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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

#111

Post by [deleted] »

mk89 wrote: post #25
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.

> The team includes recently retired, Chinese-born former ASML engineers and scientists — prime recruitment targets because they possess sensitive technical knowledge but face fewer professional constraints after leaving the company, the people said. > Their recruitment was part of an aggressive drive China launched in 2019 for semiconductor experts working abroad, offering signing bonuses that started at 3 million y…

[deleted]

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

#112

Post by matheusmoreira »

coliveira wrote: post #40
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.

Computer freedom is dying. Everything the word "hacker" ever stood for is dying. Truly depressing...

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

#113

Post by saubeidl »

XorNot wrote: post #89
Yoric wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But for most of us, that's already the case, isn't it?

For the average paranoid person who is wasting their life on it, sure But large organizations like defense are all about distributed trust anyway - even if you could verify the hardware, the guy you order to do it is going to be a whole command chain removed and likely a contractor with a clearance in the civilian world. Whereas your high level political and military leadership having direct contact with managers and…

What if my high level political and military leadership are the threat scenario?

Remember Snowden.

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

#114

Post by theautist »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #46
pxc wrote: post #20

It seems extremely dishonest to frame the project of improving computer chip manufacturing to the development of weapons of mass destruction— weapons that went on to be used against civilians. Sensationalist and propagandistic framing for what is otherwise an interesting article.

The term 'Manhattan Project' is a common and widely used metaphor for R&D programs with effectively unlimited resources applied to them. The actual Manhattan Project is simply a very famous exemplar of such a program. Use of that term is not propaganda, it's normal English.

It's not just about the use of the term "Manhattan Project". It's about the framing and wording of the article. There is literally an image of a PRC soldier in front of a rocket in the article.

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

#115

Post by saubeidl »

renewiltord wrote: post #91
askvictor wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So far only China has that incentive. The US is close to having that incentive, if the rift between the US and Europe keeps widening. The Netherlands has one lever, but damn it's a long one.

ASML develops and ships their machines at the pleasure of Uncle Sam because the USA licensed them the tech and remains a crucial part of the supply chain intentionally. It's not a lever. It's a partnership that is mutually beneficial and neither side can really ruin the other without damaging themselves.

If Uncle Sam pisses off Europa Regina enough, she won't give a damn about licenses.

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

#116

Post by hkt »

roenxi wrote: post #104
maxglute wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah PRC probably going to dump 1T into indigenize semi efforts by end of decade, but IMO good chance they're going to treat strategic semi as commodity utility business than make NASDAQ lines go up model. When western semi has 1st tier suppliers taking 30% margin, asml taking 50%, tsmc taking 50%, nvidia taking lol 70%, there's alot of fat on the pyramid to trim. PRC doing cost plus 10-20% will basically be able to…

The NASDAQ line go up model is why the AI boom is happening and a major factor in why it is Western companies leading the charge. The more bigger issue is that the west refused to sell chips to China so they had to figure out how to make their own. And margin compression is what free markets do. That is one of the big motivators to putting free markets everywhere, the freer the market the more compressed the margins…

> margin compression is what free markets do

Except the market pretty much can't do this with Nvidia. Nobody is showing any sign of catching up: it is entirely possible we are seeing a runaway train and without the intervention of a massive state like China to create a viable competitor, there will never be one.

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

#117

Post by marbro »

echelon wrote: post #82
christophilus wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. That's where this is heading, and the West-- as usual-- is pursuing quarterly profits and forgetting to look up.

Is anyone here calling legislators about it to inform them of this? Does anyone here have leverage to affect strategy?

[dead]

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

#118

Post by Account_Removed »

citizenpaul wrote: post #92
the_pwner224 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 avo…

Its not really just that AMD drivers are not that great (they are not) but they have been stable for a long time. Its that nvidia relentlessly works with game developers to make sure their graphics tricks work with nvidia drivers. Its so obvious you miss it. Look in the nvidia driver updates they always list games that have fixes, performance ect. AMD never (used?) to do this they just gave you the drivers and expect…

AMD provides this. Example: "Fixed Issues and Improvements

Intermittent driver timeout or crash may be observed while playing Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 on some AMD Graphics Products, such as the AMD Ryzen™ AI 9 HX 370.)

Lower than expected performance may be observed in Delta Force on Radeon™ RX 7000 series graphics products.

Intermittent stutter may be observed while playing Marvel Rivals when AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution 3 frame generation is enabled. "

https://www.amd.com/en/resources/support-articles/release-no...

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

#119

Post by jmyeet »

In 1945 as World War 2 wrapped up and the Cold War started, many in the US believed that it would take the Soviet Union 20+ years to build the atomic bomb. It took 4 years. There were several reasons for this. It became a national security interest, there were leaks to the USSR by people who thought the US shouldn't have a monopoly on the bomb and Americans in general viewed the Soviets as backward farmers.

I see the same thing with China. It's not so much espionage now (although there might be that) but China instead will just hire people with the right knowledge, so former employees of ASML, Nvidia, TSMC, etc.

I've been saying for awhile that China won't tolerate the export ban on ASML's best lithography machines and NVidia's best chips. It's a national security issue. And China is the one country on Earth I have faith can dedicate itself to a long term goal.

And yet I got the same reaction. "The Chinese will never catch up", etc. Reports have been comiung out that Huawei has started developing and using their own 7nm chips.

Weirdly, the US created this problem. By restricting exports of chips to China, Chinese manufacturers had no choice but to develop their own chips. Had China been flooded with NVidia chips, there would be far less market opportunity.

The American economy is essentially a bet on an AI future now. Were it not for like 7 tech companies, we'd be in a technical recession. I also believe that bubble is going to burst. But the economy as a whole pretty much now requires US dominance of an AI future and I think a lot of people are in for a rude shock as China completely disrupts that.

China hasn't caught up yet. There are still many steps in the supply chain and chip design as a whole but making their own chips at sub-7nm is a massive step in that direction.

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

#120

Post by maxglute »

barfoure wrote: post #99
maxglute wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah PRC probably going to dump 1T into indigenize semi efforts by end of decade, but IMO good chance they're going to treat strategic semi as commodity utility business than make NASDAQ lines go up model. When western semi has 1st tier suppliers taking 30% margin, asml taking 50%, tsmc taking 50%, nvidia taking lol 70%, there's alot of fat on the pyramid to trim. PRC doing cost plus 10-20% will basically be able to…

Your analysis is out of date I think. This has already happened. Poor NXP just got their asses handed to them by the PRC. The fab they have in Italy looks nice but PRC has many of those.

Also Texas Instruments, STMicro, Onsemi, Microchip Tech, i.e. what PRC is doing after going big in mature nodes last few years they likely will also do in leading edge. IMO there's argument that since leading edge will definitely be strategically bifurcated PRC and western semi can pseudo collude to maintain higher margins, especially if PRC wants to claw back investment. But if western semi continues to drive economy/growth there's also incentive to weaponize margins.
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