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This is interesting. Right now TSMC seems to provide Taiwan with guaranteed US protection because they are so far ahead technologically. Apple, AMD, and the def
by pascoej 6y ago
This is interesting. Right now TSMC seems to provide Taiwan with guaranteed US protection because they are so far ahead technologically. Apple, AMD, and the defense industry have little alternative if they want a cutting edge node. It's unclear how long they will maintain this dominance.
Maybe the long term US-Taiwan ties of factories in the US will make this worth it strategically.
I assume that all R&D will remain in Taiwan. I think this might still be a good move in the long run since it'll give more politicians stake in what happens to Taiwan (Arizona senators, etc).
- derefr 6y agoWhat does the defense industry need a cutting-edge node for? Better drone battery life?
- sct202 6y agoIt won't be as cutting edge by the time it's finished.
- asdfadsfgfdda 6y agoImagine how much processing power is needed to analyze radar signals or camera images. If you can process more efficiently, your cooling system and electrical generator can be smaller, which saves mass for more fuel or more payload.
- zozbot234 6y agoAnd they can afford to fund NRE costs that would be grossly uneconomic for most other (niche, non-mass market) applications. There aren't many industry sectors where that is the case.
- analognoise 6y agoOur FPGAs.
- ngcc_hk 6y agoNvidia just announced its ampere chip Basically a data centre in one rack mount kit. Now the first customer is ... us defend need ai and those Gpu and ai advanced chip all done there.
- rrss 6y agotechnically the first customer is Argonne National Labs, which is DoE, not DoD. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/05/14/2033539/0/en/NVIDIA-Ships-World-s-Most-Advanced-AI-System-NVIDIA-DGX-A100-to-Fight-COVID-19-Third-Generation-DGX-Packs-Record-5-Petaflops-of-AI-Performance.html https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/05/14/203353...
- snovv_crash 6y agoFor drones the power consumption isn't the issue, but heat dissipation when landed or hovering often is. Industrial solutions prefer not to have active cooling due to reliability.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- thu2111 6y agoRobots that use AI autonomously in the battlefield. Better chips = better and faster inferencing, which means faster reaction times. If both sides have such robots and both robots have similar kinetic weapons then who wins may boil down to how fast a neural network can identify the target and decide what to do.
- moeadham 6y agoTSMC has advanced research labs in US and Canada already.