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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

#531

Post by earlyreturns »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #529
earlyreturns wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are the CHIPs then? Oh but at least our infrastructure was rebuilt. Right?

In the google results, if you had bothered to google. It turns out $50B was enough to tip the investment calculus on half a dozen large projects and a dozen or so smaller ones. So tell me: was it learned helplessness or partisan hackery that made you severely underestimate what turned out to be possible?

My opinion comes from my personal experience with CHiPs funded projects but admittedly thats merely anecdotal knowledge so I’m very glad to hear that Biden’s “biggest ever!”(tm) inflation reduction package met its goals and wasn’t just money printing and political cronyism. Imagine where we would be without all those new chip fabs and infrastructure fixes you mentioned finding in your Google search. You’re right, that was 50 billion, give or take, well spent!

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

#532

Post by petcat »

rsoto2 wrote: post #520
petcat wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And then the rest of the world won’t even have older chips. This basically just means Europe wont have older chips. TSMC is already producing a significant percentage of their chips in Arizona. And they've even slated ~30% of their total production of 2nm chips and better will be produced in USA by 2028-2029.

You mean the TSMC factory that it's workers hate and has been facing heavy delays and power outages??? https://restofworld.org/2024/tsmc-arizona-expansion/

From a China/Asia-centric newspaper? I would expect them to say that.

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

#534

Post by ptx »

random9749832 wrote: post #106
pxc wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When referring to the efforts nation-states, I'd be very interested to hear how often such metaphorical usage is used to describe the work of adversarial vs. friendly countries. I would be shocked if it's as often (in the Anglophone press) used to describe the work of US-aligned countries as it is that of US-adversarial countries.

This is literally by the country that suffered the most from it.

Well, the description is attributed to "two people with knowledge of the project" of unclear national origin.

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

#535

Post by ipdashc »

_zagj wrote: post #261
mistercheph wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't require reciprocation because it is a generalized version of the rebasing problem in software. Over a big round table with cigar smoke in the air it's natural to come to the conclusion that the closed party can always outpace any set of open parties since it can take the public work and extend it with an advance that it keeps a secret. In reality, we observe that open parties tend to win, or at minimum, if…

> In reality, we observe that open parties tend to win, or at minimum, if they lose, the closed party tends to have an entirely disconnected line of research that rarely incorporates ideas from the open party An obvious counter-example to this is the NSA/GCHQ and cryptography. They've repeatedly shown that they're a good 5-15 years ahead of everyone else.

Is this still true? I feel like I haven't heard of any crazy cryptography revelations for a while now. My assumption was that cryptography was a bit of a special case because it was only government/defense entities putting significant work into it, up until the Internet/digital telecommunications became prominent enough that there was great individual and private-sector demand for crypto. (Plus the whole mess with it being export-controlled, obviously)

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

#536

Post by stackedinserter »

stupidhooper wrote: post #271

Why is it that whenever China is concerned, their most non-violent aspirations are always framed as evil? Manhattan project for anything outside a literal nuke is pretty wild for a headline.

Because they will become violent to us once they can afford to be violent to us.

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

#537

Post by mullingitover »

palmotea wrote: post #479
Levitz wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Rather, the US wants its worker coming up with the concept of drones to begin with. Sure, but that idea is too stupid and arrogant to event consider. China's not going to cede that kind of high-level work forever. They'll learn how to do it, and when that happens what will the US do? And then, in the conflict, can your "concept makers" get their implementation done by the hamburger assemblers, with their hamburger…

> They'll learn how to do it, and when that happens what will the US do?

Continue coming up with even more advanced ideas. This is like the Winklevoss Twins getting mad at Zuckerberg for 'stealing their idea', and the dean of Harvard lecturing them about how they're Men of Harvard and as such they'll simply come up with another idea, because that's what Men of Harvard do. They don't just one and done with one good idea.

The US built the world's most advanced idea factory, but the people who hate smart people got into power and now they're stripping the copper out of the walls.

> And then, in the conflict

There won't be a hot conflict between nuclear powers. Or there will, and whoever can make the most drones will be irrelevant in the first 24 hours.

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

#538

Post by nebula8804 »

zarzavat wrote: post #373
nebula8804 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

We can't dismiss the role TikTok played in breaking the standard media narrative in the west. I grew up following this issue since I am in a group that is on the receiving end of this conflict.

I occasionally think about software that has truly transformed the trajectory of humanity. So much software is just disposable or is only useful for a small group of people. But the folks at TikTok should be commended in some ways for the drastic changes their algorithm made to the views of worldwide youth. Was it altruistic or nefarious? I suspect we won't know for sure until its written in the history books but man did it have an impact. Even though TikTok is probably gone now that its been taken over by the same people who used to shape the narrative its impact wont be easily forgotten.

How many of us developers get a chance to write software that really changes the direction the world takes?

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

#539

Post by nebula8804 »

Johanx64 wrote: post #436
nebula8804 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wonder what is it that's driving the Chinese to work themselves to death to get this stuff done? Surely there must be some limit. I guess we can see it in the low birth rates, the youth unemployment, and I guess the desire to just survive because there's just so many people there. But still, I just don't get how Chinese just keep going and going. What is their end goal on a person to person level? Are they ju…

This really isn't that different from South Korea / Japan work culture isn't it? Atleast as far as hours clocked in at work is concerned, no?

I don't know. You are correct that the Japanese/Korea has this mentality to spend time at work just to spend time but there is a noticeable delta in effective results between those countries and modern China.

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

#540

Post by notepad0x90 »

jjcc wrote: post #518
notepad0x90 wrote: post #143

Good 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…

Give you some more historical context: China (ROC) planned to invade west China until the plan was given up in 60's. Both sides wanted reunification by force. When China's navy and air force was superior in early 1950's, it tried to "establish blockade of trade with west China (PRC) along the Chinese coast" (1) China eventually gave up the plan in 1960's not because it didn't want to but because the balance of the po…

Thanks. In my view, the PRC is making a huge strategic mistake. As is Taiwan. The PRC is too focused on full control, normally they're more long-term-minded, but in this case they're rushing it too much. Establishing a trade-bloc and peaceful relations first and then aiming for full reunification would be the smart play, since there isn't anything huge to gain outside of TSMC (that I know of) by way of an invasion.

Taiwan is too dependent on the west, it too should know it can't actually resist an invasion, and that the west won't do much when it comes down to it. Its interests would have been served best if it sought good trade relations with the PRC, so that the PRC will continue to rely on TSMC. it should be providing west-china with all the nice chips the west is forbidding it from having. It should have been more like india and less like south korea.

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