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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

#581

Post by kakacik »

qcnguy wrote: post #545
SubiculumCode wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy with Russia is too obtuse to be useful. Russia never was an economic exporting powerhouse with tons of manufacturing know-how and willing engagement in the larger international capitalist economies. I am no fan of the PRC, but there is plenty of intellectual, innovation, and economic competition within China to make your analogy unlikely to be helpful. That said, the U.S., if it wants to stay ahead, also…

Soviet Russia at that time was a global superpower that had developed nuclear weapons and was winning the space race. It only exported heavily to other communist states, but it definitely could do advanced tech and manufacturing. Modern PRC and USSR aren't exact analogues, but the approach of their governments is clearly similar in this case.

Soviets winning space race during microchip era? I think you have mildly mixed up decades. Soviets were leaders till US put people on the moon, that was so far beyond what soviets were capable of this race stopped, and they just focused on ICBMs.

Soviet tech was sturdy and more primitive (thus more sturdy), much cheaper and they were willing to deliver it to anybody.

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

#582

Post by mrguyorama »

nebula8804 wrote: post #284
this_user wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The west is still underestimating China. There is a great anecdote, I think it's from the book 'Apple in China', about their engineers visiting a Chinese production plant. Some changes needed to be made to the place. The Apple people estimated that that would take two weeks. They came back the next day. It was finished, the Chinese had done it overnight.

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…

Their parent's generation toiled really hard and lifted the entire country out of poverty and everyone was pretty well rewarded for it.

They feel working hard brings benefits.

In America, working hard brings your manager benefits. We are multiple generations into this. Most people have learned to not work hard because it is just free benefit to your employer.

Sure, we could pressure Americans to work harder by making the entire country even more afraid of losing their jobs and terrified of not overworking themselves, but even then, all that hard work will just be captured by a spoiled managerial class playing bonus games and extracting all that wealth for themselves, not for American advancement.

Even in the shithole that is American managerial culture, you can still find young Americans working hard, often in spite of themselves, because they get into some project. In the past, projects were small and your team had substantial agency, so this sort of "The team really gets into the project" outcomes paid huge dividends, and resulted in a lot of success. Things like the IBM PC, lots of stuff at Bell Labs.

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

#583

Post by snapcaster »

PKop wrote: post #562
snapcaster wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you on the conclusion, but man I just wish people stopped believing in fairy tales about countries like this. America does it too. Why are people so allergic to materialism? I'm not saying culture is irrelevant but saying china's success is due to "Chinese way of thinking" or america was dominant because of the "american dream" is an adult believing santa-tier take. Material conditions shape his…

Does this include the material conditions of human bio diversity? You deny "way of thinking" is itself a material differentiation but could that not be an expression of material conditions over time reshaping separate groups of people to act and think differently, who were through differing selective pressures, environments, adaptations and historical contingencies themselves "shaped" differently? Or do you yourself…

I'm not saying relevance of culture, human bio-diversity, etc. are zeroes in terms of impact. I just get frustrated because they seem to be the only things talked about at the expense of any discussion about actual material conditions or control and distribution of resources

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

#585

Post by ebonnafoux »

kleiba wrote: post #563
NemoNobody wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google the top 25 cities in China Skylines. Your going to feel humbled.

Very impressive. Here are some other interesting google searches: - "world-wide coal consumption by country" - "countries with the most executions in 2024" - "freedom in the world report" - "world press freedom index" - "climate change performance by country" Enjoy.

Now divide "coal consumption", "executions" and " CO2 emission" by capita, it is also interesting.

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

#586

Post by 3371 »

snapcaster wrote: post #471
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 don't disagree with you on the conclusion, but man I just wish people stopped believing in fairy tales about countries like this. America does it too. Why are people so allergic to materialism? I'm not saying culture is irrelevant but saying china's success is due to "Chinese way of thinking" or america was dominant because of the "american dream" is an adult believing santa-tier take. Material conditions shape his…

Well if you have pay attention this user you would realize he is a very classic example of an educated and proud Chinese. No offense but an unusual amount of Chinese uniformly think and talk like that thanks to the education.

