Love how people (americans) are always framing it "China vs the west" or "Russia vs the West" when in reality it's just China vs the US. It's convenient and makes people think that the whole western world is allied and agrees with the US. While it's true in theory, the reality is much more nuanced than this.
How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
331–340 of 645 posts
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
Controversial and possibly politically incorrect take, but the People's Republic of China sends many, many, of its citizens to study at top universities and work at top companies all over the world. I'm sure even at sensitive defense related orgs too. While I am sure that the vast majority of them are just regular people, I'm also pretty sure there are True Believers amongst them whose mission is to go out into the w…
In late 2022 our telco soft eng team got purged and everyone who was even friends with people who might be Chinese were removed from the project. That included the original architect and product owner, both Americans but with Chinese roots. So there that!
I don't like this. Feels like easily become racist. E.g. people from Southeast Asia, Japan, or Korea who might not even speak Chinese but getting fired because they "look Chinese"
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 scat…
> 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. I'm not convinced Chinese EVs are technologically better. They've just command economied demand and reduced costs via mass production. The technology seems pretty inline with anything available in the West but demand isn't there to take adv…
Making batteries for $80/kWh IS the next gen tech. I’m pretty sure China invented lipo (EDIT: I meant lfp) (at least they’re the only ones making it) and they’re currently pushing ahead on sodium ion. They are also the ones who have pushed lithium ion to the point it is today. My first EV was a Nissan Leaf that cost 40 grand and could drive 80 miles. Now you can buy 300-mile cars for about that. That was all China’s doing and nearly every EV on the road today uses their batteries.
They have done to the battery market exactly what Taiwan did to the chip market. You can buy an EV made anywhere the same way you can buy a laptop made anywhere. But guess where the chips and batteries were made.
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
What bandwidth limitations are you referencing? My understanding is that deep euv lithography is limited by chromatic aberration, so the narrow bandwidth of a single beam FEL would be an advantage. If you need more bandwidth, you can chirp it. Is the bandwidth too high?
They mean bandwidth as in rate at which one can expose a mask using an electron beam, because they’ve confused two different technologies. See my other reply. P.S. Can you usefully chirp an FEL? I don’t know whether the electron sources that would be used for EUV FELs can be re-tuned quickly enough, nor whether the magnet arrangements are conducive to perturbing the wavelength. But relativistic electron beams are wei…
I don't think it's strictly chirping, but there are methods to achieve that sort of time/ bandwidth trade-off with FELs. I've seen references to it pop up in high speed imaging, though the details of anything that fast and small are quite outside my expertise. Wasn't sure why you would want high bandwidth either, hence my confusion.
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#335Love how people (americans) are always framing it "China vs the west" or "Russia vs the West" when in reality it's just China vs the US. It's convenient and makes people think that the whole western world is allied and agrees with the US. While it's true in theory, the reality is much more nuanced than this.
China, Russia, Iran, have shared interests and are known to help each other out, in some cases finding ways to go around sanctions. It's wrong to look at it as one country "vs the west". It's two sets of countries. Even if you don't fully agree with the US, a western country will have much more disagreement with countries from the other group.
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#336It's kind of nasty that a fresh society of capable people has the drive to achieve technological excellence and the incumbents do whatever they can to delay this, even though it's inevitable and there's a lot to gain by empowering them. All in the name of "they are not us". World has gained so much from modern Chinese industrial revolution. Why suddenly everyone got cold feet? Nobody was stopping Germany or Japan on…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization_in_Ca...
Give China 50 years and I'm sure they are gonna be properly sad about what happened to Uyghurs, western style.
Or not. Measures applied to Uyghurs were done under the banner of fight with terror, which the West waved fervently as well. Although US decided to direct their zeal outside, bombing several countries and killing countless "enemies" which were defined as everybody within the blast radius. Were attempts of China at controlling their islamist minority so uncomparably worse?
Especially when we compare them to how they approached the problem of pandemics. They obviously have no qualms about attempting sweeping solutions regardless of religion and ethnicity of those affected.
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
The more China advances domestically, especially in this area, the less it has to gain from invading Taiwan. China is getting to the point where the conquest is finally doable (rapidly advancing and massive military, plus a weak US president), but the potential gains are diminishing year to year. I'd speculate that if they don't invade during Trump's term, they never will, and will pursue a different course down the…
Reunification in Taiwan has nothing to do with chips, and militarily PRC was able to do so a long time ago. The political will in PRC to "kill other Chinese" is zero.
Is that's why China has started building loads of troop transport ships recently? To peacefully transport them to Taiwan?
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#338Love how people (americans) are always framing it "China vs the west" or "Russia vs the West" when in reality it's just China vs the US. It's convenient and makes people think that the whole western world is allied and agrees with the US. While it's true in theory, the reality is much more nuanced than this.
China, Russia, Iran, have shared interests and are known to help each other out, in some cases finding ways to go around sanctions. It's wrong to look at it as one country "vs the west". It's two sets of countries. Even if you don't fully agree with the US, a western country will have much more disagreement with countries from the other group.
Even that is true, it still doesn't make the west one block, and such title makes it believe so. There are no chip makers in Europe, so why even include it on the title ?
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#339It's kind of nasty that a fresh society of capable people has the drive to achieve technological excellence and the incumbents do whatever they can to delay this, even though it's inevitable and there's a lot to gain by empowering them. All in the name of "they are not us". World has gained so much from modern Chinese industrial revolution. Why suddenly everyone got cold feet? Nobody was stopping Germany or Japan on…
> Japan
Pretty sure the US pressured Japan to up their exchange rate which was one of the factors in their stagflation. Germany never threatened the power of the US
Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
#340Good for them, I don't see this as a big deal other than my fear of west china invading china (taiwan! :) ). Don't get me wrong, I want the west to succeed, but a competition from China is exactly what is needed. They're building datacenters in arizona and india for TSMC because of this competition. I really hope we get past historical political rivalry and get along with China better. Competition is good, hostility…
> get along with China better. This will probably never happen. All countries are rivals, and the semblance of cooperation is really just the manifestation of a power imbalance. China grew into their big boy pants and can hold their own on the international stage. They have no need to be cooperative because they are in the International Superpower Club. Their strategic ambitions do not align with those of their rival…
For all the talk about how they are an equal player on the international stage PRC is still a developing country by their own assessment and WTO.