14 ms·
China wants to become a semiconductor superpower, budgeting $100B to achieve it
- Cieplak 11y agoIt will be interesting to watch this play out in the context of the Chinese intellectual property policies and non-enforcement of US copyrights, patents and trade secrets. That might be enough money to reverse engineer Intel's 14nm chipsets. Will it accelerate humanity's technological progress, or will it stifle progress by removing incentives for inventors?
- chii 11y ago>will it stifle progress by removing incentives for inventors? my guess is it will pressure companies who currently hold on to their secrets without innovating (because they are the incumbent) to start innovating. If your competitors are on an even playing field with you, the only way to survive is to innovate.
- Cieplak 11y agoTrue that. It sucks that the people at the top use the government to stifle innovation for everyone else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_Chip_Protection_Act_of_1984 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_Chip_Protection_... Edit: The context for the Chip Protection Act is actually in Intel's primary wikipedia page: "During the late 1980s and 1990s (after this law was passed), Intel also sued companies that tried to develop competitor chips to the 80386 CPU.[32] The lawsuits were noted to significantly burden the competition with legal bills, even if Intel lost the suits.[32] Antitrust allegations had been simmering since the early 1990s and had been the cause of one lawsuit against Intel in 1991. In 2004 and 2005, AMD brought further claims against Intel related to unfair competition." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel
- sitkack 11y agoThe Chinese have no need to make x86 compatible parts. Riscv or a home grown arch would work as well or better
- chii 11y agoif they intend to sell to foreign markets, they sure do. RISC custom chips may be useful for homegrown tech, or embedded systems, but the consumer market cant possibly be like that - every one expects their software to work everywhere!
- zanny 11y agoAndroid iOS and Chrome OS have been very popular despite not running Windows x86 binaries.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoWhat's their market share for desktops in office, entertainment, and business sectors? Probably almost nothing in favor of mostly Windows and Mac OS X desktops running Intel or AMD processors. Legacy compatibility, both OS and popular software, is extremely important for marketing a CPU. Notice how iOS and Chrome OS specifically targeted a sector where that didn't matter. Of course, now the effect applies to those two where people wanting iOS were stuck with ObjectiveC and ARM while people targeting ChromeOS had to support its ecosystem/model. Legacy effect just shifts here. Truly portable and self-contained software is rare these days. Mostly only OSS stuff.
- tn13 11y agoProblem with copycats is that they remain copycats forever.
- chii 11y agoit's ok to remain a copycat - generic pharmacuticals are cheap and make a drug plentiful and available. It's a balancing force in the competition, and is needed for innovation.
- CamperBob2 11y agoEverything people say about China today, including your post, is familiar from my childhood... except my old man was talking about Japan.
- _nedR 11y agoand from my childhood too.. except people were talking about South Korea. I am pretty sure most people/countries started off mimicking and copying, before innovating. Also the Chinese might catch up faster than people think. Two small examples:- Xiaomi's MIUI has really been one of the most innovative android ROMS out there balancing usability and functionality. Another one, we use multitouch IR-based components. Right now the top 2 most innovative and competitive providers are both founded by Chinese, although one is headquartered in the US. Basically, the whole "Chinese know only how to copy" argument is an excuse to be complacent, made by people thinking their culture or genes or whatever will protect them.
- x5n1 11y agoLook at how Intel stifled and basically destroyed AMD using various underhanded tactics. Please. Any country should try to beg, borrow, and steal its way to global parity. It's after all the American way. Then when they have parity and we have real competition, it will accelerate progress.
- ktRolster 11y ago> That might be enough money to reverse engineer Intel's 14nm chipsets. Maybe, but by that time Intel will be on 7nm technology. Intel isn't holding still, they are improving technology rapidly.
- rasz_pl 11y agoIntel was already forced to a joint venture and share technology (Atoms for time being) with Rockchip/Spreadtrum. It was either that or facing huge fines for price dumping (Qualcomm had similar troubles and paid >1B in fines). Of course officially its just a cost cutting measure and pure Intel win, they dont have to sell below cost and gain tablet SoC maker as a client, but you have to wonder. btw this year Intel switched to selling radio modules below cost, so you can expect china forcing them to another deal in a year or two.
- rtpg 11y agoMy guess is neither. Sure, you can copy the designs, but will you have the knowledge to modify them? Just playing catch up all the time has a major cost. Think about code. Sure, people copy designs and code, but it's still hard. And even if you have problem X, and Intel doesn't, it could be for many reasons apart from transistor Y they have in the same general vicinity that you don't. In a way, the blatant copying is good because it means that the Chinese industry has to go through less iterations to get up to speed. Hopefully the end result is a healthy environment with multiple players trying to out-innovate each other.
