Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power • Hacker News Board

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#131

Post by jonhendry18 » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 10:02 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #41

krapht wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People write this glibly without understanding history. Soviet Russia made great leaps in science and technology where it was a national priority. You can have academic freedom in most scientific disciplines without the political freedom to criticize the government.

>Soviet Russia made great leaps in science and technology Yes, we sent rockets to the moon, but an average Ivan couldn't have proper plumbing in his apartment. Those great leaps were made in things without real life value. P.R. China on other hand, can't be bothered with "prestige project." The only thing that can bother a government official here is money. And money undoubtedly have value in everyday life... unlike…

"Yes, we sent rockets to the moon, but an average Ivan couldn't have proper plumbing in his apartment."

Older properties in London sometimes still had outhouses into the 1960s.

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#132

Post by ChuckMcM » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 10:06 PM UTC

nerpderp83 wrote: post #127

ChuckMcM wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too late. China dominates in the 'jelly bean[1]' chip business. This was the bread an butter for the dozen semiconductor shops in the Bay Area during the 70's through the early naughts. As fabs shut down they became 'fabless' and had their work shipped out to TSMC. Now they exist as a genre in China in much greater numbers than they do here. Companies that will make a couple of wafers of USB + ADC + random logic kind…

> And the innovation never comes from the chip companies, it comes from companies that are building the products. I agree with you. Eng has really got to stop thinking they are the source of ideas, most good ideas come from customers that have needs that can't be currently met. Eng balances design constraints, as companies grow, hierarchies get stronger and creativity drops. Maximum innovation comes from small compan…

I think you are correct as well, its a matter of timing. Eventually there will be the equivalent of an FPGA that instead of having "LUT"s or "CLB"s they will have a bunch of useful bits of tech and an internal wiring bus that will be programmed by setting switches or blowing fuses. Then the variation will be how many pins on the package which will determine how many of these things you can bring out to pins.

I did a thought experiement of what it would take to make a 'universal' TTL chip, which was basically a 14 pin, 16 pin, and 18 pin device where all 74xx chips were actually inside of them and through a programming step you bonded one of them to pins on the lead frame. It required a 90nm or better feature size. The trick was you only have (number of pins) number of input stages and output stages (all the "TTL" part of TTL (these are fairly large by their nature). The logic was all internal 1.8v with a simple step down regulator to go from 5V down to 1.8V.

You could cover both the SSI and MSI catalogs. Of course there isn't anyone designing new stuff with TTL any more so it remains a thought experiment only.

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#133

Post by ultrasounder » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 10:13 PM UTC

TimTheTinker wrote: post #72

wishart_washy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left EE and became a full-stack developer! No complaints about JavaScript here. Verilog should just switch to lambdas and get it over with.

Same here. Switched to CS from EE and never looked back, although my respect for EE majors increased a lot. (I had trouble with the continuous math once we reached steady-state analysis. Besides, I wanted to just get through all that to the fun stuff: discrete math, logic design, and programming.)

On that path after 12 years of blood and sweat as a HW engineer in various FAANG companies. Self teaching myself Algos so that I can eventually leetcode the day light out of my life and take a crack at the same FAANG this time as a SW engineer. The problem with the whole EE landscape is much beyond the Mandarin syndrome. It’s systemic. In fact the canary in the coal mine is Berkeley where the enrollment in graduate level EE courses in analog circuit design and RFIC have been falling rapidly as more and more grads prefer the “deep learning” bandwagon much more than the traditional popcorn chip design and manufacturing which was the mainstay of the local Silicon Valley economy until I was in grad school. Back to my BFS study from clrs :-)

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#134

Post by sangnoir » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 10:14 PM UTC

RamshackleJ wrote: post #5

fermienrico wrote: post #2

Having worked in China in the semiconductor industry, it really saddens me what the Chinese are trying to do. You simply cannot out innovate 4 decades of work in a few years no matter how much money you throw at it. Also, China has a branding problem and it is only going to get worse. They can make short term progress but it takes a long time to build a great brand.

