10 ms·

US Export Restrictions, Intel Layoffs, Applied Materials, and TSMC

totalZero 4y ago
There's a lot of speculation in this piece. Almost too much for it to be informative.
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  Well, the URL sets expectations appropriately, at least.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  I find only Asianometry on youtube delivers well researched reports on the semi industry. Everyone else just posts FUD that drives clicks.
lmeyerov 4y ago
The CHIP act makes way more sense to me financially + getting the bill passed given this stuff. Long-term this does just push China into self-sufficiency faster... But near term, US co's profit? I was mostly curious about the jobs market angle (we are busy in the GPU / AI / data center space) but it was light there..
- snovv_crash 4y ago
  I think it's more about making the US independent from China, not about hurting China. Of course it is phrased as the latter so that it won't hit as much kicking and screaming from US companies who suddenly have to scramble for new supply chains.
bugfix-66 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kar1181 4y ago
Very interesting Twitter thread on this here https://twitter.com/jordanschnyc/status/1580889341265469440?s=46&t=Sj_DKlDJQyMNTk68gXhbIw https://twitter.com/jordanschnyc/status/1580889341265469440?... Pretty dramatic stuff but unsure how this will benefit the US since obviously to have this much western talent and IP the Chinese weee investing heavily. Remains to be seen if the west is going to do likewise.
- nine_k 4y ago
  I suppose it's about hampering the China's export industry on one hand, and China's ability to make advanced weapons, on the other hand. It's more an act of the cold war, and less an attempt to help US industry profit more.
  - rjzzleep 4y ago
    Advanced weapons don't need 5nm chips. How will this hamper anything in China long term? Germany for example cut off its biggest energy suppliers is preparing for an economic war with China while claiming they're moving to renewables with a supply chain that is owned over 80% by China. Where is Europes manufacturing these days? India, China, Vietnam, Turkey? Turkey is completely alienated by Europe and is turning more extreme by the day as a result(they applied to the "EU" in 1987 btw). Vietnam went to apologize for Blinkens statements to the Chinese representatives not to long ago and India is actively defying western sanctions even though they dislike China and said that their problems with China are not related to the Ukraine situation at all and that they will deal with China on their own if they need to. Usually, when you prepare for a war, you set up alternative supply chains, build up your capabilities, set up your independent energy/natural resource supply chain and then cut off what you consider your enemy. How is Europe to build up their military for a confrontation if they can't even power their own factories? I thought Trump was bad at making these kinds of strategic decisions, but this administration takes the cake. Completely haphazard, ill conceived, badly planned decisions that only make sense if you turn back the clock to 1990. If I was really generous and speculative I'd say that the plan is to make everyone divest to Taiwan in the hopes that Taiwan is then more important to everyone. But can nobody read a map? You have China 100km across the strait and the US 7000 km away. Last time they tried to upgrade the F16s they had to have an emergency landing in Hawaii. We had missile tests on this island which had to be stopped because the missiles had launch failures. This is local Taiwan news. Cut off China completely and move everything to Taiwan. What does China have to lose from invading and embargoing Taiwan at that point? If there is one lesson from the Ukraine conflict its not to turn Taiwan into another Ukraine. It's to start some kind of dialogue, and try to involve parties such as India in that dialogue. EDIT: since the person below had to come up with this "don't talk to terrorists" nonsense, i have to respond. This isn't some bank raid or a high school fight. These are conflicts with the biggest nuclear power that exports 1/3rd of earths natural resources and the biggest manufacturing and military manpower on the planet. You ABSOLUTELY talk to them. Estonia made statements like that as well. You ABSOLUTELY talk to a neighbour that has 377 your surface area in land and the worlds biggest nuclear arsenal. What's wrong with these people? Let's say they are terrorists for the sake of the argument. All the more reason to find a solution. Or if you really want a military confrontation, prepare for it silently and then show your cards when you're ready.
roenxi 4y ago
There are a lot of things here that I don't understand: - The issues around semiconductor manufacturing. - How Chinese politics work. - How the big Chinese manufacturing hubs like Shenzhen work. The exports are spectacular, so I suspect they're incubating capitalists. But what I do know is China is ~1 billion people, is moving in to being a country with some savings and is really getting the hang of high technology (eg, Huawei is the cutting edge of telecoms and it is going to shock everyone in a decade that they are at the cutting edge of nuclear tech as their reactor program keeps chugging along). If they are seriously challenged to a tech war, we are relying on the Chinese government to defeat the Chinese people. It isn't possible to intellectually starve out a country that big, especially not in the age of the internet. They can achieve miracles in 20 years.
- baybal2 4y ago
  > They can achieve miracles in 20 years. Why they didn't do so already? There hardly been a single regime in history so eager to slaughter hens laying golden eggs. China is extremely anti-business, and anti-development (unless it's real estate development.) I first understood it when I seen block, and blocks of factories being bulldozed to make space for luxury hotels, and hooker parlours. Tells of priorities of people in power.
  - throwaway4good 4y ago
    "China is extremely anti-business, and anti-development". Really? Are you absolutely sure about that?