- tajen 11y agoLet's have a good laugh and illustrate that it's really hard to copy foreign tech: The Tupolev 144, copy of the UK-French Concorde - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144#Reasons_for_failure_and_cancellation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144#Reasons_for_f...
- dingaling 11y agoLaugh away. The Tu-144 had superior handling and aerodynamics at each end of its speed range, and in the Tu-144D variant had non-afterburning engines and still cruised as fast as Concorde [0], despite having a wider five-abreast cabin. It was a first-generation SST done properly. There was plenty of industrial espionage, but the Tu-144 is no more a copy than the DC-8 is a copy of the 707. [0] no the F-22 didn't invent supercruise!
- forgetsusername 11y ago"Copy of"? According to that Wikipedia article, the Russian plane was built and flown before the Concorde.
- NegativeLatency 11y agoAnother interesting instance of copying planes was the B-29 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4
- TheLogothete 11y ago
- bsder 11y ago> That might be enough money to reverse engineer Intel's 14nm chipsets. Intel's advantage isn't their design (which was always generally one or two generations behind the best). Consequently, there is no point is reverse engineering it. Intel's primary advantage is their manufacturing has always been stellar.
- tluyben2 11y agoExactly and that is what the Chinese generally struggle with; the execution process is uncontrolled. Stuff gets delivered but it makes no sense. The process on top is far behind the west so far. Western companies manage to get brilliant things out of China but full Chinese companies struggle. Not sure how many generations it will take to get that trait into the people here but it will not be soon.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dharma1 11y agoXiaomi? DJI?
- eva1984 11y agoChina will actually probably let Intel alone, instead go against other east asian tech firms from Taiwan or Korea, which is way easier to influence. Whether it is a good thing or not, hard to say. If it succeeds, China will dominate the market, at least the chips will be become cheaper. But as asian tradition goes, those investments may never find its way back in face of next tech revolution, just like how Japan dominate the analogue electronics but fail to keep up with digital ones.
- coderdude 11y agoWill this further humanity's genius or won't it? Genius. There's one every season.
- tn13 11y agoIntel's worth in $61B, I think buying Intel would be better option than reverse engineering Intel chips for that much money. But I do get your point. I think that money would be waste. While money is important human potential is the far more important thing. If we look closely a lot of governments,people claim that they will build a world class university which will soon be among top 10. Rarely anyone succeeds and lack of money is not the reason. Same is true for cities. A lot of governments and countries have tried to build next Silicon Valley or next NY but none has succeeded. I do not doubt China's potential to create amazing things, but this sort of plan probably wont work.
- userbinator 11y agoInnovation works very differently in China, where the culture promotes collectivism. It's far more encouraged to copy and build upon the work of others, so I think it'll be good for progress. Two detailed articles explaining this: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284 http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284 http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297 http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297
- bobby_9x 11y agoCopying doesn't really encourage progress, because nobody wants to be the one to spend millions (or billions) in R and D (while the rest spend $0). I don't know any brand off the top of my head from China that is top-quality. Most are blatent, cheap, ripoffs of better brands.
- pantalaimon 11y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001640
- bobby_9x 11y agoIs this supposed to be the one example to prove me wrong? ...it's an exception to the rule.
- yohui 11y agoIt seems clear to me that Lego's introduction of underside tubes that allowed for much greater connectivity was the crucial innovation. Also, this is only an example of copying relatively primitive designs, not expensive R&D.
- userbinator 11y agobecause nobody wants to be the one to spend millions (or billions) in R and D (while the rest spend $0). They spend only enough to get ahead of their competitors, which is why I said it's a completely different model. Progress happens more incrementally.
- rhino369 11y agoChina gets away with IP infringement by either 1) mostly keeping it internal or 2) by coping using fly-by-the-night companies creating knock offs. 1) Is hard to police no matter what. 2) Is hard to police because there aren't any deep pockets to sue. They import in small batches etc. If China tried to knock off major chip designs Intel or AMD, they could be instantly found out and banned from import to major economies. And that would include any products that used those chips. So no major manufacturer would be interested in it. China would almost definitely use some industrial espionage and trade secret misappropriation. But they couldn't just do a knock off version. But its not like other competitors in this space haven't been doing the same thing. Plus, you can't fully reverse engineer semiconductor devices. A lot of steps in the fabrication process don't leave any clues. Finally, China is starting to develop a robust IP system in their country. The number of Chinese patents is skyrocketing. As they try to transition from dumb factory of the world to a leading innovation center, they'll want IP protection.
