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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

#281

Post by a_wild_dandan »

darth_avocado wrote: post #248
nitwit005 wrote: post #56

A "Manhattan Project" would be building some shocking new technology that didn't previously exist. If they're cobbling together old parts, it sounds more like something you'd to to keep things running in case a conflict erupts: > The availability of parts from older ASML machines on secondary markets has allowed China to build a domestic prototype

> A "Manhattan Project" would be building some shocking new technology that didn't previously exist. You’re missing forest for the trees. ASML at the moment has the monopoly on these machines. This is not only a great tool for the West to keep China at bay, but also a way to maintain economic dominance. Even if they can’t get the machine up and running until 2030, and the machine is a generation behind, China has eff…

Taiwan’s geopolitical position is vastly more complex than the fantasy where invasion would follow merely from fab parity.

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

#282

Post by xwindowsorg »

mattmaroon wrote: post #273
stupidhooper wrote: post #271

Why is it that whenever China is concerned, their most non-violent aspirations are always framed as evil? Manhattan project for anything outside a literal nuke is pretty wild for a headline.

It’s really not. It just is short hand for a government deciding that something really important is worth throwing a lot of resources at. I’ve heard it used to describe plenty of things western governments do too.

Why not Moonshot projects? like Google X.

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

#283

Post by xwindowsorg »

mywittyname wrote: post #176
pedroma wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good benchmark would be how long the west remains mad at Russia for invading Ukraine.

Who is "the west" in your eyes? I personally know plenty of people in the USA who are openly cheering for Russia in the conflict. So I don't think we could say that "the west" is mad at Russia. Certain people in western countries are, but plenty are quite happy with Russia and wish them well in their endeavors.

Cheering for the "West" means if West wins then please expect 1 million Iraqis (replace Iraq by any other country) dead just because.

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

#284

Post by nebula8804 »

this_user wrote: post #238
bad_haircut72 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also cant understand people being in denial about, or claiming other imagined moats or whatever. They're whipping the pants of us right now industrially, if the west has any advantages left its that we speak the truth about stuff even when it hurts, why live in denial. Also this stuff was figured out and built once before, other than the effort and resources involved (which China has lots of), why wouldn't someone…

The west is still underestimating China. There is a great anecdote, I think it's from the book 'Apple in China', about their engineers visiting a Chinese production plant. Some changes needed to be made to the place. The Apple people estimated that that would take two weeks. They came back the next day. It was finished, the Chinese had done it overnight.

I often wonder what is it that's driving the Chinese to work themselves to death to get this stuff done? Surely there must be some limit. I guess we can see it in the low birth rates, the youth unemployment, and I guess the desire to just survive because there's just so many people there. But still, I just don't get how Chinese just keep going and going. What is their end goal on a person to person level? Are they just going to keep killing themselves for the rest of their lives? What happened to the lie flat movement?

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

#285

Post by nebula8804 »

bad_haircut72 wrote: post #220
dluan wrote: post #214

It's wild to me that so many skeptical westerners who want to nitpick certain unproven technicalities, when the entire world only gets bits and pieces of the on the ground reality of China's progress, like the original Reuters article which was clearly fed information by insiders. You should be living in the world of "China has successfully developed EUV and equivalent litho supply chain" and basing your decision mak…

I also cant understand people being in denial about, or claiming other imagined moats or whatever. They're whipping the pants of us right now industrially, if the west has any advantages left its that we speak the truth about stuff even when it hurts, why live in denial. Also this stuff was figured out and built once before, other than the effort and resources involved (which China has lots of), why wouldn't someone…

>we speak the truth about stuff even when it hurts, why live in denial

Unless you are talking about Israel :P

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

#286

Post by nebula8804 »

terminalshort wrote: post #274
dluan wrote: post #214

It's wild to me that so many skeptical westerners who want to nitpick certain unproven technicalities, when the entire world only gets bits and pieces of the on the ground reality of China's progress, like the original Reuters article which was clearly fed information by insiders. You should be living in the world of "China has successfully developed EUV and equivalent litho supply chain" and basing your decision mak…

It is always like that. Most people just don't have the attitude of getting things done, and they can barely believe it is possible when they watch what the people who do accomplish.

