7 ms·

What’s the game theory-ish take on this? Isn’t cutting off China’s access to chips counter productive in the long run, because of course they’re going to throw

What’s the game theory-ish take on this? Isn’t cutting off China’s access to chips counter productive in the long run, because of course they’re going to throw the country behind being self sufficient in this regard. Is the process where cutting off an opponent’s access to a resource causing them to become more powerful a thing?

throwaway4good 3y ago
I am fairly convinced now that in about ten years time, the tech war will be seen as a huge strategic blunder.
- quantum_state 3y ago
  The blunder would be guaranteed if China spends a small fraction of the time and effort thinking out of box to look into other computing paradigms ... and relaxing some of the unnecessary limitation on individual rights, private properties, etc.
- pphysch 3y ago
  By its proponents? It's already apparent to many. The current trade war started already over half a decade ago under Trump.
  - throwaway4good 3y ago
    Yes. I think in the US politics "blob" eg. the sanctions against Huawei are still seen as enormously succesful in the sense that they did huge economic damage on the company without China being able to retribute directly. However today Huawei mass-produces a modern high-end phone and if you open that phone, none of the components inside are produced by western companies, everything is Chinese. That is really remarkable. And it is not going to stop with a phone.
    - MaxPock 3y ago
      Perfect case of winning the battle and losing the war .
  - russli1993 3y ago
    nope, the tech trade war has always been there since the country was founded in 1949, for tech such as semi conductors, machine tools, industrial software, etc. US just escalated it by placing more restrictions and targeted large swathe of the CN economy. But because of the decade of sanctions, the R&D industrial base for many of these tech is there, just very small, no market maturity, but there is human resources, there is IP and know how. Sanctions just give these actors a chance to really improve.
- amou234 3y ago
  In ten years time, China will be older and broker and with even less international friends. It would be a great strategic triumph.
  - thsksbd 3y ago
    Don't get your hopes up. Europe, Japan and S Korea are aging quicker and more countries are sympathetic to China than the US. The time to clip China's wings was the late 90s, but we were too drunk on triumphalism and busy looting Russia.
    - overstay8930 3y ago
      > more countries are sympathetic to China than the US Alexa, show democracy rankings of countries who are sympathetic to China
      - hakfoo 3y ago
        At this point, arguing about democracy feels like the political equivalent of saying "I went to Paris, and spent the whole time moaning that I couldn't get Del Taco." I guess it doesn't matter if a country is raising its quality of life metrics, or advancing up the economic ladder. Whether the population is content or satisfied with its leadership? Nope. The only relevant metric for human achievement is the invention of a multi-party electoral system. Except it's even worse than that. It's so easily reduced to parody because it was a strawman to begin with. We don't really give a flying ** about democracy; if that were true, would we have backed the string of strongmen running South Korea in the first 35 years of its independence? Would we ever let a single dime reach Saudi Arabia? I wish our leaders would be honest about it though-- if we just said "we have economic and military hegemony and it's our mission to preserve it", then nobody will waste their efforts trying to find middle ground and win-win solutions. We should ask why China is winning hearts and minds overseas: maybe they're prioritizing the things people actually need? They don't come in and airdrop a half-baked democracy on a country with little interest in it. They've been loose with the economic aid, and have strayed away from the Western/IMF "let's demand massive austerity and privatization" gameplan. There's nothing stopping the US from doing the same things, but with a bigger bankroll to play with.
- riku_iki 3y ago
  > I am fairly convinced now that in about ten years time, the tech war will be seen as a huge strategic blunder. without tech war, China could progress much faster in emerging tech(AI?). But since there is no counterfactual data, there always will be people who use this to push narrative.
- VelesDude 3y ago
  It is said that post WW2, one big stabilizing factor of the world is that we globalized and created interdependence on the 6 continent supply chain. It was in part due to technology gains, cheap energy and resources to power that tech and the fear of creating enemies that could now potentially fight back with nukes. A truly existential threat. If we all lean on each other to some degree, it works out better for most folks. And now we see that this is rapidly degrading over the last decade. I think the belief was that if the west cutoff China, they would be left in the dark. Instead they have more than enough knowledge on how to make these things that it became a driving force to active decouple from the west. Provided the other economic/demographic/political issues don't become a major problem to China, this will definitely be a large blunder.
  - overstay8930 3y ago
    The San Francisco System is proving as strong as ever especially with recent deals inked between NATO members and US allies in APAC, wtf are you talking about?
- overstay8930 3y ago
