How China plans to lead the computer chip industry
On a university campus on the outskirts of Hong Kong a group of engineers are designing computer chips they hope will be used in the next generation of Chinese made smart phones. Patrick Yue leans back in his chair in a coffee shop on the campus, sporting a Stanford University t-shirt. He is the lead engineer and professor overseeing the project. His research team designs optical communication chips, which use light rather than electrical signals to transfer information, and are needed in 5G mobile phones and other internet-connected devices.
[...] China has made no secret of its desire to become self-sufficient in technology. The nation is both the world's largest importer and consumer of semiconductors. It currently produces just 16% of the semiconductors fuelling its tech boom. But it has plans to produce 40% of all semiconductors it uses by 2020, and 70% by 2025, an ambitious plan spurred by the trade war with the US. [...] In October this year, in its latest bid to help wean the nation's tech sector away from US technology, the Chinese government created a $29bn (£22m) fund to support the semiconductor industry.
"There is no question that China has the engineers to make chips. The question is whether they can make competitive ones," questions Piero Scaruffi, a Silicon Valley historian, and artificial intelligence researcher who works in Silicon Valley. "Certainly, Huawei can develop its own chips and operating systems, and the government can make sure that they will be successful in China. But Huawei and other Chinese phone makers are successful also in foreign markets, and that's a totally different question: Will Huawei's chips and operating systems be as competitive as Qualcomm's and Android? Most likely not. At best, it will take years before they are," Mr Scaruffi adds.
Mr Scaruffi estimates that China could be as many as 10 years behind the leading producers of high-end computer chips. The majority of chips made for high-end electronics are manufactured by specialist foundries like the Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). It produces more than 70% of chips designed by third party companies.
[...] [Yue] believes that Chinese technology is three to four generations behind companies like TSMC. China lacks the industry experience to manufacture high end chips, he says. But he believes that companies like Huawei are already competitive when it comes to designing chips.
Related: China's SMIC Produces its First "14nm" FinFET Chips
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) Starts "14nm" FinFET Volume Production
(Score: 3, Informative) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday November 20 2019, @04:20PM (8 children)
An interesting article about some beliefs of Mr. Scaruffi.
Now, reality check:
https://eu.jsonline.com/story/archives/2017/08/02/china-engineers-its-next-great-leap-its-students/527951001/ [jsonline.com]
That was two years ago. You have already lost. 5G comm is a proof of that.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday November 20 2019, @04:44PM (6 children)
Yes/No.
China produces excellent technologists, scientists, etc. It also leads the world in faked results. And the person in official charge of reducing that appears to be a strong practitioner of faking. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/11/19/a-research-scandal-in-china [sciencemag.org]
So they've got some management problems to overcome, at minimum.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @05:03PM
It also leads the world in "borrowed" results
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @05:07PM
I think this sort of argument is akin to trying to assess China's ability to manufacture products by looking at the cheapest shoddy knock-offs you can find, and then implying that such an issue is inherent in all Chinese manufacturing. Of course what matters is what's happening as a whole. Are they advancing or not? At what rate? E.g. I think most of our entire field of psychology, let alone the psychotropics and "psychological techniques" it peddles, are going to go down in history about as well as astrology and lobotomies have. But the nonsense going on over there has in no way interfered with e.g. our progress in advancing space technologies or continuing to explore particle physics.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday November 20 2019, @05:08PM (3 children)
In Chinese cultural paradigm, Qi is a legitimate concept, rooted in philosophy.
Compare that to the fact many of old European universities still have plenty of theology faculties, graduating priests by the very same academic rituals as scientists and engineers, often in very same halls.
https://www.ktf.cuni.cz/KTF-1.html [ktf.cuni.cz]
https://htf.cuni.cz/HTF-1.html [htf.cuni.cz]
https://www.kuleuven.be/english/ [kuleuven.be]
https://www.ku-eichstaett.de/en [ku-eichstaett.de]
In western culture, theology is still a science. No wonder Chinese despise us as barbarians...
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday November 20 2019, @06:33PM
Yeah, we should also add liberal arts to the list of theologies and "education through sports" bright idea (noticed last weekend at Princeton)
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Wednesday November 20 2019, @08:18PM
Excuse me, but I don't see how that justifies using copied photographs in different studies.
I've got nothing against Qi or chi or even elan vital in a study, but that doesn't justify fraudulent evidence. (And, of course, your evidence will need to be a lot stronger. Rhine didn't make the cut.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 21 2019, @03:31PM
And SN has Karma which one gets by up mods from other weirdos on the internet. This is all deeply relevant to management problems in China.
