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More charts and a more detailed writeup here: https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21738903-blocking-broadcoms-takeover-qualcomm-donald-trump-showed-america

More charts and a more detailed writeup here: https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21738903-blocking-broadcoms-takeover-qualcomm-donald-trump-showed-america-worried-about https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21738903-blocking-br... This might be a key factor in the drastic rise. China is annually graduating about 8 times as many STEM degree holders as the US, as of 2016: "...In 2013, 40 percent of Chinese graduates finished a degree in STEM, over twice the share in American third level institutions." "The World Economic Forum reported that China had 4.7 million recent STEM graduates in 2016. India, another academic powerhouse, had 2.6 million new STEM graduates last year while the U.S. had 568,000." Source: The Countries With The Most STEM Graduates [Infographic] https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/02/02/the-countries-with-the-most-stem-graduates-infographic/#4d9a3f35268a https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/02/02/the-co...

adventured 9y ago
The key factor is that US cloud systems are not being included in supercomputing calculations at all. The most powerful supercomputers are Amazon's AWS or Google's systems. Alibaba's cloud systems are still tiny by comparison. Cloud compute systems are the next evolution of supercomputing. Or put a better way, the traditional supercomputers being measured, are history. It'd be like holding up 56k modem market leadership today as a sign of technological dominance.
- nopinsight 9y ago
  The point of the chart is that the rise in China's tech capabilities is quite broad-based. The tagline about supercomputers is just an illustration for non-tech readers. Quantum communications and certain NLP applications/technologies are some areas that China has likely surpassed the US. These are definitely not comparable to 56k modem.
  - adventured 9y ago
    There's zero evidence China has surpassed the US in quantum. In fact all the evidence is that the US is leading quantum by a significant margin, from IBM to Microsoft to Google. Your NLP reference is meaninglessly vague. Traditional supercomputers, except in isolated use cases, are a thing of the past. Nearly all supercomputing work will be done in the cloud in the not very distant future, supercomputing will continue to shrink. China's use of supercomputing is because on the whole they're still a decade behind on adopting cloud computing (which is why Alibaba, their leader in the segment, has such a small business compared to the US cloud giants).
    - nopinsight 9y ago
      Quantum communications, not quantum computers. https://www.insidescience.org/news/china-leader-quantum-communications https://www.insidescience.org/news/china-leader-quantum-comm... You can search ‘quantum communications china’ for more references. For NLP research: https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/ https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/. See the teams behind top algorithms. For real-world NLP: Xiaoyi (Little Doctor) was the first (and currently the only) AI that passed a medical licensing exam that human doctors need to pass (and rote learning is not enough to pass): http://sites.ieee.org/futuredirections/2017/12/02/congrats-xiaoyi-you-are-now-a-medical-doctor/ http://sites.ieee.org/futuredirections/2017/12/02/congrats-x...
- retzkek 9y ago
  Indeed much scientific computing these days is "high-throughput" rather than "high-performance" computing [1], and is done on commodity hardware, including commercial clouds. However there are certain classes of problems that still need highly-connected leadership systems [2,3], but that distinction is definitely blurring. [1] https://www.opensciencegrid.org/ https://www.opensciencegrid.org/ [2] http://www.nersc.gov/ http://www.nersc.gov/ [3] https://www.alcf.anl.gov/ https://www.alcf.anl.gov/
- superdaniel 9y ago
  High performance computing (HPC) is a specific field. Fast communication between compute nodes is very important and you won't get that on GCP or AWS where you may get 10gbs at the max. Most of the fast simulation codes are bounded by communication time between nodes. Although, Azure is currently doing some HPC offerings. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/big-compute/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/big-compute/
Angostura 9y ago
An honest question, are these degrees well regarded? In the main are the Chinese qualifications comparable to those from the US in terms of depth, breadth and rigor?
- nopinsight 9y ago
  I'm only somewhat familiar with their primary and secondary education (based on observation, not experience). If that is any indication, then their university courses are likely harder or at least as hard at a comparable level of institution prestige. (Harder doesn't always mean better. It's a characteristics of education that may/may not help with real-world applications.) One reason for that: It could be harder for a Chinese student to get into Tsinghua than a US student to get into MIT. The same likely holds for a range of other institutions as well. This is based on corresponding admission rates. Also, on average, Chinese students have better math background than American students. Obviously, MIT, Stanford, etc. currently have higher prestige in the world's eyes. It doesn't mean though that the education there is always more rigorous than top-level institutions in China.
  - PakG1 9y ago
    I'm working as a manager in Shenzhen. I have a guy on my team who's studying to do his IELTS so that he can get accepted into a foreign university to do his masters in computer science. He says that he can't get into Tsinghua (or any Chinese university at that tier) because the competition's too fierce, and all the universities a step below are not well enough respected. Hence studying for IELTS. He's targeting University of Toronto or something at that level. For what it's worth, it's only one anecdote from one Chinese guy.
    - netheril96 9y ago
      The admission standards for master's degree for the same school is usually lower than that for an undergraduate degree. At least in US, Canada, Britain and China itself.
  - aje403 9y ago
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
That probably includes CS degrees one can get at places like Hunan Tourism Univeristy (I would joke about Beijing Forestry University but their graduates are better than you’d expect). Finding good programming talent in China is still very hard, there are a lot of low quality degrees to sift out, so that everyone is chasing a very limited supply of new graduates from just a few well regarded schools.