  People will say that because everyone has an agenda, the point is to not stop China from building chips. You are naive if you think China wasn't already putting everything they can into building chips at home, did you really think China was okay buying chips from Taiwan in the first place? The point is to slow them down and just make it harder to compete today, the US is pouring more money into chip research and manufacturing than the entire rest of the world combined, and nobody thinks the US is going to fall behind anytime soon. Not to mention the 5 other massive strategic disadvantages China has just purely on geography alone (i.e. energy policy). TL;DR Who cares if China is self sufficient on tech in 10 years, they were gonna be self sufficient in 15 years anyways, and it's not like China is going to be loading up on Nvidia's stack forever. If there was going to be a time to do it, it would be now. Any later would just not matter as they would be ramping up their own production anyways.
  - russli1993 3y ago
    nope. The difference is before, China might reach some product competitive parity with western products using western supply chains, but only in selective domains that have government tax dollars support. Tax dollars in China isn't limitless. Chinese government might give SMIC money to buy Western machines to build a 7nm fab line for a few years, but TSMC will move on to 5nm and all the users will switch, SMIC is losing money and relies on tax dollars to stay afloat. Then the west might go: hey, free trade, no subsidies, with some trade pressure on CN exports, CN government will be convinced to give up on supporting money losing endeavors. Before USA's trade war, 99% of CN companies, even the state owned firms, believe in 造不如买make your own is not as good as buying. Most purchase decisions is based on market forces, better product, more reputation, competitive priced = deal. Its really hard for Chinese companies in chips, semi equipment, etc to break into the market. Say you want to compete with TI in microcontrollers, nobody wants to buy from you when they have mature products from TI. Now, the USA with export bans and its own subsidies, single handedly destroyed the "make your own is not as good as buying" mentality. Every company in every sector now has to worry, if I buy a microcontroller from TI for my toaster, what if Washington have a mental break down tomorrow and decide to ban it with a stroke of pen. Even if my alternative isn't as good, I won't have a business. And as companies starting using alternatives, that product gets better with feedback loop and iteration. Rome isn't build in a day, but it's built by human hands. Once a product starts the commercial cycle, it improves. People believed that US sanctions only targets selected companies, then Oct 2023 GPU ban targets the entire country, every single company. Now even a game streaming company can't buy the GPU they want. What do you think companies with 10B dollars of revenue streaming video games are going to do? Invest in every single semi-conductor companies in the entire supply chain, from GPU, to EDA, to semi-tools. USA is attacking huge sectors of CN economy, sectors with revenues of hundreds of billions of dollars, making an enemy out of all them, what do you think they will respond? The demand is still there, people will still buy their toaster, watch livestreamed video games, companies will need to operate, and the supplies are needed. Whoever can fill that demand laughs to the bank. The trade blockade strategy might work for smaller countries. But 1) China has always been many forms of trade blockade ever since the country is founded. See wassenaar arrangement. China can't get advanced machine tools, EDA, CAD, and many others. So there are many small companies, research labs, SOEs, universities that have been doing R&D on these tech for decades. The problem is products in these areas have very strong winner takes all effect, they don't have marketplace battle tested products. But the flip side is that they have talents, they have some IP, know how and tech. Chinese semi tools companies are rapidly advancing in the last 6 years, but they started 20 years ago because the west's sanctions on China. So when US wages the tech blockade, Chinese don't start from scratch, they take what they have in the lab, not mature, but have some value, and start putting it on production lines and iterate. 2) CN has a large internal market, and increasingly competitive in global markets for all kinds of goods, even if the entire western world stops buying from China, the rest of world + internal market is big enough for many products to be profitable and iterate. As long as there is demand, there will be people study and making it. 3) CN has surplus of university grads, many universities, etc, what if we find them some work to do? Oh and the reason why CN has been doing self-sufficiency is because the country has always been sanctioned since its founding. And western decades of western sanctions have created CN's R&D industrial base in "hard tech", such as materials, automation, industrial software, optronics etc. I guess many policy experts forgot this fact and never bothered to study what really goes on in China. They forgot they have been sanctioning CN for decades and the Chinese have always thought they can't rely on others. Why do you think they can trust you when you sanction and attack them? The self-reliance mentality is created by western sanctions. The solution is always build trust and remove the rational that causes others to think a certain way.
eunos 3y ago
Powers that be are betting that the Chinese won't be able to catch up. These folks might be swallowing the "Chinese aren't creative" too long
- xgk 3y ago
  An alternative explanation might involve both of: 1. Stopping technology transfer worked exceedingly well for the west weakening the Soviet Union during the Cold War. 2. A distinct lack of (non-violent) alternatives for the West preventing China becoming the world's leading technological superpower (and hence also strongest military). I doubt this will be successful in the long run, because China is not burdened by the Soviet Union's extremely inefficient way of organising its economy. Not to mention that China is the worlds biggest market.
  - chaostheory 3y ago
    It will work in the long run due to China’s terrible demographics, which are worse than Japan’s; and Xi’s extreme mishandling of China’s economy and foreign relations which are both intertwined. All that’s needed is a military containment of China.