    - Nomentatus 4y ago
      Certainly Xi doesn't think that he's anti-business, and much that he's done mirrors the EU's actions vs monopolies. But Xi also has no understanding of business, and wants to micromanage everywhere. I think he's already had a large chilling effect without wanting to do that. He could easily, clumsily, kill off most of the geese laying golden eggs for him by instilling more terror of the government than hope of profit. I'm not sure that'll happen, but reading his speeches to this new PRC congress I suspect so.
throwaway4good 4y ago
The latest rounds of sanctions seems to have been extended to protect in particular Qualcomm and Micron. Qualcomm by preventing Chinese fabless design houses such as unisoc in creating high end arm socs for mobile phones. And Micron by targeting YMTC.
newaccount2021 4y ago
Invictus0 4y ago
Did anyone else watch/read Doug's podcast with YAVB about SiTime? I tried to read the transcript but gave up about 1/3 through, obviously podcasts are a low signal medium but even for a podcast I thought the pitch was very speculative and hard to follow.
- knowledgemule 4y ago
  Sorry to hear that - I would like to think it wasn’t speculative!
Nokinside 4y ago
Biden dropped a real hammer on Chinese chipmaking. Thresholds: • Logic chips with non-planar transistor architectures (I.e., FinFET or GAAFET) of 16nm or 14nm, or below; • DRAM memory chips of 18nm half-pitch or less; • NAND flash memory chips with 128 layers or more. A one-year Temporary General License softens the blow for the US allies. Everything that includes the US made tools and software for design and manufacturing, and machinery is cut out, so is any person with US citizenship, green card or who lives within the US.
Zerverus 4y ago
Wait for the screaming if China forbids its nationals to work in AI research in the west.
- foepys 4y ago
  Is this actually a concern? If so, that's actually a huge deal to have so many people from an "enemy state" working in a field. Do you have any numbers or sources on that?
- PubliusMI 4y ago
  The communist clique that's enslaved the Chinese people is still reliant on obtaining technology from the West to do that.
  - chrischen 4y ago
    People often talk about and accuse the Chinese government of being bad for its people, but in the absence of a better alternative their government is still the best thing for the people. What else would the people of China support? If you really want to accuse the government of being bad then you must offer a better alternative. There was a point in time where any Chinese person would have given an arm and a leg for a visa to a western country. That’s now changing with the rising middle class in China. But if we really wanted to say the government is bad, then we also need to welcome their best and brightest, grant visas, and offer them an alternative. Otherwise think about the impossible situation you levy on the ordinary Chinese citizen with rhetoric like “hey we don’t like how your government treats you because your government sucks, but also you can’t join our team. Therefore we will just fight you (in war) and you can either fight against us or help us fight your government (oh but sorry you still cannot join us).” Obviously the average Chinese person will most likely still support their own way of life and government, no matter how bad you think their government is for them, because at the end of the day you are not really doing anything better for them. Even if you go and “liberate” them from the tyranny then what? Install a puppet government like in Afghanistan? Grant them all citizenship and annex it as part of the US (there are more Chinese people there so they would “take over” if that happened especially if we really believe in one vote per person)?
jpgvm 4y ago
This is likely to turn out to be the biggest failure of US policy maneuvering of this century. By keeping China coupled to the Wests semi-conductor supply chain there was always pressure that could be applied in various ways, veiled threat of back-doored chips, etc. Instead all you are doing is creating the perfect incubating scenario for a massive surge in Chinese semi-conductor technology. If you think about where the Chinese are right now economically etc they are ready to move away from their previous growth engines and onto new things. Part of that started happening about 10-15 years ago when they started massively investing in solar and kicking off their nuclear program. These days they produce ~80% of the worlds solar cells and the cells they produce are straight up better than what you can get elsewhere. CATL and their perfection of the LiFePO4 chemistry is another. So maybe for the next ~5-10 years the US/West will have a substantial lead in semi-conductor process nodes. Unfortunately this is essentially the least effective time to do this. Moores law scaling has massively slowed down, we still get faster processors each years but not at the same rate as before and not so much through increased transistor density and even where that scaling is still relevant it's not scaling at the same cost anymore. True increased performance of computer systems in this day and age comes from software and the Chinese are not behind on that front at all and it's incredibly unlikely anything can be done to slow them down. After that all it's really done is create most likely the ultimate competitor with infinite amounts of funding with a huge pipeline of STEM grads that will be encouraged to go into semiconductor supply chain tech. All the while with an expanding consumer class to buy all of this stuff and keep the wheels moving. Sadly I just don't see this ending well for the West and in particular countries like mine that are at odds with China and yet dependent on them for economic continued existence. The only way I could see it working would be to find some means to bring back trade agreements like the TTP that Trump canned and also work to ensure India doesn't get pushed into a closer relationship with China but I really don't believe the US has the required nuance in international relations to make that happen anymore.