adventured 9y ago

The key factor is that US cloud systems are not being included in supercomputing calculations at all. The most powerful supercomputers are Amazon's AWS or Google's systems. Alibaba's cloud systems are still tiny by comparison. Cloud compute systems are the next evolution of supercomputing. Or put a better way, the traditional supercomputers being measured, are history. It'd be like holding up 56k modem market leadership today as a sign of technological dominance.

nopinsight 9y ago
The point of the chart is that the rise in China's tech capabilities is quite broad-based. The tagline about supercomputers is just an illustration for non-tech readers. Quantum communications and certain NLP applications/technologies are some areas that China has likely surpassed the US. These are definitely not comparable to 56k modem.
- adventured 9y ago
  There's zero evidence China has surpassed the US in quantum. In fact all the evidence is that the US is leading quantum by a significant margin, from IBM to Microsoft to Google. Your NLP reference is meaninglessly vague. Traditional supercomputers, except in isolated use cases, are a thing of the past. Nearly all supercomputing work will be done in the cloud in the not very distant future, supercomputing will continue to shrink. China's use of supercomputing is because on the whole they're still a decade behind on adopting cloud computing (which is why Alibaba, their leader in the segment, has such a small business compared to the US cloud giants).
  - nopinsight 9y ago
    Quantum communications, not quantum computers. https://www.insidescience.org/news/china-leader-quantum-communications https://www.insidescience.org/news/china-leader-quantum-comm... You can search ‘quantum communications china’ for more references. For NLP research: https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/ https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/. See the teams behind top algorithms. For real-world NLP: Xiaoyi (Little Doctor) was the first (and currently the only) AI that passed a medical licensing exam that human doctors need to pass (and rote learning is not enough to pass): http://sites.ieee.org/futuredirections/2017/12/02/congrats-xiaoyi-you-are-now-a-medical-doctor/ http://sites.ieee.org/futuredirections/2017/12/02/congrats-x...
retzkek 9y ago
Indeed much scientific computing these days is "high-throughput" rather than "high-performance" computing [1], and is done on commodity hardware, including commercial clouds. However there are certain classes of problems that still need highly-connected leadership systems [2,3], but that distinction is definitely blurring. [1] https://www.opensciencegrid.org/ https://www.opensciencegrid.org/ [2] http://www.nersc.gov/ http://www.nersc.gov/ [3] https://www.alcf.anl.gov/ https://www.alcf.anl.gov/
superdaniel 9y ago
High performance computing (HPC) is a specific field. Fast communication between compute nodes is very important and you won't get that on GCP or AWS where you may get 10gbs at the max. Most of the fast simulation codes are bounded by communication time between nodes. Although, Azure is currently doing some HPC offerings. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/big-compute/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/big-compute/

Angostura 9y ago

An honest question, are these degrees well regarded? In the main are the Chinese qualifications comparable to those from the US in terms of depth, breadth and rigor?

nopinsight 9y ago
I'm only somewhat familiar with their primary and secondary education (based on observation, not experience). If that is any indication, then their university courses are likely harder or at least as hard at a comparable level of institution prestige. (Harder doesn't always mean better. It's a characteristics of education that may/may not help with real-world applications.) One reason for that: It could be harder for a Chinese student to get into Tsinghua than a US student to get into MIT. The same likely holds for a range of other institutions as well. This is based on corresponding admission rates. Also, on average, Chinese students have better math background than American students. Obviously, MIT, Stanford, etc. currently have higher prestige in the world's eyes. It doesn't mean though that the education there is always more rigorous than top-level institutions in China.
- PakG1 9y ago
  I'm working as a manager in Shenzhen. I have a guy on my team who's studying to do his IELTS so that he can get accepted into a foreign university to do his masters in computer science. He says that he can't get into Tsinghua (or any Chinese university at that tier) because the competition's too fierce, and all the universities a step below are not well enough respected. Hence studying for IELTS. He's targeting University of Toronto or something at that level. For what it's worth, it's only one anecdote from one Chinese guy.
  - netheril96 9y ago
    The admission standards for master's degree for the same school is usually lower than that for an undergraduate degree. At least in US, Canada, Britain and China itself.
- aje403 9y ago

seanmcdirmid 9y ago

That probably includes CS degrees one can get at places like Hunan Tourism Univeristy (I would joke about Beijing Forestry University but their graduates are better than you’d expect). Finding good programming talent in China is still very hard, there are a lot of low quality degrees to sift out, so that everyone is chasing a very limited supply of new graduates from just a few well regarded schools.