    - pphysch 3y ago
      Washington can't even military contain the Houthis, or Iranians, or Russians.
      - chaostheory 3y ago
        1. Russia should have overwhelmed Ukraine years ago. Yet It’s still stuck. The EU is also finally mobilizing militarily. Also, this really isn’t our problem anymore. The EU can’t even give us good trade deals. They’re too busy passing one protectionist law after another. What’s the point when until now they were unwilling to pay their fair share into defense? 2. Iran isn’t doing anything but proxy wars here and there. Mostly in places where we will eventually retreat from. 3. Washington doesn’t need to contain any of them. Globalism is no longer a US interest. We are tired of subsidizing world trade and world security for little to no gain. All we get plenty of is criticism. Only countries that need energy imports from the Middle East are worried about the Houthis. Unlike many other countries, the US does not need energy imports or food imports. This is everyone else’s problem now.
amou234 3y ago
In 10 years time, China may come up with a production of 10-7nm. It may or may not be profitable to mass produce. By then, they will be 12 years into their 25 years Great Depression. Their real estate and stock market will still be in the toilet, and their demographics will go down 200-300m. They will have 30% of their population over 65. It would be iffy to say at that point whether the Chinese government has enough money, besides addressing their enormous debt, to keep pouring into a losing enterprise like this. The western technology companies will be somewhere way way farther along/bigger by then - look at spacex flight this week for comparison at how fast western technologies move.
- throwaway4good 3y ago
  SMIC is doing volume production at 7nm now.
  - amou234 3y ago
    So what if China has 7nm chips now, there's no Huawei it can make them 'at scale' https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/19/huaweis_advanced_chip_sparks_us/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/19/huaweis_advanced_chip...
    - ptx 3y ago
      I'm not sure that assertion by the US Commerce Secretary is holding up a months later. Apparently "Huawei has seen a resurgence in its premium smartphone sales since it released its Mate 60 series" (the phone model in question): https://www.reuters.com/technology/apples-china-iphone-sales-plunge-24-first-six-weeks-2024-report-says-2024-03-05/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/apples-china-iphone-sales...
  - lostmsu 3y ago
    What products contain that 7nm?
    - throwaway4good 3y ago
fspeech 3y ago
This is merely a demonstration of China's general competence level in CPU design and fabrication. Loongson is poorly resourced and has only niche applications and sales. Huawei and Alibaba are at a completely different level of resource availability in comparison.
ninetyninenine 3y ago
The other question is, is it morally right? For what legitimate reason do we have to cut them off of chips? The literal only reason I see is jealousy. Power tripping. The whole weapons thing is bullshit. You don't need the top of the line ic to power military equipment. This is really just petty jealousy and economic hording by the USA.
- FooBarWidget 3y ago
  From my Chinese perspective, the time to ponder this question has long passed. It's not useful. In a street interview in China (Xinjiang, even) about sanctions, an old man gave an interesting answer. He did not express resentment for the sanctions. Instead, he said: let them sanction, in the end we can't rely on others for our own prosperity and development. He is right. There is no point in Chinese resenting the sanctions. There is no point in foreigners criticizing the sanctions, we all know it's no use. The only thing that matters now is for Chinese to focus on work. Focus on our own R&D. No need to say much, just get things done.
  - cjbgkagh 3y ago
    Not only is it no use, but it's very counterproductive. It's hard to push for innovation locally as it's initially higher cost and lower quality so local companies are incentivized to continue to buy foreign. Without the customers to drive demand the top down initiatives invites corruption and money spent on it just goes into a bottomless black hole. By being sanctioned you have the foreign countries ensuring local companies can only by locally and are not able to bribe the foreign countries to circumvent.
  - ninetyninenine 3y ago
    From the US perspective it's different. I'm living in the US, I think we're being petty, disrespectful and I think the action is pathetic. This is not about China resenting the sanctions. You already have the right attitude This is about a US citizen looking at the US and feeling ashamed at our own virtues. We should share technology and work together. Not fear one nation surpassing the other.
  - 3y ago
_w1tm 3y ago
Resources spent re-inventing wheels is resources not spent gaining a lead.
- fspeech 3y ago
  Are you calling for the government to pick a winner? The Chinese word for this fierce if at times chaotic competition is "juan". It worked for them in EV and PV. The outcome remains to be seen in chips and commercial space launches. But even their mostly (ex-)students-run open source Xiangshan RiscV project https://github.com/OpenXiangShan/XiangShan https://github.com/OpenXiangShan/XiangShan shows a remarkable level of sophistication.
FooBarWidget 3y ago
It is a thing but it depends on the opponent's will, orgsnizational prowess, resources and human capital. The latter includes talent pool and scientific knowledge. Not all countries can pull it off. Most countries don't have the scale necessary, many don't have the organizational prowess.
exe34 3y ago
It might be about buying time - if our side develops some dominating technology before they manage to reach parity in chips, then they won't have time to catch up.
HPsquared 3y ago
It's the opposite of "embrace, extend, extinguish".

