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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

#451

Post by decafninja »

_lvbh wrote: post #332
rnewme wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

I don’t like this either. It falls under what I referred to as “highly controversial” choices.

But I also don’t doubt that if the coin was flipped, China would not hesitate at all to fire any non-Chinese person from such sensitive projects, and all without any outcry you would see in the West.

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

#452

Post by MrSkelter »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #425
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…

> This is how we approach everything. > This is because it is not only a government policy, but also a Chinese way of thinking. Nothing can interrupt this process. Is there any evidence that this kind of homogeneous "national character" is objectively real? Or is it just another story that people tell themselves?

[flagged]

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

#453

Post by amluto »

cess11 wrote: post #346
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…

I'm not all that familiar with the intricacies of this industry but it seems they have at least one corporation with ambitions in this area: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3333641/chin... That mention of "quantum" seems suspicious, but it's beyond me to judge whether their presentations are credible: http://lumi-universe.com/?about_33/ If they actually produce machines that can do ~14 nm stuff on "de…

Oh, that’s neat. It uses high-harmonic generation.

My sole personal experience with any sort of harmonic generation was being in the room while some grad students debugged a 266nm laser that consisted of a boring 1064nm Nd:YAG laser followed by two frequency doublers. Quite a lot of power was lost in each stage, and the results of accidentally letting the full 1064nm source power loose were mildly spectacular.

I wish Lumiverse luck getting any appreciable amount of power out of their system. (FELs, in contrast, seem to be cable of monstrous power output — that’s never been the problem AFAIK.)

P.S. never buy a 532nm laser from a non-reputable source. While it’s impressive that frequency doubled Nd:YAG lasers are small and cheap enough to be sold as laser pointers these days, it’s far too easy for highly dangerous amounts of invisible 1064nm radiation to leak out, whether by carelessness or malice. I have a little disreputable ~510nm laser pointer, which I chose because, while I don’t trust the specs at all, 510nm is likely produced directly using a somewhat unusual solid state source, and it can’t be produced at all using a doubled Nd:YAH laser. The color is different enough that I’m confident they’re not lying about the wavelength.

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

#454

Post by kavalg »

nosianu wrote: post #412
kavalg wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a fair point! I am myself wondering how much of this is policy and how much is the "natural way".

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

#455

Post by Levitz »

palmotea wrote: post #352
mullingitover wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> The US explicitly chose to be a service economy. China explicitly chose to be a mercantile economy. In other words: the US wants its workers assembling hamburgers, China wants its workers assembling drones. And when there's a conflict, the US will lose because you can't win a war with hamburgers.

Rather, the US wants its worker coming up with the concept of drones to begin with.

Which is how China gets to make drones to begin with. You don't seem to have any understanding of what a service economy is.

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

#456

Post by impossiblefork »

jpgvm wrote: post #289
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 scat…

XFEL is going to be destructive to the chip. It can't be the future.

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

#457

Post by mensetmanusman »

adventured wrote: post #430
iknowSFR wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a NYT’s interview several months back where the journalist phrased it as in America, you have to prove success first to get funded. But in China, funding comes first and the successful companies emerge.

Which isn't at all accurate. Venture capital specifically exists to fund first, in the pursuit of success later - and the US has been by a dramatic margin the leader in doing that for the past ~60-70 years.

China has this process at the city state level. They can leverage their pegged currency to keep their citizen’s purchasing power lower than it should be to fund anything.

A downside is that their consumption economy is low, all their geo neighbors view them as a threat (reducing exports long term), and this contributes to high unemployment as productivity increases.

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

#458

Post by mensetmanusman »

kaycey2022 wrote: post #405
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…

I don't see why copying is unnatural or even bad. Maybe within a single economy or a group of economies which share a common understanding and laws, chosing to discourage copying to incentivise other citizen innovators makes sense. But in the global context, between adversarial nations, or even countries that don't see each other as equal, it is absolutely foolish not to copy. Since everything is framed in terms of g…

Some copying creates a first mover disadvantage in game theory in regards to capital resource allocation. It requires second order thinking to understand, but it’s not super complicated.

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

#459

Post by mensetmanusman »

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.

To be fair, they were uncoordinated actors in a prisoner’s dilemma competition.

This was the role of government to manage but there weren’t enough non-lawyers at positions of power to understand fixes.

Now with the massive fraud seen in local states, civilians will rightfully trust institutions less and the downward trend will continue.

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

#460

Post by dangus »

MrSkelter wrote: post #452
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is how we approach everything. > This is because it is not only a government policy, but also a Chinese way of thinking. Nothing can interrupt this process. Is there any evidence that this kind of homogeneous "national character" is objectively real? Or is it just another story that people tell themselves?

[flagged]

I think the places where American inefficiency is most visible is in construction, urban planning, and healthcare.

America blows a significant amount of its money by having its citizens drive everywhere with no option to take a train, bus, bicycle, or low-speed e-scooter. Americans take a crazy percentage of their income and just dump it into the stagnant automotive industry. Americans blow between $5,000-10,000 a year on transportation. It’s so crazy that there is a pretty long list of American cities where moving from the suburbs to the most walkable part of the metro area of that city will net you more square footage in your dwelling after removing the $750/month expense of owning a personal vehicle.

Then you can’t even really fix this problem in America because construction costs are wildly inflated. China can build a high speed rail network for the entire country for the price of a handful of miles of subway in manhattan. Projects take an insanely long time, e.g., California high speed rail. Multiple US cities have a housing cost crisis because houses aren’t being built fast enough, and that’s more money in the economy being blown on rent and financial products rather than productive endeavors.

Hangzhou metro has 12 subway lines. In 2014 they only had one.

Finally, healthcare. America just blows double the amount of money on healthcare of the next most expensive country, with worse outcomes in part because they sit in their cars all day.

I don’t even think some of the problems you’ve brought up with America like the school system are as big of problems. America has really good public schools and universities, so good that Chinese people still come to the US to get educated en masse, even at pretty standard and average state schools.

The current government doing stupid shit like discouraging research and immigration is certainly not helping though.

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