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What's the deal with the municipal government being a partner in this project? Is that structure common in china? Is it just them giving VIA tax breaks and thin

What's the deal with the municipal government being a partner in this project? Is that structure common in china? Is it just them giving VIA tax breaks and things, or are they more involved than that?

fspeech 1y ago
Do governments allow some of their employees to be highly compensated relative to others? Would someone with real expertise in chip development work for the government at what the government is willing to pay? I think the answer is no.
- wmf 1y ago
  The Chinese government has definitely "bought back" some top talent from the US. It's probably a small number of people. I'm not sure why local governments would get involved although in general China has had a problem with too much investment and not enough places for it to go. It's not impossible that there are essentially local sovereign wealth funds.
  - fspeech 1y ago
    They work at companies or universities, and there is a "market" to look to for the pay scale.
- dghlsakjg 1y ago
  This initiative seems to be a private company propped up by government funds rather than direct government employment. Think Lockheed Martin not DARPA.
jenny91 1y ago
Yes, it's very common in China.
Havoc 1y ago
Yeah. They know the chips aren’t commercially competitive so they just create artificial demand by making gov and state controlled entities buy it. Basically an attempt to bootstrap an industry brute force style
- jandrese 1y ago
  Seems like it depends on the price point. These chips might be slow by modern standards, but if they're cheap enough then it doesn't really matter for a lot of the potential applications. I'm typing this post on a chip that is roughly in that performance bracket (an i5-3750k) that only rarely feels like the bottleneck. And this is my gaming machine.
  - 999900000999 1y ago
    Plus the vast majority of work computers don’t need to be particularly fast. Add a lightweight Linux distro, and that’s more than enough for paperwork.
    - OmarAssadi 1y ago
      Early into high school, I needed something to take to class, but since I already had a decent desktop at home, plus we were broke, I picked up some cheap Asus K55N; AMD A8-4500M, 4GB DDR3, etc -- nothing particularly fancy; only upgrade I did to it was removing the mechanical hard drive and swapping in my old 120GB Corsair Force GT. I eventually upgraded, went off to university, etc. When I finally came home, I found out my mom apparently "borrowed" it, figured out how to install Ubuntu, and has been using it ever since for grading papers and what not. No idea how much longer it will remain in use, but aside from the awful screen, ironically, honestly, I think the browser and the seemingly ever increasing resource requirements of the web will eventually be the only thing that finally causes an upgrade.
      - 999900000999 1y ago
        As is the Chinese web tends to be less full of complex JavaScript and CSS tricks. It wouldn't surprise me if these processors are more than fine for municipal workers.
markus_zhang 1y ago
Yeah it is pretty common. Governments invest in key area corporations to provide fund, tax breaks, regulatory aid and a bunch of other benefits, and sometimes sell its chunk of shares in a few years. One early example is Chongqing government with Huang Qifan as mayor back in the 2010s.

fspeech 1y ago

Do governments allow some of their employees to be highly compensated relative to others? Would someone with real expertise in chip development work for the government at what the government is willing to pay? I think the answer is no.

wmf 1y ago
The Chinese government has definitely "bought back" some top talent from the US. It's probably a small number of people. I'm not sure why local governments would get involved although in general China has had a problem with too much investment and not enough places for it to go. It's not impossible that there are essentially local sovereign wealth funds.
- fspeech 1y ago
  They work at companies or universities, and there is a "market" to look to for the pay scale.
dghlsakjg 1y ago
This initiative seems to be a private company propped up by government funds rather than direct government employment. Think Lockheed Martin not DARPA.

jenny91 1y ago

Yes, it's very common in China.

Havoc 1y ago

Yeah. They know the chips aren’t commercially competitive so they just create artificial demand by making gov and state controlled entities buy it. Basically an attempt to bootstrap an industry brute force style

jandrese 1y ago
Seems like it depends on the price point. These chips might be slow by modern standards, but if they're cheap enough then it doesn't really matter for a lot of the potential applications. I'm typing this post on a chip that is roughly in that performance bracket (an i5-3750k) that only rarely feels like the bottleneck. And this is my gaming machine.
- 999900000999 1y ago
  Plus the vast majority of work computers don’t need to be particularly fast. Add a lightweight Linux distro, and that’s more than enough for paperwork.
  - OmarAssadi 1y ago
    Early into high school, I needed something to take to class, but since I already had a decent desktop at home, plus we were broke, I picked up some cheap Asus K55N; AMD A8-4500M, 4GB DDR3, etc -- nothing particularly fancy; only upgrade I did to it was removing the mechanical hard drive and swapping in my old 120GB Corsair Force GT. I eventually upgraded, went off to university, etc. When I finally came home, I found out my mom apparently "borrowed" it, figured out how to install Ubuntu, and has been using it ever since for grading papers and what not. No idea how much longer it will remain in use, but aside from the awful screen, ironically, honestly, I think the browser and the seemingly ever increasing resource requirements of the web will eventually be the only thing that finally causes an upgrade.
    - 999900000999 1y ago
      As is the Chinese web tends to be less full of complex JavaScript and CSS tricks. It wouldn't surprise me if these processors are more than fine for municipal workers.

markus_zhang 1y ago

Yeah it is pretty common. Governments invest in key area corporations to provide fund, tax breaks, regulatory aid and a bunch of other benefits, and sometimes sell its chunk of shares in a few years. One early example is Chongqing government with Huang Qifan as mayor back in the 2010s.