throwaway4good 3y ago

I am fairly convinced now that in about ten years time, the tech war will be seen as a huge strategic blunder.

quantum_state 3y ago
The blunder would be guaranteed if China spends a small fraction of the time and effort thinking out of box to look into other computing paradigms ... and relaxing some of the unnecessary limitation on individual rights, private properties, etc.
pphysch 3y ago
By its proponents? It's already apparent to many. The current trade war started already over half a decade ago under Trump.
- throwaway4good 3y ago
  Yes. I think in the US politics "blob" eg. the sanctions against Huawei are still seen as enormously succesful in the sense that they did huge economic damage on the company without China being able to retribute directly. However today Huawei mass-produces a modern high-end phone and if you open that phone, none of the components inside are produced by western companies, everything is Chinese. That is really remarkable. And it is not going to stop with a phone.
  - MaxPock 3y ago
    Perfect case of winning the battle and losing the war .
- russli1993 3y ago
  nope, the tech trade war has always been there since the country was founded in 1949, for tech such as semi conductors, machine tools, industrial software, etc. US just escalated it by placing more restrictions and targeted large swathe of the CN economy. But because of the decade of sanctions, the R&D industrial base for many of these tech is there, just very small, no market maturity, but there is human resources, there is IP and know how. Sanctions just give these actors a chance to really improve.
amou234 3y ago
In ten years time, China will be older and broker and with even less international friends. It would be a great strategic triumph.
- thsksbd 3y ago
  Don't get your hopes up. Europe, Japan and S Korea are aging quicker and more countries are sympathetic to China than the US. The time to clip China's wings was the late 90s, but we were too drunk on triumphalism and busy looting Russia.
  - overstay8930 3y ago
    > more countries are sympathetic to China than the US Alexa, show democracy rankings of countries who are sympathetic to China
    - hakfoo 3y ago
      At this point, arguing about democracy feels like the political equivalent of saying "I went to Paris, and spent the whole time moaning that I couldn't get Del Taco." I guess it doesn't matter if a country is raising its quality of life metrics, or advancing up the economic ladder. Whether the population is content or satisfied with its leadership? Nope. The only relevant metric for human achievement is the invention of a multi-party electoral system. Except it's even worse than that. It's so easily reduced to parody because it was a strawman to begin with. We don't really give a flying ** about democracy; if that were true, would we have backed the string of strongmen running South Korea in the first 35 years of its independence? Would we ever let a single dime reach Saudi Arabia? I wish our leaders would be honest about it though-- if we just said "we have economic and military hegemony and it's our mission to preserve it", then nobody will waste their efforts trying to find middle ground and win-win solutions. We should ask why China is winning hearts and minds overseas: maybe they're prioritizing the things people actually need? They don't come in and airdrop a half-baked democracy on a country with little interest in it. They've been loose with the economic aid, and have strayed away from the Western/IMF "let's demand massive austerity and privatization" gameplan. There's nothing stopping the US from doing the same things, but with a bigger bankroll to play with.
riku_iki 3y ago
> I am fairly convinced now that in about ten years time, the tech war will be seen as a huge strategic blunder. without tech war, China could progress much faster in emerging tech(AI?). But since there is no counterfactual data, there always will be people who use this to push narrative.
VelesDude 3y ago
It is said that post WW2, one big stabilizing factor of the world is that we globalized and created interdependence on the 6 continent supply chain. It was in part due to technology gains, cheap energy and resources to power that tech and the fear of creating enemies that could now potentially fight back with nukes. A truly existential threat. If we all lean on each other to some degree, it works out better for most folks. And now we see that this is rapidly degrading over the last decade. I think the belief was that if the west cutoff China, they would be left in the dark. Instead they have more than enough knowledge on how to make these things that it became a driving force to active decouple from the west. Provided the other economic/demographic/political issues don't become a major problem to China, this will definitely be a large blunder.
- overstay8930 3y ago
  The San Francisco System is proving as strong as ever especially with recent deals inked between NATO members and US allies in APAC, wtf are you talking about?
overstay8930 3y ago