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

#587

Post by citizenpaul »

m4rtink wrote: post #125
Waterluvian wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole “improve a game’s performance on the driver side” thing: does AMD simply not do that at all? Or just far less?

Frankly, this always seemed like dirty hacks - either the game or the drivers don't actually comply woth the graphics API and then the drivers need to hack around that. :P

I don't work in the industry but as I've understood from reading stuff from people that are. Basically the entire industry is dirty hacks from the top down and bottom up.

That is not to say this is good or bad. Just that it appears common.

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

#588

Post by hearsathought »

maxglute wrote: post #578
hearsathought wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That's how everyone who industrialized/advanced approaches everything. China isn't the only country with the "can do" or "if you can do it, we can do it" attitud…

The PRC motto is not about "can do", it's about "able to do". Can Palau build a commercial airliner when Boeing and Airbus workforce is 10x their population? No that's simply out of their reach. That's really the crux behind the original statement, there are not many (really currently any) country in the world other than PRC who has the complete industrial chains and workforce numbers to build anything that already e…

> The PRC motto is not about "can do", it's about "able to do".

Who cares? "Can do" assumes "able to do".

> Can Palau build a commercial airliner when Boeing and Airbus workforce is 10x their population? No that's simply out of their reach.

That's why I limited it to : "That's how everyone who industrialized/advanced approaches everything.".

> That's really the crux behind the original statement, there are not many (really currently any) country in the world other than PRC who has the complete industrial chains and workforce numbers to build anything that already exist if they pour enough resources into it.

China is a subset of the american world order. The PRC's industrialization is a creation of the US/Japan/EU.

> PRC can figure out how to build it.

So can the US. Are you saying china can create something we can't figure out?

> The geopolitical reality today (i.e. the amount aggregate S&T complexity that has accumulated from past 100 years) is there may not be anything others can build that PRC eventually can't due to size of PRC talent and industrial base, the reverse is not necessarily true

I'd say there is nothing that china cannot build.

> There's a shit load of advanced industries that are simply out of most small/medium even large countries reach because their size precludes them from coordinating enough people or industrial resources for undertaking.

That just means small/medium countries will collaborate.

FYI: China is smaller than the west. China is much smaller than the west and its allies combined. There is no denying china has some advantages. But china also has disadvantages. Linguistically, politically, culturally, geographically, historically, etc. China's industrialization, just like japan's industrialization, was predicated entirely on western knowledge/tech and access to western trade routes.

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

#589

Post by tsunamifury »

woooooo wrote: post #265
tsunamifury wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s only the first year after that it’s command and control for the vast majority. Also you take is highly simplistic. Even the small players are command and control. You’re likely just not aware how it works.

Its a pretty big detriment to American thinking that they take cold-war era characterizations of the Russian economy and then apply them to 2025 China. The current Chinese worries are about having too much competition rather than too little, Google "involution" to read about it.

work with china every day.

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

#590

Post by owenversteeg »

qcnguy wrote: post #523
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…

It’s only a matter of time, but time matters, as they say. You should know that what China is doing was tried in the past. It is an old story. When the microchip was brand new (invented in the USA) the Soviets realized they needed the tech for military purposes. So they built a closed city devoted to silicon research called Zelenograd. It was staffed with very bright physicists and engineers. But Zelenograd didn't ma…

The history of Soviet electronics manufacturing is fascinating, but there are some huge differences and I actually don't think the private sector is the largest. One is the pace and type of innovation. In the 70s and 80s the landscape was incredibly dynamic and technology went through several huge changes. If you wanted to run a clone of the US tech industry then, you would need a distributed, dynamic effort across many fields and not a top-down directed Manhattan Project. In 2025 we do have rapid technological change, but things are much more consolidated. In terms of strategically important recent innovations I can only think of EUV and AI. That's much more Manhattan-Project-able.

The other difference - which is even more significant - is that China is already far ahead in advanced manufacturing. The US was lightyears ahead of the Soviets in advanced manufacturing, which is what allowed us to win in the 70s and 80s. Now, we're so far behind it's not even funny. Sure, the West still makes some ultra-precise machines for EUV, but look where most of the components in those machines are made...

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