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China's chip capabilities just 3 years behind TSMC, teardown shows
- more_corn 2y agoPerfect timing for a planned 2027 disruption of the TSMC assembly line.
- m3kw9 2y ago3 years is a lot in tech actually. In 3 years down the line a lot can change
- pragmomm 2y agoArticle is misleading, this is in terms of chip design, not in terms of equipment manufacturing which is what they need to scale or improve yield. SMIC has the equipment they bought before sanctions and no ability to make new comparable or better equipment. So really, this is just SMIC squeezing a little more out of what they already have. Their yield still sucks and can’t be dramatically improved. Also, 7nm mainstream cpu made by TSMC was released 2018
- ksec 2y agoThe article served its purpose.
- andrewflnr 2y agoIs it just me or are we past the stage where being at the absolute apex of chip development is strategically important? For at least a decade, chips have been fine and even pretty often overpowered for the vast majority of applications. You want to have access to chips, yes, but who cares if they're five years out of date?
- nothercastle 2y agoPower consumption is a big deal. You can power modem ai chips with very small battery packs. That leaves more room for explosives
- m4rtink 2y agoOr longer range with the same warhead. Or better feature detection & terminal targetting, etc.
- andrewflnr 2y agoTrue, but how much has power consumption changed in the last few years? Enough to be a serious obstacle in the face of, say, a determined national defense effort? Serious question, I guess. I don't really know know how power consumption varies across the last few generations of chips, or among the chips you'd plausibly choose between for a warhead or something. But I'm guessing it's not a huge effect.
- nothercastle 2y agoI mean just look at modern cpus and gpus. Power consumption gets cut in half between generations. So it can be a big deal but you are right about diminishing returns at some point it’s low enough.
- Jensson 2y ago> For at least a decade, chips have been fine and even pretty often overpowered for the vast majority of applications True, but that changed the last few years, next gen AI require vast amounts of compute, that isn't strategically important today but could be in a few years.
- 3eb7988a1663 2y agoI am of a similar mind. 95%+ of work done today is not limited by compute capacity. The remaining frontiers are already heavily distributed (datacenters for processing weather, spying on citizens, early universe simulations, AI model du jour, etc) so that you can buy a few more racks if you really need to get the process done sooner. I already enable ECO mode (AMD power limitation) because the chip is fast enough without burning extra watts for a marginal performance improvement (which in my testing was incredibly minor relative to the additional draw).
- re-thc 2y ago> You want to have access to chips, yes, but who cares if they're five years out of date? Everyone cares? Faster chips = less cost. If you can run more with the same power then it'll be cheaper. Large businesses run it at scale and so...
- andrewflnr 2y agoOk, fair, "who cares" was too broad. But "older chips would cut into our profit margin" is not the same as "strategically important". Would any of those large businesses go bankrupt if they had to use slightly older chips, or would they grumble and adapt (especially if their competitors were in the same situation)?
- re-thc 2y ago> Would any of those large businesses go bankrupt if they had to use slightly older chips, or would they grumble and adapt (especially if their competitors were in the same situation)? It all depends on the business. If you compare AMD EPYC growth in 5 years, there are huge savings, maybe >200% (in extra cores, less power and faster cores). Is that profit margin not significant? I'm sure a lot of businesses relying on a fleet of servers would struggle. If you're selling phones for example and Samsung/Apple have the latest chips whilst your local company doesn't it will soon matter. Today it might be close, but in 5 years? There's the you don't "need" it as a consumer but there's also a why would a consumer buy a vastly inferior product? So who are you competing against and hence how do you adapt? You assume the competitors are in the same situation, but are they? A lot of companies compete globally.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoDoes the teardown consider yields (reading it, they just include an aside comment)? It is easy to make cheap, it is easy to make fast, the hard part is making cheap and fast (the same goes for jet turbine, the other side of China's tech push).
- downrightmike 2y ago3 years is really 6, which in reality is never. The chip industry has been through this before many times.
- DHaldane 2y agoThis is an old story, rehashed without new information. That 7nm chip from SMIC is what prompted the export controls -- nobody thought they were close before that.
- mullingitover 2y agoChina chasing TSMC is probably a fool's errand. They might catch up for a bit, but they'll always be renters in the houses that ASML builds (and they can be evicted/sanctioned out at any time[1]). Rage Against the Machine said it best: "F** tha G-ride I want the machines that are makin' em." Call me when they get serious about their domestic lithography business. [1] https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/china-only-produces-1-of-critical-litho-chipmaking-tools-exposing-it-to-harsh-us-sanctions-investment-in-domestic-toolmakers-looks-to-reverse-the-trend https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/ch...
- layer8 2y agoYour link says that they are also chasing ASML. And if they invade Taiwan, it will take the rest of the world a couple of years to replace TSMC, regardless of ASML.
- mullingitover 2y agoThey might be chasing, but I haven't seen anything showing that they're even close to the same time zone as ASML right now. It seems like China invading Taiwan doesn't make any strategic sense until they have a serious alternative to ASML. If they invade they'll never lay eyes on ASML hardware again. However, if they have their own serious domestic ASML competitor, plus a bunch of domestic foundries that could pick up TSMC's orders after an invasion, they have the world over a barrel.