People will say that because everyone has an agenda, the point is to not stop China from building chips. You are naive if you think China wasn't already putting everything they can into building chips at home, did you really think China was okay buying chips from Taiwan in the first place? The point is to slow them down and just make it harder to compete today, the US is pouring more money into chip research and manufacturing than the entire rest of the world combined, and nobody thinks the US is going to fall behind anytime soon. Not to mention the 5 other massive strategic disadvantages China has just purely on geography alone (i.e. energy policy). TL;DR Who cares if China is self sufficient on tech in 10 years, they were gonna be self sufficient in 15 years anyways, and it's not like China is going to be loading up on Nvidia's stack forever. If there was going to be a time to do it, it would be now. Any later would just not matter as they would be ramping up their own production anyways.
- russli1993 3y ago
  nope. The difference is before, China might reach some product competitive parity with western products using western supply chains, but only in selective domains that have government tax dollars support. Tax dollars in China isn't limitless. Chinese government might give SMIC money to buy Western machines to build a 7nm fab line for a few years, but TSMC will move on to 5nm and all the users will switch, SMIC is losing money and relies on tax dollars to stay afloat. Then the west might go: hey, free trade, no subsidies, with some trade pressure on CN exports, CN government will be convinced to give up on supporting money losing endeavors. Before USA's trade war, 99% of CN companies, even the state owned firms, believe in 造不如买make your own is not as good as buying. Most purchase decisions is based on market forces, better product, more reputation, competitive priced = deal. Its really hard for Chinese companies in chips, semi equipment, etc to break into the market. Say you want to compete with TI in microcontrollers, nobody wants to buy from you when they have mature products from TI. Now, the USA with export bans and its own subsidies, single handedly destroyed the "make your own is not as good as buying" mentality. Every company in every sector now has to worry, if I buy a microcontroller from TI for my toaster, what if Washington have a mental break down tomorrow and decide to ban it with a stroke of pen. Even if my alternative isn't as good, I won't have a business. And as companies starting using alternatives, that product gets better with feedback loop and iteration. Rome isn't build in a day, but it's built by human hands. Once a product starts the commercial cycle, it improves. People believed that US sanctions only targets selected companies, then Oct 2023 GPU ban targets the entire country, every single company. Now even a game streaming company can't buy the GPU they want. What do you think companies with 10B dollars of revenue streaming video games are going to do? Invest in every single semi-conductor companies in the entire supply chain, from GPU, to EDA, to semi-tools. USA is attacking huge sectors of CN economy, sectors with revenues of hundreds of billions of dollars, making an enemy out of all them, what do you think they will respond? The demand is still there, people will still buy their toaster, watch livestreamed video games, companies will need to operate, and the supplies are needed. Whoever can fill that demand laughs to the bank. The trade blockade strategy might work for smaller countries. But 1) China has always been many forms of trade blockade ever since the country is founded. See wassenaar arrangement. China can't get advanced machine tools, EDA, CAD, and many others. So there are many small companies, research labs, SOEs, universities that have been doing R&D on these tech for decades. The problem is products in these areas have very strong winner takes all effect, they don't have marketplace battle tested products. But the flip side is that they have talents, they have some IP, know how and tech. Chinese semi tools companies are rapidly advancing in the last 6 years, but they started 20 years ago because the west's sanctions on China. So when US wages the tech blockade, Chinese don't start from scratch, they take what they have in the lab, not mature, but have some value, and start putting it on production lines and iterate. 2) CN has a large internal market, and increasingly competitive in global markets for all kinds of goods, even if the entire western world stops buying from China, the rest of world + internal market is big enough for many products to be profitable and iterate. As long as there is demand, there will be people study and making it. 3) CN has surplus of university grads, many universities, etc, what if we find them some work to do? Oh and the reason why CN has been doing self-sufficiency is because the country has always been sanctioned since its founding. And western decades of western sanctions have created CN's R&D industrial base in "hard tech", such as materials, automation, industrial software, optronics etc. I guess many policy experts forgot this fact and never bothered to study what really goes on in China. They forgot they have been sanctioning CN for decades and the Chinese have always thought they can't rely on others. Why do you think they can trust you when you sanction and attack them? The self-reliance mentality is created by western sanctions. The solution is always build trust and remove the rational that causes others to think a certain way.