You definitely should turn that into a YouTube video. I can see the obvious, logical extensions of this principle. Scientists drive on roads, so do pimply, teen-age burger flippers. So in Western culture, burger flipping is still a science!
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday November 20 2019, @04:57PM
quantity vs. quality. Political biases could preclude the latter. How many foreigners are flocking to Chinese universities?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fadrian on Wednesday November 20 2019, @05:06PM (2 children)
A hostile takeover of TSMC via a hostile takeover of Taiwan solves the "10 years behind" problem. Think bigger, rather than myopically focusing on some puny industry sector, BBC - the world does not stay stable.
We've built a world in which might makes right. The world is about equally balanced in various countries' abilities to inflict mayhem (social and/or physical) on each other's countries. The only thing stopping the PRC is a fervent desire not to upset the whole fucking apple cart. But thin-skinned egotists being in charge just about everywhere hasn't helped anyone. Who knows what tomorrow may bring.
That is all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @05:29PM
I'm expecting my new couch tbh
(Score: 5, Informative) by legont on Wednesday November 20 2019, @06:38PM
This was said overnight by some official. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_say_we_didn%27t_tell_it_before [wikipedia.org]
In Chinese diplomacy, this is typically the last call before a war.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 20 2019, @07:12PM
The Chinese can lead the world in their production and consumption of silicon chips.
Just let America lead the world in their production and consumption of potato chips.
Satin worshipers are obsessed with high thread counts because they have so many daemons.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Wednesday November 20 2019, @08:40PM (1 child)
Is this a different one from the one that's currently a warzone? Kinda hard to make chips when you arrest all the engineers.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday November 20 2019, @10:06PM
They really can make those engineers a very compelling proposal, if not one the engineers can't refuse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday November 20 2019, @11:22PM (5 children)
The law of diminishing returns guarantees there will be areas of application where "three to four generations behind" technology is good enough.
In China's case, all that matters is that the user will be responsible to compensate for any of the technology's shortcomings that may result in a lower social credit system [wikipedia.org]; by behaving double-plus good. So, actually, that's not a bug, it's a feature (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday November 20 2019, @11:43PM
3DSoC built using "130nm" process technology could outperform "3nm" planar chips. That's more like 10 generations behind. There's some great IP out there for China to
stealcopydraw inspiration from. I wonder how good Minnesotans [skywatertechnology.com] are at securing their data.[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Thursday November 21 2019, @03:43AM (3 children)
They've also now got a huge motivation, thanks to random and arbitrary embargoes by Trump, to catch up quick. Short-term it'll hurt China while they have to fill in the gap caused by the absence of US products that they're currently dependent on. Then once they get up to speed and start churning out the same stuff, or better, in China at a fraction of the price that the US vendors are charging, it's curtains for a lot of US vendors.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 21 2019, @05:16AM (2 children)
On the same line, just in case one doesn't know how come China has its own space program in non-trivially advanced stages, a brief reminder of the Chinese exclusion policy of NASA [wikipedia.org].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday November 21 2019, @08:47AM (1 child)
Ah, good point! And that link points out they then ended up teaming up with Europe and Russia for it, which advanced the Chinese, European, and Russian programs, not just the Chinese one alone. If they do the same thing with the cellular/electronics technology they used to get from the US, it'll also end up benefitting China, Russia, and Europe, which presumably is the last thing the US wants.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 21 2019, @10:24AM
And they can actually play nice/bring value in research collaborations.
See EAST [wikipedia.org], on a shoestring budget of $37M, contributing back into ITER [wikipedia.org] Achieved record (electron) temperatures one year ago [sciencealert.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by khakipuce on Thursday November 21 2019, @09:22AM (1 child)
Last time I checked, China was a communist state controlled country, who thinks they give a flying frig about the competitiveness of an industry which they see as of national strategic interest? And besides they are amongst the most competitive manufacturers in the world, that’s why so much stuff is manufactured there.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday November 21 2019, @12:09PM
They can compete with some stuff two nodes ahead, like discrete GPUs [pcgamesn.com], just by cutting the profit margin and making power-hungry chips. Nvidia, Intel, and AMD are making bank but exposing themselves to attack by a Chinese entrant.
Piero Scaruffi is talking about mobile chips, where you want to be on the bleeding edge node to reduce power consumption, reduce die sizes, and increase performance per Watt. TSMC's top priority customers are getting mobile SoCs. The top priority customers are Huawei and Apple, in that order.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]