I do not think China ever prioritized home grown semis, since its viewed as "plumbing" for more lucrative things built on top of chips ( software, etc).
Why focus on it when South Korea, Taiwan was already doing it ?
As the article states, it's a 500 billion dollar industry.
Compared to energy, defense it's much less important ( but critical ).
Now that the US is threatening to shut them off, they are being forced to invest more heavily.
I saw a graph the other day, within 2030 or something, china was poised to hold a monopsony position in semis, something like 80% of global semi consumption is going to come from China.
It's just surprising that the US would kick their biggest semiconductor customer in the head.
Is that consumption measured by units or total value? I'm sure China could compete for cheap smartphone chips and microcontrollers but it would take them a while to make something like a Xeon.
You are making assumption, that they will stick to x86 architecture. What if they don’t want this old thing with all the microcode and hacks inside? What if they start on clean page with RISC-V or alike and software for it? Or China will just buy company building competitive chips: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/qualcomm-server-chip-exit-...
Posted a few months ago. Admittedly it’s not a Xeon but these things are becoming commodities.
> Ara runs at 1.2 GHz in the typical corner (TT/0.80 V/25 oC), achieving a performance up to 34 DP-GFLOPS. In terms of energy efficiency, Ara achieves up to 67 DP-GFLOPS/W under the same conditions, which is 56% higher than similar vector processors found in literature.
The problem with monopsony is not any particular chip or technology. You can make (with huge investment and a couple of decades) or buy any technology. The problem is that you have to make the whole Digikey catalogue (and then some) all by yourself. From capacitors - all of them - types, capacities, sizes, form-factors, voltages, grades, to ADCs (no, buying Analog Devices wouldn't solve this, and you couldn't buy it anyway) and RF components, and everything in between. All of them, to stay competitive in what you can build with that components. That's where Soviet Union lost the game, and any modern country, including the United States would loose too, considering how the field has expanded since 1991.
China's major problem is that it's not the USA. The USA has lots of capital to throw around, it can shift manufacturing to other countries. The USA is also the leader in style, culture, and innovation - China just plays catchup. With a centralized government, you'll always be playing catchup.
China may led the world in cheap electronic components, but there is no reason that India couldn't do the same if the USA trade war with China keeps escalating. Italy also has many small workshop that can crank out small precision parts. Sooner or latter Eastern Europe will get back into the game.
> China just plays catchup. With a centralized government, you'll always be playing catchup.
Japan/S Korea/Taiwan beg to differ. Those are under democratic governance, but 'centralized' never the less. Japan has lion share of Semiconductor equipment, while South Korea and Taiwan are leading the most advanced foundry business.
Centralized in what sense? Those are all free market economies. On Heritage Foundation’s economic freedom index, Taiwan ranks in the top 10, ahead of the US, while South Korea and Japan rank around Germany or Norway, and ahead of Spain, Italy, or France: https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking.
Yeah lets see again in 2025~2030, that is when China plans to be the top of these sectors with the Chinese Made in China 2025 plan.
Semis are already feeling Huawei presence in the world, huawei designs its own soc and some of its components. The bigger Huawei market share the smaller amount of US components need to be exported.
It’s not like it’s too late, especially with the US pursuing 19th century solutions to 21st century problems. The level of understanding possessed by the US presidential candidates for the 2020 elections is a little worrying. For starters, we have a number of folks who want to break up big tech without a corresponding plan to break up the oligarchies held by the big telcos.
The article alludes to a major Chinese shortcoming: that it thought it could own semiconductor manufacturing by owning the equipment. A lot of US nationalism is centered on how the US leads in terms of culture. It would be precarious to assume that we should really be so advantaged, or more broadly, to pin your success on the failure of your competitor.
> It’s not like it’s too late, especially with the US pursuing 19th century solutions to 21st century problems.
Of course not. It just requires China actually do the research for the tech instead of stealing it.
> The level of understanding possessed by the US presidential candidates for the 2020 elections is a little worrying. For starters, we have a number of folks who want to break up big tech without a corresponding plan to break up the oligarchies held by the big telcos.