eunos 3y ago

Powers that be are betting that the Chinese won't be able to catch up. These folks might be swallowing the "Chinese aren't creative" too long

xgk 3y ago
An alternative explanation might involve both of: 1. Stopping technology transfer worked exceedingly well for the west weakening the Soviet Union during the Cold War. 2. A distinct lack of (non-violent) alternatives for the West preventing China becoming the world's leading technological superpower (and hence also strongest military). I doubt this will be successful in the long run, because China is not burdened by the Soviet Union's extremely inefficient way of organising its economy. Not to mention that China is the worlds biggest market.
- chaostheory 3y ago
  It will work in the long run due to China’s terrible demographics, which are worse than Japan’s; and Xi’s extreme mishandling of China’s economy and foreign relations which are both intertwined. All that’s needed is a military containment of China.
  - pphysch 3y ago
    Washington can't even military contain the Houthis, or Iranians, or Russians.
    - chaostheory 3y ago
      1. Russia should have overwhelmed Ukraine years ago. Yet It’s still stuck. The EU is also finally mobilizing militarily. Also, this really isn’t our problem anymore. The EU can’t even give us good trade deals. They’re too busy passing one protectionist law after another. What’s the point when until now they were unwilling to pay their fair share into defense? 2. Iran isn’t doing anything but proxy wars here and there. Mostly in places where we will eventually retreat from. 3. Washington doesn’t need to contain any of them. Globalism is no longer a US interest. We are tired of subsidizing world trade and world security for little to no gain. All we get plenty of is criticism. Only countries that need energy imports from the Middle East are worried about the Houthis. Unlike many other countries, the US does not need energy imports or food imports. This is everyone else’s problem now.