- monocasa 2y agoThey're already practically cut off from ASML. The concern is that they build a domestic competitor to ASML in response.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y agoYou know what's 3 years behind the iPhone 15? The iPhone 12. Barely anyone wants to buy one. You know what's 3 years behind the h100? Definitely something no one is seriously buying. 3 years behind is still way too far behind. It took them 15 years to get 3 years behind. It could take them another 15 to be 1 year behind. And by then - who know - the chips of today might not matter. There might be some new kind of chip that they're even farther behind on. Your guess is as good as mine that far in the future.
- matthew-wegner 2y agoSome consumer gaming data points: - Geforce 3090 with 24GB will be 4 years old at the end of this month - The PS5 is also almost 4 years old - The Nintendo Switch is 7.5 years old iPhone 12 is more like 4 years old. So is the M1!
- zarzavat 2y agoThe M1 is four years ago, and all I hear is people saying they don’t see any point upgrading since it’s good enough for them.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y agoYour anecdata of what you hear people talking about and consumer trends do not agree.
- lossolo 2y agoWhich trends exactly? I have M1 PRO and I agree with OP.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y agoSales trends.
- lossolo 2y ago
- atleastoptimal 2y agoI don't understand why there are such extreme export controls wrt China. Isn't a more technologically capable China better for everyone because it increases the supply of high-quality parts? Is it just revenge for Chinese nationals stealing IP ?
- leduyquang753 2y agoThe US's upper class is afraid of China taking over as the biggest economy in the world.
- atleastoptimal 2y agoIf they think that's a risk wouldn't they just put their money into China?
- sabbaticaldev 2y agothey tried
- aurareturn 2y agoThey did. Many got so rich because of China.
- gamepsys 2y agoIt's blatantly about international power. Technology is seen as a bottle neck to limit China's power on several fronts. Economic power, military power, scientific power, technological power.
- tjpnz 2y agoBecause China is a threat to US allies in the region and regularly speaks of its ambition to invade one of them.
- atleastoptimal 2y agoWouldn't sanctions just make them more antagonistic? If you integrate China into the world economy more they have more to lose when they invade. Imposing sanctions necessitates they become more self-reliant, making them more resistant to further sanctions if they were to invade.
- h_tbob 2y agoI wonder if the CHIPS act was a bad idea strategically. Theoretically the more intertwined our economies, the less likely war is, as we all have more to lose. By isolating china, they reduce the perceived dependence they have, as their industries grow. Thus wisdom would indicate that it is not the right time to cut off any nation.
- m4rtink 2y agoThat was the idea with Russia and Germany - did not really work out (but german machine tools continue to churn out weapons in Russia, bought from hydrocarbon profits...).
- h_tbob 2y agoBut Russia and Germany are not at war. Honestly if Ukraine and Russia had stronger trade-who know what would have happened?
- yieldcrv 2y ago> U.S. export curbs on chip technology have spurred China to become more self-reliant in producing semiconductors. everyone needs to be more self-reliant in producing semiconductors how far behind is the US on TSMC? because I want that Arizona supply chain to be up and running Chairman Nao! literally nobody should be basing any of their decisions on the possibility of China invading China. No wonder TSMC makes up dumb excuses about their issues deploying in the US, they need to stall and delay the obvious, that's the only... chip... they have.
- newuser94303 2y agoTSMC is stalling to get more sweet US tax dollars.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoThis is great. Making this tech anti fragile by less over reliance on one or two sources is a good for humanity.
- bubaumba 2y agoChina is the major second super power. Having only one taken over by 'you know whom' would turn the whole world into a big sh*thole.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoIt won’t be taken over though. The world woke up to the dangers of over-reliance on china. Foreign direct investment is down nearly 10x.
- black_13 2y ago[dead]
- prinzmaus 2y agoSo, China is about as far behind TSMC as Intel is?
- audunw 2y agoSMIC has been forced to focus only on DUV technolog, and take that as far as it can go. That’s not bad for the short term. DUV is actually just as good if not better than EUV for the nodes they’re working on. TSMC is putting a lot of their R&D into next generation technologies like EUV, backside power, advanced packaging/chiplet stuff, glass substrates etc I’m not sure SMIC will be able to keep up when these efforts bear fruit. Eventually they’ll need EUV to unlock further progress. SMIC has been able to poach talent by throwing mountains of money at them. This might not be possible going forward. Not being able to work on EUV could be career suicide, and I’m not so sure China can be so frivolous with their money anymore. They have to start raising taxes to compensate for the loss of land lease revenue.
- ziddoap 2y agoFor those like me who don't know these acronyms: DUV = Deep Ultraviolet EUV = Extreme Ultraviolet And they are different methods of lithography. To quote a random site that I googled while looking for the acronyms: >Think of EUV as a precision scalpel, capable of carving out the finest details, while DUV is more like a skilled artist's brush – versatile and reliable, but with limitations when it comes to the tiniest features.
- klyrs 2y agoMore precisely, DUV has about 10x shorter wavelength than EUV -- where wavelength directly corresponds to minimum feature size.
- mlyle 2y ago> More precisely, DUV has about 10x shorter wavelength than EUV Other way around, though 10x shorter is confusing; I suggest saying EUV has a wavelength that's about 1/10th of DUV.
- chasil 2y agoThe current technology to generate extreme ultraviolet involves a container of molten/liquid tin that is released drop by drop; these are vaporized by a laser. The equipment for this is sold by one vendor, ASML (a company in the Netherlands). It is extremely expensive. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ultraviolet_lithography https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ultraviolet_lithogra... A Japanese advance was reported on HN recently that could simplify EUV. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41336690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41336690
- linotype 2y agoEventually they’re going to catch up with the state of the art, then their progress will stall.