Stealing IP mostly helps manufacturing, It doesn't really help innovation. If they want to build up their semiconductor industry they need to steal the people who are creating IP, which is kinda the opposite of what is happening. the culture that creates new tech is something that china can't steal and it can't replicate it without giving up authoritarian rule.

> the culture that creates new tech is something that china can't steal and it can't replicate it without giving up authoritarian rule.

I've seen this trope repeated here, and it needs to die (IMO). Where's the evidence for this assertion?

The soviet union with it's command economy saw plenty of innovation coming out of its design bureaus (weaponry, rocketry, aerospace engineering). Present-day China seems less authoritarian than cold-war USSR, but I could be wrong.

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#135

Post by fermienrico » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 10:21 PM UTC

alexbeloi wrote: post #51

fermienrico wrote: post #2

Having worked in China in the semiconductor industry, it really saddens me what the Chinese are trying to do. You simply cannot out innovate 4 decades of work in a few years no matter how much money you throw at it. Also, China has a branding problem and it is only going to get worse. They can make short term progress but it takes a long time to build a great brand.

>Having worked in China in the semiconductor industry, it really saddens me what the Chinese are trying to do. I too have worked in China, and there is nothing sad about fighting and investing heavily to catch your competition. If the competition isn't careful, they'll get blindsided just like auto companies were by similar looking Japanese manufacturing investments in the 80s. Japan used to have a reputation for rea…

Equating China with Japan is totally asinine. Japan long before the 70's had always been considered as a culture that respected quality and efficiency. In fact, every major manufacturing industry in the world today adopts some form of Japanese manufacturing principles. From airports to cancel hospitals; systems such as Kanban and Kaizen have been universally adopted.

Name one thing we have adopted from China in terms of manufacturing principles/philosophy.

Saying that China is what Japan was in the 80's is totally absurd and impossible to reason with. Not to mention, immense difference in Japanese and Chinese culture.

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#136

Post by fermienrico » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 10:27 PM UTC

ksk wrote: post #11

fermienrico wrote: post #2

Having worked in China in the semiconductor industry, it really saddens me what the Chinese are trying to do. You simply cannot out innovate 4 decades of work in a few years no matter how much money you throw at it. Also, China has a branding problem and it is only going to get worse. They can make short term progress but it takes a long time to build a great brand.

>You simply cannot out innovate 4 decades of work in a few years no matter how much money you throw at it. Could you explain your reasoning?

I can give you an example of semiconductor manufacturing and its supply chain. Say, I am a company with X billions to throw at building a Fab. You could probably build one, but finding lithography suppliers, automation, building long term relationships with them and being able to do it in a cost effective manner is a monumental challenge. Intel, Global Foundries, TSMC runs on decades of internal knowledge to be able to manufacture silicon. Furthermore, you now need to package silicon, test it, and post-silicon assembly is insanely complex as we go towards chip-scale manufacturing.

Another example is Tesla. They will and in the past have throw billions of dollars to build a solid manufacturing lines, suppliers and personnel; but you can see the challenge today when theyre trying to ramp up.

On small scale, you can buy time with money; but on a large scale, that transaction often becomes difficult or simply impossible.

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#137

Post by skybrian » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 10:36 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #132

nerpderp83 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the innovation never comes from the chip companies, it comes from companies that are building the products. I agree with you. Eng has really got to stop thinking they are the source of ideas, most good ideas come from customers that have needs that can't be currently met. Eng balances design constraints, as companies grow, hierarchies get stronger and creativity drops. Maximum innovation comes from small compan…

I think you are correct as well, its a matter of timing. Eventually there will be the equivalent of an FPGA that instead of having "LUT"s or "CLB"s they will have a bunch of useful bits of tech and an internal wiring bus that will be programmed by setting switches or blowing fuses. Then the variation will be how many pins on the package which will determine how many of these things you can bring out to pins. I did a…

Based on a link posted not long ago, FPGA's seem to already be changing this way:

http://semiengineering.com/fpgas-becoming-more-soc-like/

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#138

Post by blattimwind » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 10:47 PM UTC

andygrovetheman wrote: post #84

tzahola wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think authoritarian regimes are good at fostering innovation. Werner Von Braun would disagree.