amou234 3y ago

In 10 years time, China may come up with a production of 10-7nm. It may or may not be profitable to mass produce. By then, they will be 12 years into their 25 years Great Depression. Their real estate and stock market will still be in the toilet, and their demographics will go down 200-300m. They will have 30% of their population over 65. It would be iffy to say at that point whether the Chinese government has enough money, besides addressing their enormous debt, to keep pouring into a losing enterprise like this. The western technology companies will be somewhere way way farther along/bigger by then - look at spacex flight this week for comparison at how fast western technologies move.

throwaway4good 3y ago
SMIC is doing volume production at 7nm now.
- amou234 3y ago
  So what if China has 7nm chips now, there's no Huawei it can make them 'at scale' https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/19/huaweis_advanced_chip_sparks_us/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/19/huaweis_advanced_chip...
  - ptx 3y ago
    I'm not sure that assertion by the US Commerce Secretary is holding up a months later. Apparently "Huawei has seen a resurgence in its premium smartphone sales since it released its Mate 60 series" (the phone model in question): https://www.reuters.com/technology/apples-china-iphone-sales-plunge-24-first-six-weeks-2024-report-says-2024-03-05/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/apples-china-iphone-sales...
- lostmsu 3y ago
  What products contain that 7nm?
  - throwaway4good 3y ago

fspeech 3y ago

This is merely a demonstration of China's general competence level in CPU design and fabrication. Loongson is poorly resourced and has only niche applications and sales. Huawei and Alibaba are at a completely different level of resource availability in comparison.

ninetyninenine 3y ago

The other question is, is it morally right? For what legitimate reason do we have to cut them off of chips? The literal only reason I see is jealousy. Power tripping. The whole weapons thing is bullshit. You don't need the top of the line ic to power military equipment. This is really just petty jealousy and economic hording by the USA.

FooBarWidget 3y ago
From my Chinese perspective, the time to ponder this question has long passed. It's not useful. In a street interview in China (Xinjiang, even) about sanctions, an old man gave an interesting answer. He did not express resentment for the sanctions. Instead, he said: let them sanction, in the end we can't rely on others for our own prosperity and development. He is right. There is no point in Chinese resenting the sanctions. There is no point in foreigners criticizing the sanctions, we all know it's no use. The only thing that matters now is for Chinese to focus on work. Focus on our own R&D. No need to say much, just get things done.
- cjbgkagh 3y ago
  Not only is it no use, but it's very counterproductive. It's hard to push for innovation locally as it's initially higher cost and lower quality so local companies are incentivized to continue to buy foreign. Without the customers to drive demand the top down initiatives invites corruption and money spent on it just goes into a bottomless black hole. By being sanctioned you have the foreign countries ensuring local companies can only by locally and are not able to bribe the foreign countries to circumvent.
- ninetyninenine 3y ago
  From the US perspective it's different. I'm living in the US, I think we're being petty, disrespectful and I think the action is pathetic. This is not about China resenting the sanctions. You already have the right attitude This is about a US citizen looking at the US and feeling ashamed at our own virtues. We should share technology and work together. Not fear one nation surpassing the other.
- 3y ago

_w1tm 3y ago

Resources spent re-inventing wheels is resources not spent gaining a lead.

fspeech 3y ago
Are you calling for the government to pick a winner? The Chinese word for this fierce if at times chaotic competition is "juan". It worked for them in EV and PV. The outcome remains to be seen in chips and commercial space launches. But even their mostly (ex-)students-run open source Xiangshan RiscV project https://github.com/OpenXiangShan/XiangShan https://github.com/OpenXiangShan/XiangShan shows a remarkable level of sophistication.

FooBarWidget 3y ago

It is a thing but it depends on the opponent's will, orgsnizational prowess, resources and human capital. The latter includes talent pool and scientific knowledge. Not all countries can pull it off. Most countries don't have the scale necessary, many don't have the organizational prowess.

exe34 3y ago

It might be about buying time - if our side develops some dominating technology before they manage to reach parity in chips, then they won't have time to catch up.

HPsquared 3y ago

It's the opposite of "embrace, extend, extinguish".