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> It is wise for these Chinese fabs to eventually use a very aggressive dumping strategy to price well below cost push out other players forever, especially in

> It is wise for these Chinese fabs to eventually use a very aggressive dumping strategy to price well below cost push out other players forever, especially in DRAM. It's not dumping, it's the opposite. Sam Altman's stunt has created massive amounts of fictitious demand (OpenAI isn't using those wafers it's ordering) and triggered massive panic-buying from everyone else. Prices are arteficially high, this has turbocharged China's fab and R&D budgets as you observe. > is about to pay off with some industry dominance soon. They're not looking to dump the semiconductor markets. They're looking to invade Taiwan. All this buildout in their semiconductor industry is to detach themselves from the western semiconductor industry that will either sanction them if they invade Taiwan, or in the case of TSMC, suffer major damage in the ensuing conflict. That the collapse/destruction of the Taiwanese semiconductor and electronics industries will utterly ruin the western tech industry is somewhere between a happy coincidence and acceptable collateral damage to them. No dumping required.

fc417fc802 8mo ago
> utterly ruin I realize Intel has done some serious ball dropping over the past two decades but you do realize the US has on shore cutting edge fabs, right? It's only luxury consumer electronics and the highest end corporate gear that use cutting edge nodes to begin with. Disruption of the cutting edge would certainly wreak havoc on the pricing and specs of high end luxury electronics but that would hardly be the end of the world. I still use a desktop with DDR3 on a daily basis (granted the GPU is much newer with GDDR6) and my laptop is from the early era of DDR4 ...
- smw 8mo ago
  > but you do realize the US has on shore cutting edge fabs, right? No they don't. Even the US partnerships with TSMC aren't cutting edge. TSMC and arguably Samsung have cutting edge fabs, no one else.
  - adrian_b 8mo ago
    The Intel CMOS process 18A, which they have launched a few weeks ago, is the first after almost a decade that is somewhat competitive with TSMC and Samsung. Good for Intel: their new manufacturing process has demonstrated a much better energy efficiency than the TSMC "3 nm" process that was used to make Intel Arrow Lake and Intel Lunar Lake. Unknown: TSMC now has a "2 nm" process and the first products using variants of this process are being launched. It is unknown how TSMC "2 nm" compares with Intel 18A, but it is almost certain that the TSMC "2 nm" is better. Bad for Intel: they had difficulties to achieve high clock frequencies in Intel 18A in comparison with TSMC "3 nm", so most Panther Lake models have lower clock frequencies than their Arrow Lake counterparts. Moreover, it is also pretty certain that for now Intel 18A has much lower fabrication yields than even the latest TSMC "2 nm" process.
- SlinkyOnStairs 8mo ago
  > I realize Intel has done some serious ball dropping over the past two decades but you do realize the US has on shore cutting edge fabs, right? We could squabble about the finer details of Intel's fab capabilities. They have advanced nodes, but it's irrelevant. They simply do not have the capacity to support the entire demand that is currently supplied by TSMC. It is not just "high end luxury electronics" that have modern CPUs. It's every bloody server in the cloud. (Have a look at who makes and distributes the mainboards. Same story, substitute Intel for Supermicro.) The economic impact on this field would be a disaster. Compute becomes much more expensive, SaaS prices will follow, and with that a massive drop in demand. Not to mention you can kiss the entire AI industry goodbye if the price of GPUs spike.
  - fc417fc802 8mo ago
    I don't think that's an accurate prediction. Currently less than 10 year old hardware gets recycled for pennies on the dollar. That's effectively due to the combination of how cheap and how much better the cutting edge hardware is. If it suddenly became more expensive it would just see slower adoption. Case in point, this very comment section. The major suppliers have discontinued DDR4 production because it's "obsolete" meanwhile capacity for that exact same technology is coming online in China. What makes sense just depends on context.
dontlaugh 8mo ago
Why would they bother to invade Taiwan when they’re winning economically and diplomatically? Public opinion in Taiwan is rapidly changing towards peaceful re-unification and no one anywhere on earth trust the US will help them with anything.
- PowerElectronix 8mo ago
  China economic numbers don't have a winning tune to the in the least. I don't think taiwan could ever be taken by force, but that doesn't matter as Xi Jinping seems to think it's doable and is taking steps towards it (developing landing ships, purging the military of oppsition and pacifists, building a fleet and bombers...) It would be very surprising to me that taiwan people think a reunification is feasable while the CCP still exists, just see how things are going in HK to see what would be waiting taiwan if they reunite.
- SlinkyOnStairs 8mo ago
  > Why would they bother to invade Taiwan when they’re winning economically and diplomatically? They are hedging their bets. If Taiwan refuses to accept re-unification, China wants to have the option of a military annexation. They have been planning this for quite a bit longer than the current US administration. They're not going to bank on Donald Trump forever, he's not getting any younger and healthier, and November 2028 is sooner with every passing day. A military conflict is not off the table, and so it is considered and prepared for.