There's a lot of speculation in this piece. Almost too much for it to be informative.

CamperBob2 4y ago
Well, the URL sets expectations appropriately, at least.
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
I find only Asianometry on youtube delivers well researched reports on the semi industry. Everyone else just posts FUD that drives clicks.

The CHIP act makes way more sense to me financially + getting the bill passed given this stuff. Long-term this does just push China into self-sufficiency faster... But near term, US co's profit? I was mostly curious about the jobs market angle (we are busy in the GPU / AI / data center space) but it was light there..

snovv_crash 4y ago
I think it's more about making the US independent from China, not about hurting China. Of course it is phrased as the latter so that it won't hit as much kicking and screaming from US companies who suddenly have to scramble for new supply chains.

bugfix-66 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

kar1181 4y ago

Very interesting Twitter thread on this here https://twitter.com/jordanschnyc/status/1580889341265469440?s=46&t=Sj_DKlDJQyMNTk68gXhbIw https://twitter.com/jordanschnyc/status/1580889341265469440?... Pretty dramatic stuff but unsure how this will benefit the US since obviously to have this much western talent and IP the Chinese weee investing heavily. Remains to be seen if the west is going to do likewise.

nine_k 4y ago
I suppose it's about hampering the China's export industry on one hand, and China's ability to make advanced weapons, on the other hand. It's more an act of the cold war, and less an attempt to help US industry profit more.
- rjzzleep 4y ago
  Advanced weapons don't need 5nm chips. How will this hamper anything in China long term? Germany for example cut off its biggest energy suppliers is preparing for an economic war with China while claiming they're moving to renewables with a supply chain that is owned over 80% by China. Where is Europes manufacturing these days? India, China, Vietnam, Turkey? Turkey is completely alienated by Europe and is turning more extreme by the day as a result(they applied to the "EU" in 1987 btw). Vietnam went to apologize for Blinkens statements to the Chinese representatives not to long ago and India is actively defying western sanctions even though they dislike China and said that their problems with China are not related to the Ukraine situation at all and that they will deal with China on their own if they need to. Usually, when you prepare for a war, you set up alternative supply chains, build up your capabilities, set up your independent energy/natural resource supply chain and then cut off what you consider your enemy. How is Europe to build up their military for a confrontation if they can't even power their own factories? I thought Trump was bad at making these kinds of strategic decisions, but this administration takes the cake. Completely haphazard, ill conceived, badly planned decisions that only make sense if you turn back the clock to 1990. If I was really generous and speculative I'd say that the plan is to make everyone divest to Taiwan in the hopes that Taiwan is then more important to everyone. But can nobody read a map? You have China 100km across the strait and the US 7000 km away. Last time they tried to upgrade the F16s they had to have an emergency landing in Hawaii. We had missile tests on this island which had to be stopped because the missiles had launch failures. This is local Taiwan news. Cut off China completely and move everything to Taiwan. What does China have to lose from invading and embargoing