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How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#31

Post by qoez »

solid_fuel wrote: post #24

With Nvidia scaling down their consumer GPU production [0] I wonder if we will see consumer GPUs shipping from China in the future. Western companies seem to be abandoning the consumer/prosumer market which will have bad implications for hobbyists and aspiring professionals down the line. [0] https://www.pcmag.com/news/nvidia-might-cut-rtx-50-gpu-suppl...

Would be interesting if the US decides to ban or heavily tariff these chips and if the consequence will be significanly cheaper data center access through chinese-owned sites/platforms

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#32

Post by integralid »

kccqzy wrote: post #15
georgeburdell wrote: post #13

The knowledge came from former ASML employees. I wonder if countries will sanction these individuals given the geopolitical implications of their assistance.

Sanctioning won’t do anything. These former ASML employees know that their professional careers in the western world are finished. I bet they know when they are signing that they are going to stay in China or countries friendly with China for the rest of their lives.

>for the rest of their lives

You overestimate length of the western outrage.

Anyway what's to sanction? Almost no country recognizes Taiwan. Diplomatically they changed one job in China to another

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#33

Post by mk89 »

darkamaul wrote: post #5

I'd argue ASML's moat isn't the machine itself but the ecosystem: Carl Zeiss optics, decades of supplier relationships, institutional knowledge. This is clearly a significant achievement, but does anyone with semiconductor experience have a sense of how far "generates EUV light" is from "production-ready tool"?

They are "extracting" optical devices from other machines, imagine how desperate they are for this "machine".

As I ironically said in another comment, all you need is a retired Chinese ex employee at Zeiss.

Nothing can stay private or secret forever, and they have the money and people to achieve that. Even if it takes them another 5 years to reach what we have today.

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#34

Post by the_pwner224 »

solid_fuel wrote: post #24

With Nvidia scaling down their consumer GPU production [0] I wonder if we will see consumer GPUs shipping from China in the future. Western companies seem to be abandoning the consumer/prosumer market which will have bad implications for hobbyists and aspiring professionals down the line. [0] https://www.pcmag.com/news/nvidia-might-cut-rtx-50-gpu-suppl...

You don't need CUDA for gaming but software is still just as big of a moat. Gaming GPU drivers are complex and have tons of game-specific patches.

With their new Radeon/RDNA architecture it took AMD years to overcome their reputation for having shitty drivers on their consumer GPUs (and that reputation was indeed deserved early on). And I bet if you go read GPU discussion online today you'll still find people who avoid AMD because of drivers.

That won't stop them, but it's a big barrier to entry.

Oh and that's just to get the drivers to work. Not including company-specific features that need to be integrated by the game devs into their game codebase, like DLSS / FrameGen and FSR. And in the past there was other Nvidia/AMD-specific stuff like PhysX, hair rendering, etc.

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#35

Post by echelon »

solid_fuel wrote: post #24

With Nvidia scaling down their consumer GPU production [0] I wonder if we will see consumer GPUs shipping from China in the future. Western companies seem to be abandoning the consumer/prosumer market which will have bad implications for hobbyists and aspiring professionals down the line. [0] https://www.pcmag.com/news/nvidia-might-cut-rtx-50-gpu-suppl...

> scaling down their consumer GPU production [0]

>> Due to Memory Shortages

I don't think Nvidia wants to give up on consumer. They're a gateway into the overall AI ecosystem.

Having feet planted there also make sure they can play the local game when that begins to blow up. Nvidia wants a robotics play, too.

This is a pragmatic choice. And most of the money is in commercial.

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#36

Post by vslira »

solid_fuel wrote: post #24

With Nvidia scaling down their consumer GPU production [0] I wonder if we will see consumer GPUs shipping from China in the future. Western companies seem to be abandoning the consumer/prosumer market which will have bad implications for hobbyists and aspiring professionals down the line. [0] https://www.pcmag.com/news/nvidia-might-cut-rtx-50-gpu-suppl...

It’s a good thing that Chinese companies have zero expertise in leveraging consumer demand for lower-end tech to develop know-how and catch up with the state of the art from Western-aligned companies and then economies of scale to surpass them in distribution.

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#37

Post by culi »

Aldo_MX wrote: post #7

This article is more skeptical: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/ch...

I've read both articles and they say basically the exact same information. Only the tone of this article is a little more skeptical. It also just includes less context/information in general than the featured article

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#38

Post by wood_spirit »

Ancalagon wrote: post #10

Seems like demographics, AI, and tech parity are converging on a Taiwan takeover attempt in the 2027-2030 timeframe.

China is building all kinds of suggestive tech including invasion barge piers to land heavy stuff quickly once a beachhead has been established http://www.hisutton.com/Chinese-Invasion-Barge-OSINT.html

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#39

Post by [deleted] »

darkamaul wrote: post #5

I'd argue ASML's moat isn't the machine itself but the ecosystem: Carl Zeiss optics, decades of supplier relationships, institutional knowledge. This is clearly a significant achievement, but does anyone with semiconductor experience have a sense of how far "generates EUV light" is from "production-ready tool"?

[deleted]

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#40

Post by coliveira »

solid_fuel wrote: post #24

With Nvidia scaling down their consumer GPU production [0] I wonder if we will see consumer GPUs shipping from China in the future. Western companies seem to be abandoning the consumer/prosumer market which will have bad implications for hobbyists and aspiring professionals down the line. [0] https://www.pcmag.com/news/nvidia-might-cut-rtx-50-gpu-suppl...

The general trend of the industry is to move computational resources from the hands of users into data centers, so that they can control what can be done and how much they'll charge for computational services. In the medium term, a lot of what we take for granted nowadays will only be accessible from cloud providers and companies will pay more and more in subscriptions for these services.
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