- beambot 11y agoAmerican Superconductor vs. Sinovel seems to be a counterpoint to (1) and (2). Both are (or were) large companies. And now Sinovel is selling wind turbines using stolen tech back to the United States.
- johnloeber 11y agoChina is budgeting this plan to catch up to the US' industry by about 2030. Is there any chance that within the next 15 years, traditional semiconductor chips will become replaced by something else (whatever that may be)?
- free2rhyme214 11y agoQuantum Computing.
- djcapelis 11y agoIn only 15 years? In a way that's faster and cheaper for general purpose computing than semiconductors will be in 15 years? Doubt it.
- typon 11y agoQuantum Computing is not a replacement for general purpose computing. No one is going to watch 4k video on a quantum computer. They aren't useful or built for that.
- djcapelis 11y agoBottom up self assembled nanofabrics? Yeah but don't think that the US is necessarily going to be the place those show up first.
- bsder 11y agoPlastic https://semiaccurate.com/2015/11/18/arm-charts-path-printed-plastic-chips/ https://semiaccurate.com/2015/11/18/arm-charts-path-printed-... These aren't better than silicon, but they probably will be close enough shortly. After that, Moore's Law should go operational. And these have a huge advantage in terms of non-recurring expense. Think taking all of the "maker" stuff but creating a chip instead of a PCB.
- e_modad 11y agoFascinating! Also, I couldn't help but think of that scene from The Graduate when I first read your post.
- ktRolster 11y ago$100Billion seems a little small, to be honest
- samcheng 11y agoIntel spends about $10 billion per year on R&D, and a single fab costs about $10 billion (they build one every few years). If they want to catch Intel, they will want to at least spend as much as them, and also benefit from IP-leakage. So I guess it depends on how far you think they are behind the state of the art?
- tajen 11y agoCan't we even achieve more in China with the same amount of money as in the US, thanks to lower cost of living? Also, creating a $10bn fab is not as hard as Intel inventing it for the first time.
- 1stop 11y agoBut once you start making semi-conductors you start making money. The 100 billion is the seed capital. Semi-conductors pay for themselves once they're rolling. See samsung's balance sheet.
- revelation 11y agoIf only. Intel is the only remaining company with own fabs, all others have long exited that particular line of business. Designing chips makes money, manufacturing them in $10B and rising fabs that stop making profit after a few years not so much.
- MagnumOpus 11y agoThis is not a play against Intel, it is a play against TSMC which is the backbone of the Taiwanese economy. They very much haven't exited the foundry business and are very profitable ($7bn a year or so in net income), and are stealing away even the iDevice SoC business from Samsung these days...
- rorykoehler 11y agoWas thinking about this whilst watching Marco Polo on Netflix the other day. China gave the western world so much of it's tech, science and culture within the last millennium. How the tables have turned. I'd put it down to karma. In general I think it will accelerate humanity's technological progress. Looking on an individual level the most impactful inventors weren't motivated by monetary reward (e.g. Tesla). If you are a true inventor it is a tap you cannot turn off. If you are a bro who is in it for the money chances are you will not invent anything particularly ground breaking. The major concern here is that it's the bros who control the capital.
- dba7dba 11y agoAnd west is trying to return the favor a few centuries later by trying to introduce basic human rights and/or democracy in China but so far, with not much success...
- tluyben2 11y agoIs that true though? Sure it happens but it also still happens in the US and other democratic countries. Maybe less but things progressed a lot. You keep reading things about oppression etc but Chinese colleagues I talk to in Shanghai and surrounding or Bejing and surrounding notice nothing of the sort. Maybe you have to actively oppose the gov to get kicked down? It is not there yet but not much success is too negative imho. Looking at Apple and other western brands here I think it even went too far. Mao would not be happy.
- PavlovsCat 11y ago> Maybe you have to actively oppose the gov to get kicked down? You mean kind like you're free to go wherever you want in prison, as long as you don't try to walk out of the door of your cell? :P Here's a really sobering thought though: > You can have a lot of political 'change' in the United States, but will it really change that much? Will it change the amount of money in someone’s bank account? Will it change contracts? Will it void contracts that already exist? And contracts on contracts? And contracts on contracts on contracts? Not really. > So I say that free speech in many Western places is free not as a result of liberal circumstances but rather as a result of such intense fiscalization that it doesn’t matter what you say. The dominant elite doesn’t have to be scared of what people think, because a change in political view is not going to change whether they own their company or not; it is not going to change whether they own a piece of land or not. But China is still a political society, although it is rapidly heading toward a fiscalized society. And other societies, like Egypt, are still heavily politicized. Their rulers really do need to be concerned about what people think, so they expend proportionate efforts on controlling freedom of speech. -- Julian Assange
- eccstartup 11y agoI hear that fewer and fewer people are subscribing the economist magazine. Now I know the reason.
