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Is the US slowly bowing out of the international tech scene? China is still going to get their processors from somewhere, the difference is if they don't get t
by err4nt 12y ago
Is the US slowly bowing out of the international tech scene?
China is still going to get their processors from somewhere, the difference is if they don't get them from US companies then no money gets added to the US economy when they do buy their chips.
This type of government interference doesn't hurt Chinese businesses at all, but could damage or destroy US-based businesses that may depend on foreign customers to stay afloat. This only serves to hurt US business and limit the amount of money being added to the US economy by Chinese consumers. It feels like a spiteful, self-destructive move to me.
- Kalium 12y agoIt is perhaps naive to assume that any given part can be had with identical properties and costs from American or non-American suppliers. Also, there are other considerations at hand, such as making life harder for foreign intelligence agencies.
- err4nt 12y agoFrom what I could decipher from the end of the article, it sounded like China has already migrated away from Intel's architecture and replaced it with a different architecture they could get their hands on more reliably—meaning even if the US were to reverse their decision about this denial list, the damage to Intel is already done. This may have killed the demand for Intel's products in China, even if they were free to sell them. If you owned a Volkswagen car and required specialized parts which were were denied to you, and you upgraded to a different make of car like Volvo, what good would Wolkswagen spare parts serve to you? You're not going to switch back to VW just because the spare parts are available on the market again…you've moved on by that point. As we say where I live: «L'avion c'est en vol!» (“The plane has taken off” ~= That Ship has sailed)
- emn13 12y agoI really can't imagine this has any impact on any chinese intelligence agency whatsoever. Tianhe-2 is already the #1 supercomputer - what possible difference could a minor (it's not an order of magnituge faster, and software doesn't scale perfectly anyhow) upgrade make?
- Kalium 12y agoIt cuts off one avenue by which a foreign country might gain useful information from within American companies. China in particular is notorious for their industrial espionage.
- kuschku 12y agoThat’s actually a hilarious statement, considering how notorious the US is for their industrial espionage. Both china and the US are equally bad in that situation, and both equally try to fully observe every single step any of their people does.
- outworlder 12y agoNot the same, though. The US does quite a lot of original research. Industrial espionage in this context is more about predicting the adversary's moves, not stealing their IP. The 'stealing' part takes on many forms. One of them is: http://thediplomat.com/2013/11/how-china-plans-to-use-the-su-35/ http://thediplomat.com/2013/11/how-china-plans-to-use-the-su... > Russia understandably became upset when its star export appeared as an indigenously produced J-11 in China – without a licensing agreement. In short, China has a pretty large technological gap, and does anything necessary to shorten the gap as quickly as possible. And that's the government. There's no indication that private Chinese companies are any better in this regard. In fact, you can even find 'counterfeit' cars. One wonders why US companies outsource their manufacturing there. Their technology will be 're purposed', without any need of industrial espionage, by the standard definition of it.
- semi-extrinsic 12y agoIt's funny, because technically Tianhe-2 is the world's fastest supercomputer based on Linpack, but most of that comes from the Xeon Phi accelerators, which to my knowledge has been a total flop on the HPC scene. It's almost like a brilliant evil plan to make the Chinese chase a futureless accelerator platform.
- criley2 12y agoIt's naive to assume that America makes all the processors. Intel and AMD have fabs all over Europe and the Middle East. Germany and Israel are known for their processor fabs. Processor makers are multinationals, not national companies. Both AMD and Intel are bigger than the US. If China stops buying from major multinational US companies, the entire Western tech industry will be hurt. No American jobs are lost when a German AMD fabricator has less demand.
- voidlogic 12y agoAny company that wants to have a presence in the US must abide by the list as far as I know. Even further to the point AMD and Intel are actually headquartered in the US...
- criley2 12y agoThe point was to say that this is a Western problem not an American problem, because the ramifications against multinational companies are multinational.
- voidlogic 12y agoSorry- I read what you said as trying to make the opposite point. Re-reading it on context of what you intended it makes more sense now.
- Crito 12y agoMost Intel fabs are in the US, particularly the new ones. Only one Intel fab is in Israel. All but one 14nm Intel fabs are in the US (the exception is in Ireland). The Intel fab in China is 65nm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_sites http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_sit... AMD is now a fabless company. They contract with other companies that own fabs.
- raverbashing 12y agoTrue about AMD Just to add they use GlobalFoundries (US) but also TSMC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC There are several outside of the US http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricati...
- gaius 12y agoMIPS CPUs are better anyway - a good British company (now).
- ris 12y ago...with a history of awful/non-existent documentation.