Another set of 19th century solutions.
> The article alludes to a major Chinese shortcoming: that it thought it could own semiconductor manufacturing by owning the equipment.
IP theft isn't the same as IP research.
> A lot of US nationalism is centered on how the US leads in terms of culture. It would be precarious to assume that we should really be so advantaged, or more broadly, to pin your success on the failure of your competitor.
It's more than just culture. We have a set of law that protects our research efforts. In China, what protection is there from competition or even the government?
A quick note --just because China is not a major player in the semiconductor industry today, doesn't the CCP is not placing its state resources (both state financial backing [1] and the industrial espionage kind [2][3][4][5]) to try and incubate a semiconductor industry
> just because China is not a major player in the semiconductor industry today, doesn't the CCP is not placing its state resources (both state financial backing [1] and the industrial espionage kind [2][3][4][5]) to try and incubate a semiconductor industry
18 comments
[ 9.7 ms ] story [ 340 ms ] threadWhy focus on it when South Korea, Taiwan was already doing it ?
As the article states, it's a 500 billion dollar industry.
Compared to energy, defense it's much less important ( but critical ).
Now that the US is threatening to shut them off, they are being forced to invest more heavily.
I saw a graph the other day, within 2030 or something, china was poised to hold a monopsony position in semis, something like 80% of global semi consumption is going to come from China.
It's just surprising that the US would kick their biggest semiconductor customer in the head.
> Ara runs at 1.2 GHz in the typical corner (TT/0.80 V/25 oC), achieving a performance up to 34 DP-GFLOPS. In terms of energy efficiency, Ara achieves up to 67 DP-GFLOPS/W under the same conditions, which is 56% higher than similar vector processors found in literature.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20126280
market share, which means total value ( $$ ).
> but it would take them a while to make something like a Xeon.
By a while do you mean 10 years max ? that's not a long time.
Also it's noticeable that Japan doesn't feature, why's that and why are the Japanese cool about that?
China may led the world in cheap electronic components, but there is no reason that India couldn't do the same if the USA trade war with China keeps escalating. Italy also has many small workshop that can crank out small precision parts. Sooner or latter Eastern Europe will get back into the game.
Japan/S Korea/Taiwan beg to differ. Those are under democratic governance, but 'centralized' never the less. Japan has lion share of Semiconductor equipment, while South Korea and Taiwan are leading the most advanced foundry business.
Semis are already feeling Huawei presence in the world, huawei designs its own soc and some of its components. The bigger Huawei market share the smaller amount of US components need to be exported.
The article alludes to a major Chinese shortcoming: that it thought it could own semiconductor manufacturing by owning the equipment. A lot of US nationalism is centered on how the US leads in terms of culture. It would be precarious to assume that we should really be so advantaged, or more broadly, to pin your success on the failure of your competitor.
Of course not. It just requires China actually do the research for the tech instead of stealing it.
> The level of understanding possessed by the US presidential candidates for the 2020 elections is a little worrying. For starters, we have a number of folks who want to break up big tech without a corresponding plan to break up the oligarchies held by the big telcos.
Another set of 19th century solutions.
> The article alludes to a major Chinese shortcoming: that it thought it could own semiconductor manufacturing by owning the equipment.
IP theft isn't the same as IP research.
> A lot of US nationalism is centered on how the US leads in terms of culture. It would be precarious to assume that we should really be so advantaged, or more broadly, to pin your success on the failure of your competitor.
It's more than just culture. We have a set of law that protects our research efforts. In China, what protection is there from competition or even the government?
[1]https://outline.com/j35sNG
[2]https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3005738/ch...
[3]https://www.wired.com/story/us-accuses-chinese-stealing-micr...
[4]https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/prc-state-owned-company-taiwa...
[5]https://www.wsj.com/articles/taiwans-technology-secrets-come...
What I've read about made in 2025 in the past few years, the motto of CCP can be distilled down to:
1) Whatever CCP can't build, it will try to buy
2) Whatever CCP can't buy, it will try to steal
Did anyone ever think that?