fc417fc802 8mo ago

> utterly ruin I realize Intel has done some serious ball dropping over the past two decades but you do realize the US has on shore cutting edge fabs, right? It's only luxury consumer electronics and the highest end corporate gear that use cutting edge nodes to begin with. Disruption of the cutting edge would certainly wreak havoc on the pricing and specs of high end luxury electronics but that would hardly be the end of the world. I still use a desktop with DDR3 on a daily basis (granted the GPU is much newer with GDDR6) and my laptop is from the early era of DDR4 ...

smw 8mo ago
> but you do realize the US has on shore cutting edge fabs, right? No they don't. Even the US partnerships with TSMC aren't cutting edge. TSMC and arguably Samsung have cutting edge fabs, no one else.
- adrian_b 8mo ago
  The Intel CMOS process 18A, which they have launched a few weeks ago, is the first after almost a decade that is somewhat competitive with TSMC and Samsung. Good for Intel: their new manufacturing process has demonstrated a much better energy efficiency than the TSMC "3 nm" process that was used to make Intel Arrow Lake and Intel Lunar Lake. Unknown: TSMC now has a "2 nm" process and the first products using variants of this process are being launched. It is unknown how TSMC "2 nm" compares with Intel 18A, but it is almost certain that the TSMC "2 nm" is better. Bad for Intel: they had difficulties to achieve high clock frequencies in Intel 18A in comparison with TSMC "3 nm", so most Panther Lake models have lower clock frequencies than their Arrow Lake counterparts. Moreover, it is also pretty certain that for now Intel 18A has much lower fabrication yields than even the latest TSMC "2 nm" process.
SlinkyOnStairs 8mo ago
> I realize Intel has done some serious ball dropping over the past two decades but you do realize the US has on shore cutting edge fabs, right? We could squabble about the finer details of Intel's fab capabilities. They have advanced nodes, but it's irrelevant. They simply do not have the capacity to support the entire demand that is currently supplied by TSMC. It is not just "high end luxury electronics" that have modern CPUs. It's every bloody server in the cloud. (Have a look at who makes and distributes the mainboards. Same story, substitute Intel for Supermicro.) The economic impact on this field would be a disaster. Compute becomes much more expensive, SaaS prices will follow, and with that a massive drop in demand. Not to mention you can kiss the entire AI industry goodbye if the price of GPUs spike.
- fc417fc802 8mo ago
  I don't think that's an accurate prediction. Currently less than 10 year old hardware gets recycled for pennies on the dollar. That's effectively due to the combination of how cheap and how much better the cutting edge hardware is. If it suddenly became more expensive it would just see slower adoption. Case in point, this very comment section. The major suppliers have discontinued DDR4 production because it's "obsolete" meanwhile capacity for that exact same technology is coming online in China. What makes sense just depends on context.

dontlaugh 8mo ago

Why would they bother to invade Taiwan when they’re winning economically and diplomatically? Public opinion in Taiwan is rapidly changing towards peaceful re-unification and no one anywhere on earth trust the US will help them with anything.

PowerElectronix 8mo ago
China economic numbers don't have a winning tune to the in the least. I don't think taiwan could ever be taken by force, but that doesn't matter as Xi Jinping seems to think it's doable and is taking steps towards it (developing landing ships, purging the military of oppsition and pacifists, building a fleet and bombers...) It would be very surprising to me that taiwan people think a reunification is feasable while the CCP still exists, just see how things are going in HK to see what would be waiting taiwan if they reunite.
SlinkyOnStairs 8mo ago
> Why would they bother to invade Taiwan when they’re winning economically and diplomatically? They are hedging their bets. If Taiwan refuses to accept re-unification, China wants to have the option of a military annexation. They have been planning this for quite a bit longer than the current US administration. They're not going to bank on Donald Trump forever, he's not getting any younger and healthier, and November 2028 is sooner with every passing day. A military conflict is not off the table, and so it is considered and prepared for.