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

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

#61

Post by seanmcdirmid »

0000011111 wrote: post #47
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…

China launched more rockets to orbit than any other country last year. They make not take short cuts. But they do catch up quickly in terms of development.

Rockets are pretty simple compared to jet turbines, rocket production doesn't have as thick of a moat as jet turbine production.

> Developing jet engine is not an easy game unlike rocket engines as it's comparatively very compact in size & it requires advance engineering to develop it's crystal blades technology & maintain it's thrust to weight ratio & that's what make jet engine technology one of the most complicated technology.

From https://defenceview.in/how-difficult-is-it-to-build-an-jet-e...

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

#62

Post by mensetmanusman »

300bps wrote: post #57
acchow wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it might be a few decades They could just hire the experts from the incumbents

The article said that’s exactly what they did from CEO to engineers and they still failed. HSMC attracted a former top TSMC executive as chief executive. QXIC recruited dozens of experienced engineers from Taiwan, including from TSMC, with relatively big pay packages, according to former employees.

I wonder if they were playing both sides, ie getting a ton of money from China and TSMC to just lead them astray :)

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

#63

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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.

Not just companies, but the Russians were pissed after China copied some of their jet military tech. They were angry enough that they stopped supplying them with military jet turbine parts for awhile, which really tripped things up for the Chinese because they can't produce their own at the same level (they can make fast, they can make economical, but they can't make both yet).

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

#64

Post by kelnos »

chx wrote: post #15
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 starte…

Is Intel's & TSMC's spends comparable, though? They are both already executing at very high scale, so further investments need to be pretty huge to be worth it. A new upstart could likely start smaller. Not too small such that you can't develop any economies of scale, but significantly smaller than either Intel's or TSMC's planned operations.

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

#65

Post by bcrl »

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…

Indeed, there is no free lunch. Just look at Intel's missteps on their 10nm process. There's a company with decades of experience building semiconductors and $77 billion in revenue last year that took close to 4 years to recover from initial mistakes with their transition from their 14nm process to a 10nm class process. If Intel has that much difficulty, just imagine how many orders of magnitude harder it is for a small upstart without all of that institutional experience and resources to recreate that process step from scratch.

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

#66

Post by bigbillheck »

stickfigure wrote: post #43
r00fus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you actually understand how this works or are you theorizing? The no-fly-list exists. Security clearances are tracked.

Anyone who has been through civics 101 in the US knows this. Unless there is a warrant out for your arrest, the US government cannot stop a US citizen from leaving the country. Even if somehow you got on the no-fly list, you can take a boat. Or drive/walk across one of the land borders. Perfectly legally. Security clearances are a red herring. The folks working in Intel/TSMC/TI/etc fabs don't have or need security cl…

> Anyone who has been through civics 101 in the US knows this

Anyone who has been through civics 102 in the US knows that there's lots of ways to get your passport taken away, and without one you're not getting far. It looks like Canada's requiring either passports or fancy drivers licenses (only available from some states), and Mexico's at least as strict.

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

#67

Post by ffwszgf »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #26
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?

Leaders in their field usually do not want to live under a totalitarian communist government.

If you pay them enough most people don’t care. Chinese companies routinely poach Japanese talent in car manufacturing and Taiwanese talent for chips.

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

#68

Post by WalterBright »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #59
WalterBright wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandfather figured out how to grow large haloid crystals, which were used in camera polaroid Carl Zeiss "Bernotar" filters. He kept the process a secret, which died with him. My family gets contacted now and then by researchers trying to figure out how to do it.

So interesting! Any pictures?

There are many pictures if you do a google image search on "Carl Zeiss Bernotar".

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Bernauer

https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21370378/

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

#69

Post by kurthr »

bcrl wrote: post #65
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…

Indeed, there is no free lunch. Just look at Intel's missteps on their 10nm process. There's a company with decades of experience building semiconductors and $77 billion in revenue last year that took close to 4 years to recover from initial mistakes with their transition from their 14nm process to a 10nm class process. If Intel has that much difficulty, just imagine how many orders of magnitude harder it is for a sm…

Well, to be fair their 10nm is everyone else's 7nm and they were trying to do it without DUV litho, for reasons?

However, their style of process/chip design is very hierarchical with HUGE teams to get the implementation out in the 3-4year cycles (there are multiple overlapping teams). This was driven over the successes of decades of scaling. Then it failed. Now they are behind. If they had been able to pivot early they might be parallel with rather than behind TSMC, but they couldn't admit it wasn't working. The large group structure got in the way.

We'll see if they can fix it.

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

#70

Post by mhh__ »

rossmohax wrote: post #35

Where is Mill CPU? Been almost 10 years since they started talking about architecture, but nothing tangible emerged yet.

They're still going, but seeing them semi-complain/semi-get-cold-feet about VC funding on their forum makes me think they might not be totally in tune with reality.

From Ivan on the forum "We expected to go out for a funding round (and convert from bootstrap to salary-paying) last spring but, well, 2020.

Right now we’re trying to decide when to make a second try at it. The financial market for the likes of us isn’t back yet, and the virus rates are turning up again, which argues for waiting. But the economy and the future market is real iffy, which argues for doing it now. "

https://news.crunchbase.com/news/global-vc-funding-unicorns-... this suggests there has been a dramatic increase in VC money to be acquired by the right startups.

If I were the mill team, I would get their patents nailed down (which I think they have mostly done), then get some token open source projects out there to show what they actually have in their trousers. Then start giving some talks, public presence, things like that. Show what their toolchain and simulator can actually do.

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