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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

#411

Post by CuriouslyC »

maxglute wrote: post #77
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...

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 absolute irony of China being more capitalist than the US in some ways.

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

#412

Post by nosianu »

kavalg wrote: post #379
vasco wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Which in turn was fueled by the consumers' desire for cheap stuff, and for their portfolios to earn them a lot of money to be able to retire early and live comfortably while letting a cheaper workforce far away do more and more of the dirty and dangerous jobs.

The "bean counters" are under pressure just like everybody else. They didn't come up with their targets and incentives out of nowhere.

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

#413

Post by [deleted] »

yosefk wrote: post #357
vasco wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The Chinese are ahead at too many things at this point to think they're only good at copying

[deleted]

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

#414

Post by myrmidon »

mullingitover wrote: post #212
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? The US explicitly chose to be a service economy. China explicitly chose to be a mercantile economy. The US can absolutely switch paths, it will just take a long time and will require pushing millions into poverty. But we're on track to do it.

"Explicitly chose" is a strong word.

US and China are on completely different stages of industrialization: The US had its massive boom of manufacturing almost a century ago, enriching its population massively. Those rich citizens make the same manufacturing uncompetitive today, because no one is going to work in a factory for $20k/year (median wage in urban China), when he can work for other "rich" people for more than twice as much.

Switching paths is not feasible for the US in the same way that it is not gonna be feasible for China to hold on to all its industry as wages rise: You can't compete globally at "poor people wages" while being "rich", as simple as that.

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

#415

Post by vasco »

yosefk wrote: post #357
vasco wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The Chinese are ahead at too many things at this point to think they're only good at copying

I never said that, or that there's something wrong with copying. I just said the sentence implies copying. Which it does.

And in fact this meme Chinese only copy is crap as I point out in my last paragraph. Over the centuries the Chinese were the first at quite a few things.

But the sentence says what it says.

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

#416

Post by vasco »

never_inline wrote: post #380
vasco wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

You wouldn't and you shouldn't. You should copy. It's what I would've done also. It's just what it is.

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

#417

Post by pantalaimon »

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...

It's just a matter of time until they show up on AliExpress - you can already order LoongArch systems (3A6000) and have them shipped to your doorstep.

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

#418

Post by foldr »

yanhangyhy wrote: post #401
gpt5 wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clarify what are you talking about? The US has been developing 6th-gen fighter since the mid mid-2010s - not that I'd consider it as an important new original invention. What I would consider as the most impactful inventions of the last decade would be things like mRNA, Generative AI, and reusable rockets - all came from the US and the US is maintaining the lead in them.

> Can you clarify what are you talking about? The US has been developing 6th-gen fighter since the mid mid-2010s - not that I'd consider it as an important new original invention. So you think that, as an advanced military project that should have been kept under the strictest secrecy, the Chinese somehow obtained it and, based on that, developed their own sixth-generation fighter—and even managed a successful test f…

China doesn’t yet have the jet engine technology to compete with American 5th gen fighters. I certainly don’t think the US or anyone else should be complacent, but the US has a substantial lead for now.

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

#419

Post by ajsnigrutin »

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…

A better question here is, would china be doing this, if "the west" wasn't threathening (and implementing) all kinds of sanctions on them, giving them no choice but to go "the bender way", by making their own chips (with blackjack, and hookers!).

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

#420

Post by powerapple »

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…

IMO, the difference between East and West is money allocation. In west, especially in the US, there are a lot money in the private sector, they will take the risk and fund moonshot projects; in China, the state will (have to) play that role. Yes, 90% of the projects will fail in the portfolio, that's part of the game.
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