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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

#371

Post by yanhangyhy »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #362
yanhangyhy wrote: post #323

Domestically, we often put it this way: since it wasn’t made by God, we can definitely make it ourselves. It’s only a matter of time — if not this year, then next year; if we can’t do it next year, we’ll just keep going. This is how we approach everything. There is a small caveat, though. China was not actually that far behind in the semiconductor field in the past. The problem was that corruption and fraudulent proj…

I wonder how much scam there is on US side...

To be honest, maybe only Americans themselves really understand it. Our understanding of them is that they have poured vast amounts of money into areas outside of technology.

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

#372

Post by yanhangyhy »

bean469 wrote: post #359
barrenko wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The final outcome is affected by the final 10%, you can even call it 1%, for which the semi-corrupt or "communistiquesque" countries never (seemingly) have the will or sheer talent for.

> "communistiquesque" countries never (seemingly) have the will or sheer talent for. I don't have the data to back it up, but I think that there is actually the same amount of will and talent in China as in the West

around 13 millons graduates each year and > 50% of them are STEM

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

#373

Post by zarzavat »

nebula8804 wrote: post #285
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…

>we speak the truth about stuff even when it hurts, why live in denial Unless you are talking about Israel :P

It's more like the genocide in Gaza is the uncommon case where western propaganda was openly rejected by the population, at least by younger people, despite a concerted top-down effort to try to convince people that genocide is actually concordant with western values. Though it did take some time.

It's the propaganda that nobody questions that is most insidious.

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

#374

Post by yanhangyhy »

yanhangyhy wrote: post #323

Domestically, we often put it this way: since it wasn’t made by God, we can definitely make it ourselves. It’s only a matter of time — if not this year, then next year; if we can’t do it next year, we’ll just keep going. This is how we approach everything. There is a small caveat, though. China was not actually that far behind in the semiconductor field in the past. The problem was that corruption and fraudulent proj…

“transparent computing” -> this shit: https://www.science.org/content/article/critics-pounce-china...

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

#375

Post by bgnn »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #163
maxglute wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowhere close, but pace now seems faster than estimated, i.e. original western estimate is they won't even get EUV prototype up until 2030s. Right now their chips are already "economically" competitive, as in SMIC is starving on 20% margins vs ASML/TSMC/NVIDIA getting gluttonous on 50-70%, at least for enterprise AI. Current scarcity pricing = litho costs borderline rounding error, 1500 Nvidia chip flips for 30000, 6…

How does one even smuggle an ASML machine? I'd assume the machine stops working if the GPS position doesn't compute, at end of life I wouldn't expect ASML to allow these devices nor their components to end up on the second hand market, I'd expect the future transfers to require continued permission of ASML, much like weapons distribution.

These machines are not like John Deere tractors. If you own the hardware, you own it. They won't be connected to internet. Security first!

Smuggling part is happening on the old machines before EUV. There's a lot of them available on the second hand market thanks to Europe and US keep shutting down their old fabs. I don't think any DUV machine is smuggled. Even if they physically smuggled one, you need a team of ASML engineers to set it up and calibrate. You can guess what ASML will do in this case.

By the way, let's don't forget: ASML doesn't have any problems with China. They are incredibly annoyed with US and Dutch governments. This is potentially the biggest market they are missing out. Even then, they won't tolerate a summugling operation.

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

#376

Post by bgnn »

htrp wrote: post #97
bgnn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are nowhere close to beat ASML. This isn't a moat ASML can keep for long though. There can be alternatove technologies to achieve the same goal. So far only China has that incentive. The real problem is process scaling is slowing down. How many more generations of lithography machines will ASML design? Probably not many. This means there will be no edge left in 5 or 10 years, as eventually brute force will work…

> even if they use older machines and run longer exposure times How do longer exposure times and older machines enable 2nm process nodes?

They can do 7nm and 5nm. Multiple patterning basically. I don't know when it doesn't scale anymore. Moat likely 4x patterning is the max you want to do.

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

#377

Post by bgnn »

petre wrote: post #62
bgnn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are nowhere close to beat ASML. This isn't a moat ASML can keep for long though. There can be alternatove technologies to achieve the same goal. So far only China has that incentive. The real problem is process scaling is slowing down. How many more generations of lithography machines will ASML design? Probably not many. This means there will be no edge left in 5 or 10 years, as eventually brute force will work…

No, they won't beat ASML but they'll be good enough and most importantly cheap. And they'll catch up eventually.

That's basically what I said, no?

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

#378

Post by bgnn »

pests wrote: post #251
renewiltord wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is too far from correct for any correction to be anything but a full restatement of the facts. Moving the tech over requires US approval. Listen, the Dutch are not going to risk it. Even if they were, ASML would not risk it because all of their customers wouldn't buy anything from a company that's on the EAR Entity List (which is where they'd end up if they tried this without the US allowing it) without US appro…

Specifically control is related to the Foreign Direct Product Rule, where in which the US claims jurisdiction over any foreign product containing 25% or more of US-origins (Cymer, etc)

In ASML's case it is the Dutch government banning them, because US government openly threatened them. It's the logical thing to do for an ally.

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

#379

Post by kavalg »

vasco wrote: post #354
yanhangyhy wrote: post #323

Domestically, we often put it this way: since it wasn’t made by God, we can definitely make it ourselves. It’s only a matter of time — if not this year, then next year; if we can’t do it next year, we’ll just keep going. This is how we approach everything. There is a small caveat, though. China was not actually that far behind in the semiconductor field in the past. The problem was that corruption and fraudulent proj…

> since it wasn’t made by God, we can definitely make it ourselves. This implies copying what someone else did. Rather than inventing something new. I know it's not what you meant but if it wasn't made by God it's because it's already made by someone else. The sentence says to me more about copying than some relentless pursuit. The people who invented the thing to copy, those were more relentless presumably. And then…

And that copying was largely enabled by our greedy western bean counters that outsourced so many things in the first place.

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

#380

Post by never_inline »

vasco wrote: post #354
yanhangyhy wrote: post #323

Domestically, we often put it this way: since it wasn’t made by God, we can definitely make it ourselves. It’s only a matter of time — if not this year, then next year; if we can’t do it next year, we’ll just keep going. This is how we approach everything. There is a small caveat, though. China was not actually that far behind in the semiconductor field in the past. The problem was that corruption and fraudulent proj…

> since it wasn’t made by God, we can definitely make it ourselves. This implies copying what someone else did. Rather than inventing something new. I know it's not what you meant but if it wasn't made by God it's because it's already made by someone else. The sentence says to me more about copying than some relentless pursuit. The people who invented the thing to copy, those were more relentless presumably. And then…

If I was in china's position and so much is at stake, how can I go towards engineering all the tech from scratch when I can reverse engineer existing tech from west?
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