On a mostly-unrelated note: Apparently big difference between the US and Germany in the nuclear race was not science but instead engineering. Fermi and Oppenheimer were useful to the US effort but Heisenberg probably had the intellectual firepower to do that for Germany. The REAL advances the US made were in chemical and metallurgical engineering at an industrial scale. Dealing with gaseous and liquid uranium and plu…

> Apparently big difference between the US and Germany in the nuclear race was not science but instead engineering.

The tl;dr is: mostly they didn't want to build it. Then funding was cut, because the project went on too slow.

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#139

Post by alexbeloi » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 10:49 PM UTC

fermienrico wrote: post #135

alexbeloi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Having worked in China in the semiconductor industry, it really saddens me what the Chinese are trying to do. I too have worked in China, and there is nothing sad about fighting and investing heavily to catch your competition. If the competition isn't careful, they'll get blindsided just like auto companies were by similar looking Japanese manufacturing investments in the 80s. Japan used to have a reputation for rea…

Equating China with Japan is totally asinine. Japan long before the 70's had always been considered as a culture that respected quality and efficiency. In fact, every major manufacturing industry in the world today adopts some form of Japanese manufacturing principles. From airports to cancel hospitals; systems such as Kanban and Kaizen have been universally adopted. Name one thing we have adopted from China in terms…

It has little to do with culture and everything to do with current economic stage of development, Japan was known for making faulty mass produced garbage in the 50's and 60's, they used that economic model to bootstrap the manufacturing industry and to make investments in education, science, tech and manufacturing. From 1950 to 1970 Japan went from 40% agricultural to 17%. [0]

Similar story taking place in China, just 30 years later (following the cultural revolution). From 1980 to 2010 China went from 33% agricultural to >Name one thing we have adopted from China in terms of manufacturing principles/philosophy.

I don't know who we are in this conversation, but from my point of view, there seems to be some kind of hegemonic-cultural war going on in the JAPAC region. I have no stake in the fight, so arguments stemming from the point of view of cultural superiority will fall on deaf ears.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Japan#Fact...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture_in_the_...

edit: A side note is that Japan in the 80s was exporting their highest quality goods to the US while leaving lower-mid quality goods for the domestic market, this is also contributed to Japan's good brand growth internationally.

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#140

Post by adventured » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 10:52 PM UTC

epc wrote: post #98

worldengineer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The trend is just reverting to the mean. That's a lie. United States get 1M immigrants a year since 2000. There's over 37,000,000 legal immigrants in US. United States gets the creme of the crop from countries around the world. On the other hand, there were approximately 594,000 immigrants living in China in 2010, most from Asia. If you can live in US and make 300k-400k, you would do that in a heartbeat, vs living…

The current US government approach to immigrants, legal or otherwise, would seem designed to convince immigrants to go elsewhere. I think China will be fine given that it can simply shut down exports to the US if Trump's tariff pettiness starts to sting. Where, precisely, do you think your phones and computers are manufactured?

> Where, precisely, do you think your phones and computers are manufactured?

Vietnam, which now produces more Samsung phones than China does.

"Samsung has invested $17.3 billion in eight factories and one research and development center in Vietnam, turning the country into its largest smart phone production base, the government said. ... Exports from Samsung Electronics’ factories in Vietnam totaled $54 billion last year" [1]

US trade with Vietnam has massively exploded higher over the last decade. The US now imports as much from Vietnam as it does France (an economy 12 times larger). That trend will continue.

China's low value manufacturing is too easy to replace.

The US can move its manufacturing to any number of about two dozen other low cost countries. Just as US capital and the vast US consumption machine built China (and Japan + South Korea before that), it can next build up numerous other nations. The US has no permanently fixed need for China, there's nothing they contribute that can't be manufactured elsewhere (as witnessed by the way clothing manufacturing rapidly fled China on cost, and now eg Samsung's smart phone manufacturing).

Most of what China is looking to do is copy and then compete with what the US already does, from Boeing planes to military tech to semiconductor tech to software to biotech, medtech & pharma. China is a giant clone machine, nothing has changed about that at all. Accordingly, China has nothing novel that the US doesn't already have access to elsewhere or otherwise.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-vietnam/sams...