- dba7dba 11y agoHeard about this few weeks ago. Supposedly there's a formula, 1:3:7, that Chinese firms are using to recruit South Korean engineers. It means if a S Korean semiconductor engineer joins a Chinese firm in China, he's guaranteed to be paid 7 times of his current salary for 3 years. So let's say you make $10,000 at current job in S Korea, you will be making $70,000 a year, for 3 years. That's supposedly 'guaranteed'. I may be off with the formula. It may have been 1:3:9. But I am sure it was 1:3:x, so pretty sure that it was supposed to be for 3 years. A few dozen engineers did accept the offer so far. In the story I heard some S Korean HR person commenting such poaching went on recently for Display engineers who were recruited away from S Korea to Chinese firms. But he claimed none achieved much success, which I took as their career in the industry didn't last longer or they didn't make the money they expected to make. China also made massive investment in commercial airliner, resulting in Comac C919. I read however that the C919 mostly had US/EU components though.
- zhte415 11y agoThe 3 in 1:3:x certainly sounds credible, as employment contracts in China typically last 3 years (after which, renewable, of course). The reason for 3 years per contract? Seems to be a sweet spot. After 2 contract renewals an employee is 'permanent' and essentially unfireable. 5 years per contract seems a bit long and a big buy-in by the employer, and 1 year way too short to expect someone to have the level of assurance and employer buy-in. So, the 7/9 sounds realistic because of the 3. But I honestly don't expect much to get done, even in 3 years. Someone coming from outside a firmly entrenched organisation has to be a management master to achieve anything.
- Cieplak 11y ago$100 billion is not unrealistic for typical defense budgets. Modern warfare is transitioning from lead to silicon. It takes 6 lines of VHDL to backdoor a CPU. Modern chips have billions of transistors. It would be irresponsible of any modern superpower not to ensure their nation's machines are secure. I am a US citizen, but if I were a Chinese national, I might be worried about things like Intel Active Management Technology. Maybe mutual defense is a good thing if it prevents escalation. I'm still outraged that members of my Congress proposed violent conflict with China as an appropriate reaction to a data breech, as if their own organization had never accessed Chinese systems without authorization. It's probably just theatrics of elected officials from states with large military presence, but how evil is it to propose killing people for sneaking into your computers which you failed to secure properly?
- nraynaud 11y agoI was curious about how a CPU backdoor would work: http://es.slideshare.net/ortegaalfredo/deep-submicronbackdoorsortegasyscan2014slides http://es.slideshare.net/ortegaalfredo/deep-submicronbackdoo... This example is a memory inspector and poker. On a side note, I think using a LEON MCU would be smart for this kind of demonstration, the code is free and it's synthetisable in a lot of targets.
- stock_toaster 11y agoAnother example[1] (actual paper[2]) of potential for cpu backdoors. [1]: https://ece.umass.edu/news/paper-stealthy-trojans-attracting-international-attention https://ece.umass.edu/news/paper-stealthy-trojans-attracting... [2]: http://sharps.org/wp-content/uploads/BECKER-CHES.pdf http://sharps.org/wp-content/uploads/BECKER-CHES.pdf
- Cieplak 11y agoAt minute 39:30, the lecturer demonstrates a snippet of HDL which will transition the CPU to ring 0 if a very specific instruction is passed to the processor core: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwyh3Vychj8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwyh3Vychj8
- kumarski 11y agoBlowing billions on getting to that 7nm PTM seems like a good move. That being said, someone should re-invent the antiquated world of EDA, electronic design automation software, the software that you can use to design chips. Several major problems of Cadence/Synopsis.... * No Forking of designs(not easily) * Min Cost is too high. --Should be browser based solution. * Version Control is lacking in chip design teams today. It's hard to get single digit cost licenses for chip design.
- pjc50 11y ago--Should be browser based solution. If you thought Encounter was slow, wait until you see the browser version! I've actually been in an EDA startup. The problem is that changing the toolchain is percieved to increase design risk, and you have to overcome the usual problem that the people paying for "enterprise" software aren't the users. It's quite hard to make headway in this environment.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago> --Should be browser based solution. Why, oh why? Browser is a crappy environment and its unsuitable for any kind of bigger application. It's too bloated and too constrained. Google is barely able to make WordPad equivalent run in the browser - I don't see any actually usable EDA as a browser solution any time soon.
