The chip wasn’t even made by Chinese machines. And the chips are many generations behind in performance.
The CCP propaganda machine has gone all out trying to prove to the west that “see, we can make amazing products even with your sanctions in place, so you should just remove the sanctions. …Please remove them.”
So what better response than to tighten the sanctions?
Well since the US sanctions started, the chinese semiconductor industry went from being a multi generations late, government funded laughing stock, even for Chinese officials, to something that is now close to the best Intel and USA can make.
Both now are at 7nm non-EUV, only Taiwan is significantly ahead.
If anything the sanctions are counterproductive, instead of crippling the competition, they lit a fire under them.
The Chinese chip manufacturing industry is still a laughing stock, and many generations behind. The new Huawei phone is using components from 2018 that they obtained before the sanctions. There won’t even be a next generation after this. They’re not even close to Intel despite what claims they make.
This is all pure economics the strategic importance of small nodes is highly overrated, even more so than the importance of chip design is underrated.
Sure TSMC leads when it comes to node size, but that node size doesn’t even come close to being optimal when it comes to costs per transistor. No military is prevented from building rocket control systems, no weather service is prevented from building supercomputers, by not having access to 5nm. Certainly no government is prevented from having secure communications, home-brew PCs for civil servant desks, etc, by not having access.
The new plant in Europe that TSMC is building with Bosch, NXP, and Infinion is going to go down to 12nm – about the optimum when it comes to price per transistor. Neither of the three companies has any interest in challenging Intel or AMD on the desktop market, it’s all about automotive and industry applications: If Bosch wants to sell you a thingie with tons of their sensors in it pretty much the only thing they don’t produce themselves right now is a CPU to connect it all up (that isn’t a microcontroller), and 12nm are plenty for such applications. For a sense of scale: The BCM2711, the SOC in a Rasberry Pi 4, is made in 28nm. 12nm is roughly Zen1 or NVidia Turing class (e.g. 2080Ti). Bosch themselves are sticking with much larger nodes because they’re into MEMS and stuff, there’s e.g. basically no smartphone in the world that doesn’t use one of their accelerometers. “Price per transistor” isn’t really the right metric, there, it’s about mechanics, not transistors.
Another thing might play into things: SMIC has been spying on TSMC heavily, it’s kind of like their favourite past-time. They might already have stolen all the knowledge they need to copy TSMC’s newest nodes, the people in charge of deciding these things know, and all this sanction stuff is to keep the Chinese from benefitting economically from that. It might be that neither Taiwan nor the US would care had the Chinese actually developed their own shit – which they’re now forced to do without access to EUV. I very much doubt than small nodes without EUV will be price-competetive, though.
I love how the audio reading for this article is just straight-up AI generated. Like literally they mispronounce Xi’s name within 3 seconds of the thing starting, kinda wondering why they even bothered.
A hallow criticism, given that china runs forced labour camps full of Uyghur people (and political prisoners), and is in territory dispute with every neighbor. Not the mentioned, successfully erased the Tibetan people, and is doing the same to Muslims now.
If you think about it, it is quite an accomplishment that they managed to make communist Vietnam dislike them so much, that they'd rather engage in relatively close military ties with the US. Public opinion towards the US is also surprisingly good. I mean, the US committed plenty of atrocities during the war, so you'd expect them to be far more negative than those towards China.
Yeah, I wish the government would do something. Preferably something that exists today, but I trust they'd want to make their own shitty app. At least then it'd be in one place, I suppose. Emergency alerts on phones are a thing for many people, but not everything is that level of emergency.
They are now relying more on other communication methods such as email, the Line messaging app, their official website, and the L-Alert system, which shares information to media outlets who broadcast it to citizens.
It’s going to take a long time but ultimately one can only hope for a more balanced world.
Question is, will Westerners manage to keep their democratic values such as individual liberty, the rule of law and the protection of minorities in a world where theocracies and fascist states have more power?
Sure thing. Germany, UK and Italia waking up every morning trying to figure out how to have more unfaithful spouses stoned, more blasphemers beheaded and more women hidden under fabric bags
Iran was quite progressive before the US intervened to secure oil.
Syria had a strong left wing separatist movement before the US intervened and repeatedly betrayed them.
The extremist right theocrats in Afghanistan were kept safe during the war and reinstated (but the moderates and extremist left wing are dead).
Ethiopia, Sudan same story.
The Saudi Arabian and Israeli theocrats are allies of the west. The west supports the genocide Israel’s ultra-conservative government is performing.
Niger has been destabilized by france for decades to keep them from controlling their energy resources. Just because what russia is going to do is worse, doesn’t mean the existing corruption (and thus the ability for russia to trigger the coup) wasn’t the direct result of western imperialism.
It is publicly stated policy of the fascist evangelicals in the US to spread homophobia and hate via “charities”.
At every turn, anyone outside the imperial core with resources has the most corrupt and theocratic element assisted by the west. The US brings the opposite of democracy or progressivism, and there are many countries in europe that are just as bad.
And that’s not to mention the growing fascist movements in the UK and Italy who would love to go back to stoning women.
Clearly you have an altered perception of reality or an agenda to point Western democracies as the villain in the story.
I am not denying the fact that Western countries have initiated and supported some dictatorships that would align with their interests. But these regimes are light years away from fascism and theocracy. You can not in good faith compare military dictators in the Sahel with de jure theocracies like Afghanistan and Iran.
Unless you want to prove that every regime is corrupt and that democracy is no better than dictatorships.
Also, the fact that these democracies are struggling peacefully with inner extremists without falling into outright dictatorship like China and Russia is enough to prove that yes, they are better.
You are just stating alternative fact to support your narrative.
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