A lot of things require sacrifice beyond reasonable means. I see these books on how Apple, Nvidia, or Tesla developed their innovations, its groups of people that are extremely talented and became that talented due to sacrifices from their families/communities that go and sacrifice everything themselves to achieve amazing goals. Some of that resultant wealth goes to them but most goes to the shareholders/tech bros.

Eventually less and less people want to go down this route so we get "people just not having the attitude of getting things done".

The real question is will Chinese people go down that same road or will the fact that there is so much cutthroat competition there keep people in line?

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

#287

Post by [deleted] »

solid_fuel wrote: post #203
chii wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> immense supply chain options. so this begs the question - why isn't the west's own supply chain options as immense? My unresearched answer is that the gov't policies of the west doesn't induce it, while china's gov't does (which includes targeted subsidies, tax incentives and state driven finances). The "hidden" cost is that the workers in this supply chain isn't as well paid and isn't as powerful as the workers fr…

> why isn't the west's own supply chain options as immense? They used to be. Since roughly the 80's, policymakers have decided it is better for the shareholders to outsource most of that industry overseas to China and India and etc, where the labor is cheaper. Note that workers and especially union members actually have every incentive to keep that production domestic, but shareholders and CEOs profit when they can c…

[deleted]

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

#288

Post by makeitdouble »

wood_spirit wrote: post #73
nitwit005 wrote: post #56

A "Manhattan Project" would be building some shocking new technology that didn't previously exist. If they're cobbling together old parts, it sounds more like something you'd to to keep things running in case a conflict erupts: > The availability of parts from older ASML machines on secondary markets has allowed China to build a domestic prototype

A “manhattan project” can just mean a massive secret scientific war project? Seems apt.

They have high security, and obfuscating the premises is part of it, but is it really secret in any way ? I mean, we're knowing exactly what they're aiming for and could compare notes at the end of it.

Is it war ? in a "everything is a war" political sense, perhaps, but not in any other sense.

We're left with "massive project" for the analogy, that's kinda weak really.

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

#289

Post by jpgvm »

amluto wrote: post #277

If I were running this show, I would have a second concurrent project as a hedge and as a chance of leapfrogging the West: trying to make free electron laser lithography work. Free electron lasers have lots of (theoretical) advantages: no tin debris, better wavelength control, the ability to get even shorter wavelengths, higher power, higher efficiency, and it’s less Rube Goldberg-ish. Also the barrier to entry for b…

Yeah I think it's likely they get an EUV machine working but with less efficiency than ASML just because of how long it takes to tune these beasts and work out all the kinks.

The big brain move is to try leap-frog the whole thing with XFEL. Smaller wavelength, way brighter source, no vaporized tin particulate, etc. It's a much bigger lift, new optics, new resists, etc. So a completely brand new supply-chain from scatch but with no competitors on that tech yet and low will for Western companies to try compete on it because they need to get money out of existing EUV tech first.

This is very similar IMO to Chinese auto manufacturing. Their ICE cars never really did meet the same standards as European or Japanese manufacturers despite JVs etc.

However EVs and green-tech are analagous to the XFEL path, they built from scratch and leapt over the competition that was happy to sit on it's existing profitable tech instead.

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

#290

Post by entangledqubit »

amluto wrote: post #277

If I were running this show, I would have a second concurrent project as a hedge and as a chance of leapfrogging the West: trying to make free electron laser lithography work. Free electron lasers have lots of (theoretical) advantages: no tin debris, better wavelength control, the ability to get even shorter wavelengths, higher power, higher efficiency, and it’s less Rube Goldberg-ish. Also the barrier to entry for b…

DARPA funded a bit in this space a while ago. (Example: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/01/darpa-maskless-nanowri...) I'm not sure how you get over the bandwidth limitations, even with multi-beam.
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