years to replicate it because surely some of it is public but still, it's a big, big project. https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA56970339&sid=googleSc...

Re: Two startups tried to catch up to makers of advanced computer chips, and failed

#16

Post by bfung »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #4

Economical and performant chip and jet turbine production are two areas where China can't really take any shortcuts. They have to put in a lot of time and resources to rediscover closely guarded secrets that are almost impossible to reverse engineer. They are dumping in the resources, so I'm sure they will eventually get there, but it might be a few decades (in both fields, they can already do performant or economica…

I suspect some or most of this secret sauce is more like institutional knowledge and not one single person knows how the whole system works (to produce high quality chips at scale). Or maybe there IS one person, but that’s the CEO/founder, haha.

Regardless, it’s similar to software companies claiming to run agile, but always reverting to the “get it done, waterfall deadline” mode. It takes good effort and detailed knowledge of pitfalls to avoid to actually make a less intuitive, but more repeatable and productive process work. (Agile’s been around for over 10years and people still don’t do good versions well)

Re: Two startups tried to catch up to makers of advanced computer chips, and failed

#17

Post by genericone »

For a somewhat biased take on the situation, Asianometry on Youtube talked about Hongxin last year, this guy's choice of topic coverage is all over the map, but focuses on Asia, Tech, and Politics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZSvDYDfd78

Re: Two startups tried to catch up to makers of advanced computer chips, and failed

#18

Post by tablespoon »

carabiner wrote: post #13
bvaldivielso wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. What about hiring people from the leading companies? Isn't that how a lot of knowledge transfer happens in all industries? Are non-competes enforceable internationally?

Stuff like this isn't just trade secrets, in the US it's often ITAR-controlled and requires a security clearance. There are CFD algorithms that are classified. If you possess this information and plan to move to (or even visit) China, I imagine US immigration will look at you very closely and not simply allow you to leave to go work for Chengdu Aerospace Corporation.

> If you possess this information and plan to move to (or even visit) China, I imagine US immigration will look at you very closely and not simply allow you to leave to go work for Chengdu Aerospace Corporation.

I don't think the US border control system works like that. If you're a citizen, you never need an exit visa. IIRC, as long as you have a valid passport, you can exit and enter as you please, but if there's probable cause to suspect you of a crime they can arrest you.

China's system, on the other hand, does work like that. IIRC, anyone with any authority or access to secrets isn't allowed to have free control over their passport, and they have systems for denying people exit permission.

Re: Two startups tried to catch up to makers of advanced computer chips, and failed

#19

Post by pixl97 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #4

Economical and performant chip and jet turbine production are two areas where China can't really take any shortcuts. They have to put in a lot of time and resources to rediscover closely guarded secrets that are almost impossible to reverse engineer. They are dumping in the resources, so I'm sure they will eventually get there, but it might be a few decades (in both fields, they can already do performant or economica…

What about doing it the old fashion way and just stealing said information?

Re: Two startups tried to catch up to makers of advanced computer chips, and failed

#20

Post by nwiswell »

pixl97 wrote: post #19
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #4

Economical and performant chip and jet turbine production are two areas where China can't really take any shortcuts. They have to put in a lot of time and resources to rediscover closely guarded secrets that are almost impossible to reverse engineer. They are dumping in the resources, so I'm sure they will eventually get there, but it might be a few decades (in both fields, they can already do performant or economica…

What about doing it the old fashion way and just stealing said information?

At least for semiconductors a lot of the magic is distributed tribal knowledge among engineers and the sophisticated equipment used to fabricate the devices (all major suppliers are in the US, Europe, and Japan). So theft is not really a complete solution, although it can help.
Post reply on HN