Taiwan at that point? If there is one lesson from the Ukraine conflict its not to turn Taiwan into another Ukraine. It's to start some kind of dialogue, and try to involve parties such as India in that dialogue. EDIT: since the person below had to come up with this "don't talk to terrorists" nonsense, i have to respond. This isn't some bank raid or a high school fight. These are conflicts with the biggest nuclear power that exports 1/3rd of earths natural resources and the biggest manufacturing and military manpower on the planet. You ABSOLUTELY talk to them. Estonia made statements like that as well. You ABSOLUTELY talk to a neighbour that has 377 your surface area in land and the worlds biggest nuclear arsenal. What's wrong with these people? Let's say they are terrorists for the sake of the argument. All the more reason to find a solution. Or if you really want a military confrontation, prepare for it silently and then show your cards when you're ready.

roenxi 4y ago

There are a lot of things here that I don't understand: - The issues around semiconductor manufacturing. - How Chinese politics work. - How the big Chinese manufacturing hubs like Shenzhen work. The exports are spectacular, so I suspect they're incubating capitalists. But what I do know is China is ~1 billion people, is moving in to being a country with some savings and is really getting the hang of high technology (eg, Huawei is the cutting edge of telecoms and it is going to shock everyone in a decade that they are at the cutting edge of nuclear tech as their reactor program keeps chugging along). If they are seriously challenged to a tech war, we are relying on the Chinese government to defeat the Chinese people. It isn't possible to intellectually starve out a country that big, especially not in the age of the internet. They can achieve miracles in 20 years.

baybal2 4y ago
> They can achieve miracles in 20 years. Why they didn't do so already? There hardly been a single regime in history so eager to slaughter hens laying golden eggs. China is extremely anti-business, and anti-development (unless it's real estate development.) I first understood it when I seen block, and blocks of factories being bulldozed to make space for luxury hotels, and hooker parlours. Tells of priorities of people in power.
- throwaway4good 4y ago
  "China is extremely anti-business, and anti-development". Really? Are you absolutely sure about that?
  - Nomentatus 4y ago
    Certainly Xi doesn't think that he's anti-business, and much that he's done mirrors the EU's actions vs monopolies. But Xi also has no understanding of business, and wants to micromanage everywhere. I think he's already had a large chilling effect without wanting to do that. He could easily, clumsily, kill off most of the geese laying golden eggs for him by instilling more terror of the government than hope of profit. I'm not sure that'll happen, but reading his speeches to this new PRC congress I suspect so.

throwaway4good 4y ago

The latest rounds of sanctions seems to have been extended to protect in particular Qualcomm and Micron. Qualcomm by preventing Chinese fabless design houses such as unisoc in creating high end arm socs for mobile phones. And Micron by targeting YMTC.

newaccount2021 4y ago

Invictus0 4y ago

Did anyone else watch/read Doug's podcast with YAVB about SiTime? I tried to read the transcript but gave up about 1/3 through, obviously podcasts are a low signal medium but even for a podcast I thought the pitch was very speculative and hard to follow.

knowledgemule 4y ago
Sorry to hear that - I would like to think it wasn’t speculative!

