7 ms·

It 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 tra

• 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 ago
    True 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 ago
      The Chinese have no need to make x86 compatible parts. Riscv or a home grown arch would work as well or better
      • chii 11y ago
        if 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 ago
          Android iOS and Chrome OS have been very popular despite not running Windows x86 binaries.
          • nickpsecurity 11y ago
            What'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 ago
    Problem with copycats is that they remain copycats forever.
    • chii 11y ago
      it'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 ago
      Everything people say about China today, including your post, is familiar from my childhood... except my old man was talking about Japan.
      • _nedR 11y ago
        and 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 ago
  Look 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 ago
  Intel 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 ago
  My 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 ago
    Let'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 ago
      Laugh 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 ago
      Another 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 ago
    Exactly 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 ago
      Xiaomi? DJI?
• eva1984 11y ago
  China 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 ago
  Will this further humanity's genius or won't it? Genius. There's one every season.
• tn13 11y ago
  Intel'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.
  • amorphid 11y ago
    It wouldn't surprise me to see proposed buyout of Intel by a foreign power would be blocked by the United States government.
    • redwood 11y ago
      "Wouldn't surprise": hell would have to freeze over be for that happened.
• userbinator 11y ago
  Innovation 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 ago
    Copying 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 ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001640
      • bobby_9x 11y ago
        Is this supposed to be the one example to prove me wrong? ...it's an exception to the rule.
      • yohui 11y ago
        It 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 ago
      because 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 ago
  China 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 ago
    American 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.