- typon 11y agoPeople use ICManage quite frequently, which is essentially a Perforce fork. Agreed that Synopsys/Cadence tools are severely outdated and terrible. They need to be rewritten from scratch and designed by actual UX/UI designers for the front end. Their backend algorithms are already state of the art for the most part (e.g. Place and route and simulation). A huge hurdle in making a Virtuoso or Encounter replacement is that foundries are not going to work with you because they already have such deep relationships with Cadence/Synopsys. It's an extremely nontrivial task to get that up and running.
- t05ter 11y ago> --Should be browser based solution. Please no. That's exactly the type of suggestion I would expect to see a startup looking to do things "differently" to get attention, without bringing any really value to the overall system.
- throwaway300116 11y agoThe American response will be funding more food delivery app startups and playing more games empowering female CEOs of remaining real hardware companies such as HP, IBM or GM instead.
- fuck_dang 11y agoI will never purchase a chinese computer, or a computer with chinese semiconductors, or chinese software.
- balazsdavid987 11y agoDon't stop breathing, it's bad for your health, but many of the air molecules in your lung has been previously in the lungs of Chinese people as well.
- fuck_dang 11y agoI'm 1/4 Chinese.
- DanBC 11y ago> a computer with chinese semiconductors How will you know where the semiconductors are made?
- typon 11y agoSo I'm assuming you don't use graphics cards in your computer made by either NVIDIA or AMD, both of which use TSMC to manufacture them?
- brobinson 11y agoTaiwan != China, at least in terms of "not trusting ___China___".
- typon 11y agoTSMC is building a massive foundry in mainland. If you think the government doesn't have control over everything there you're fooling yourself.
- brobinson 11y agoInteresting, didn't know about the mainland expansion! If anyone else is curious: http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/12/07/apple-supplier-tsmc-to-set-up-3b-independent-factory-in-mainland-china http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/12/07/apple-supplier-tsm...
- naijanewsrave 11y agoit is possible http://naijanewsrave.com http://naijanewsrave.com
- cottonseed 11y agoCountries with cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing capability ban export of such technology to China. If I remember correctly, the Netherlands was the main exception and China's manufacturing equipment came from there. I'm surprised the article failed to mention this. "[T]he home countries of major semiconductor companies ban the export of leading-edge manufacturing technologies to China." http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service/semiconductors/latest_thinking/the_challenge_of_china http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service/semiconductors/latest...
- nickpsecurity 11y agoI've been trying to encourage America and Europe to do this with EDA tooling and I.P.. To no avail. Idea is that the whole flow gets good tools, cell libraries, and info on processes that nearly guarantees first pass. Then, a whole platform of I.P., esp I/O or accelerators, are built on several nodes for easy integration and shrinking of third party designs. Multi-project wafers are streamlined for each of those nodes. You get all that free (except MPW's) if you use the host's tooling and fabs with local fabless getting a tax deduction potentially. Such a setup could make for a HW equivalent of what's happening in embedded with Arduino's etc. A slower pace due to costs but still better than now. Plus, an existing SOC platform at 45nm and 28nm would be great for cloud datacenters that are investigating custom hardware for accelerators and cost reduction. We'd see shit cranking out constantly for that market. So, it's now up to China. They can have that blueprint of mine for free. I'd also consult on the specifics since nobody here is doing it outside a few academics and smaller firms. Gotta create the end result somehow. Note to Chinese involved reading: Also, do a FPGA at 28nm and 28SLP with open bitstream and free tooling at low cost. Make ASIC conversions easy with paid, Chinese I.P. as an upsell. Probably sell the heck out of those FPGA's and academics will do most of R&D on their EDA just for fun. Acquire Achronix while you're at it to do the same with their asynchronous stuff. Acquire eASIC and/or Triad for RAD hardware at a discount for Chinese firms. Same advice I give here should help there.
- nascentmind 11y agoOpening up bit streams would be really great. I am still hoping that someday we have completely open source FPGA tools.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoHere's some fun reading for you: Open-source FPGA http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2014/EECS-2014-43.pdf http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2014/EECS-2014-43... Open-source, bitstream generation for Xilinx http://drop.isi.edu/sites/default/files/users/nsteiner/soni-2013-bitstream-fccm13.pdf http://drop.isi.edu/sites/default/files/users/nsteiner/soni-... Open-source tooling for lattice http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/ http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/ Open-source EDA flow http://opencircuitdesign.com/qflow/ http://opencircuitdesign.com/qflow/ Older, academic tooling for FPGA's http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~jayar/pubs/rose/rosefpga12.pdf http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~jayar/pubs/rose/rosefpga12.pdf
- matt_wulfeck 11y agoThis is one of the few types of arms races that I feel benefits the consumer.