Nokinside 4y ago

Biden dropped a real hammer on Chinese chipmaking. Thresholds: • Logic chips with non-planar transistor architectures (I.e., FinFET or GAAFET) of 16nm or 14nm, or below; • DRAM memory chips of 18nm half-pitch or less; • NAND flash memory chips with 128 layers or more. A one-year Temporary General License softens the blow for the US allies. Everything that includes the US made tools and software for design and manufacturing, and machinery is cut out, so is any person with US citizenship, green card or who lives within the US.

Zerverus 4y ago

Wait for the screaming if China forbids its nationals to work in AI research in the west.

foepys 4y ago
Is this actually a concern? If so, that's actually a huge deal to have so many people from an "enemy state" working in a field. Do you have any numbers or sources on that?
PubliusMI 4y ago
The communist clique that's enslaved the Chinese people is still reliant on obtaining technology from the West to do that.
- chrischen 4y ago
  People often talk about and accuse the Chinese government of being bad for its people, but in the absence of a better alternative their government is still the best thing for the people. What else would the people of China support? If you really want to accuse the government of being bad then you must offer a better alternative. There was a point in time where any Chinese person would have given an arm and a leg for a visa to a western country. That’s now changing with the rising middle class in China. But if we really wanted to say the government is bad, then we also need to welcome their best and brightest, grant visas, and offer them an alternative. Otherwise think about the impossible situation you levy on the ordinary Chinese citizen with rhetoric like “hey we don’t like how your government treats you because your government sucks, but also you can’t join our team. Therefore we will just fight you (in war) and you can either fight against us or help us fight your government (oh but sorry you still cannot join us).” Obviously the average Chinese person will most likely still support their own way of life and government, no matter how bad you think their government is for them, because at the end of the day you are not really doing anything better for them. Even if you go and “liberate” them from the tyranny then what? Install a puppet government like in Afghanistan? Grant them all citizenship and annex it as part of the US (there are more Chinese people there so they would “take over” if that happened especially if we really believe in one vote per person)?

jpgvm 4y ago

This is likely to turn out to be the biggest failure of US policy maneuvering of this century. By keeping China coupled to the Wests semi-conductor supply chain there was always pressure that could be applied in various ways, veiled threat of back-doored chips, etc. Instead all you are doing is creating the perfect incubating scenario for a massive surge in Chinese semi-conductor technology. If you think about where the Chinese are right now economically etc they are ready to move away from their previous growth engines and onto new things. Part of that started happening about 10-15 years ago when they started massively investing in solar and kicking off their nuclear program. These days they produce ~80% of the worlds solar cells and the cells they produce are straight up better than what you can get elsewhere. CATL and their perfection of the LiFePO4 chemistry is another. So maybe for the next ~5-10 years the US/West will have a substantial lead in semi-conductor process nodes. Unfortunately this is essentially the least effective time to do this. Moores law scaling has massively slowed down, we still get faster processors each years but not at the same rate as before and not so much through increased transistor density and even where that scaling is still relevant it's not scaling at the same cost anymore. True increased performance of computer systems in this day and age comes from software and the Chinese are not behind on that front at all and it's incredibly unlikely anything can be done to slow them down. After that all it's really done is create most likely the ultimate competitor with infinite amounts of funding with a huge pipeline of STEM grads that will be encouraged to go into semiconductor supply chain tech. All the while with an expanding consumer class to buy all of this stuff and keep the wheels moving. Sadly I just don't see this ending well for the West and in particular countries like mine that are at odds with China and yet dependent on them for economic continued existence. The only way I could see it working would be to find some means to bring back trade agreements like the TTP that Trump canned and also work to ensure India doesn't get pushed into a closer relationship with China but I really don't believe the US has the required nuance in international relations to make that happen anymore.