US Government Can't Stop Chinese Semiconductor Advancement, Notes Former TSMC VP

[Easo]

Only racists and xenophobes doubt the capability of China's engineers. Recently, YMTC shipped the densest NAND in the world. However, you are naïve if you believe that there's no possibility of industrial espionage. SMIC has done that in the past with the victim being TSMC.

Oh, I am fully aware they have stolen quite a bit. Gotta have the jumpstart and all that.

P.S.
About that "stealth ship thing" discussed here - hold your horses. You will see Burke's still swimming in 2050ties, there isn't going to be any USA stealth armada on the seas then (nor Chinese for that matter).

 

[AusWolf]

Come on, we all know where this is going to go.

Fab-investments in China doesn't make China independent from the West. It makes them independent from Taiwan. "The West" doesn't make chips. Samsung (aka: Korea) and TSMC (aka: Taiwan) makes chips.

Taiwan manufactures them, but they're not designed there.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Taiwan manufactures them, but they're not designed there.

The Chinese companies Espressif, ChangXin Memory Technologies, AllWinner, Zhaoxin say otherwise.

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With regards to Taiwan, remember that MediaTek is Taiwanese, and a fair number of chips are designed entirely in Taiwan as well. Samsung designs and produces most of the RAM in the world too, so that's not Western tech either.

The chipmaking and chip-designing fields are extremely competitive. Its not obvious to me that "The West" is obviously superior for chips anymore. And this is going to be a big deal when it comes to missile production for the next war, its quite possible for China to outproduce us thanks to crazy tech-hubs like Shenzhen. Cities like Guangdong are extremely high-tech and have significant design services as well, with PH.d level designers.

And besides, when war breaks out, production is all that matters. USA is tied to Taiwan's production and we're separated by the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, Taiwan is within missile-range of China and a potential Chinese blockade of the island would completely shut down Taiwan's exports (and therefore negate USA from having NVidia, AMD, iPhone, or other chips). All of those designs will be worthless in the hypothetical battles. Fortunately, USA is forward thinking and we've managed to convince Taiwan/TSMC to build a factory in Arizona in case the worst-comes-to-worst, but its incredibly important for this Arizona factory to truly become productive.

-------

Look: only in China can you get a service like JLCPCB that can automatically design, assemble, and manufacture a board for cheap. They have significant technology, not just internet-based Web GUIs to make the Gerber->PCB process easy, but also legions of pick-and-place machines that are pre-loaded to automatically populate these boards and automatically send them to reflow ovens. The whole process is automated in a way that no Western company can compete against. (See these services here: https://jlcpcb.com/capabilities/pcb-assembly-capabilities). They are extremely innovative and mass-production driven. Do not discount their ingenuity just because they're our rivals.

EDIT: A naval battle today will primarily be chips vs chips. Chinese missiles will be trying to hit targets in Taiwan, while US Destroyers/Cruisers will be shooting Patriot missiles to defend against them. Missiles are made up of... chips... these days. Whoever can produce more PCBs and chips and create more high-quality missiles will be the winner of the contest. RADAR is run by chips. F35 Jets are run by chips. Chinese Spy Balloons are made up of chips. Drones are made up of chips.

 

[A Computer Guy]

The Chinese companies Espressif, ChangXin Memory Technologies, AllWinner, Zhaoxin say otherwise.

--------

With regards to Taiwan, remember that MediaTek is Taiwanese, and a fair number of chips are designed entirely in Taiwan as well. Samsung designs and produces most of the RAM in the world too, so that's not Western tech either.

The chipmaking and chip-designing fields are extremely competitive. Its not obvious to me that "The West" is obviously superior for chips anymore. And this is going to be a big deal when it comes to missile production for the next war, its quite possible for China to outproduce us thanks to crazy tech-hubs like Shenzhen. Cities like Guangdong are extremely high-tech and have significant design services as well, with PH.d level designers.

And besides, when war breaks out, production is all that matters. USA is tied to Taiwan's production and we're separated by the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, Taiwan is within missile-range of China and a potential Chinese blockade of the island would completely shut down Taiwan's exports (and therefore negate USA from having NVidia, AMD, iPhone, or other chips). All of those designs will be worthless in the hypothetical battles. Fortunately, USA is forward thinking and we've managed to convince Taiwan/TSMC to build a factory in Arizona in case the worst-comes-to-worst, but its incredibly important for this Arizona factory to truly become productive.

-------

Look: only in China can you get a service like JLCPCB that can automatically design, assemble, and manufacture a board for cheap. They have significant technology, not just internet-based Web GUIs to make the Gerber->PCB process easy, but also legions of pick-and-place machines that are pre-loaded to automatically populate these boards and automatically send them to reflow ovens. The whole process is automated in a way that no Western company can compete against. (See these services here: https://jlcpcb.com/capabilities/pcb-assembly-capabilities). They are extremely innovative and mass-production driven. Do not discount their ingenuity just because they're our rivals.

EDIT: A naval battle today will primarily be chips vs chips. Chinese missiles will be trying to hit targets in Taiwan, while US Destroyers/Cruisers will be shooting Patriot missiles to defend against them. Missiles are made up of... chips... these days. Whoever can produce more PCBs and chips and create more high-quality missiles will be the winner of the contest. RADAR is run by chips. F35 Jets are run by chips. Chinese Spy Balloons are made up of chips. Drones are made up of chips.

And pretty soon Elon will have chips in heads too which eventually means combat cyborgs.

 

[R-T-B]

And pretty soon Elon will have chips in heads too which eventually means combat cyborgs.

Honestly that's most likely just going to kill a bunch of people like the monkeys he prototyped it on.

 

[AusWolf]

And pretty soon Elon will have chips in heads too

Is that what he wants now that his Mars landing program is a total success? Oh wait...

 

[A Computer Guy]

Honestly that's most likely just going to kill a bunch of people like the monkeys he prototyped it on.

Can't be worse than cough, cough... nevermind I won't go there.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Though they like to think they do

Yup. No argument there.

I'd be leery to welcome any stolen Chinese technology. I love competition but China does not play by the rules and they dont care about the consumer.

And what, the USA does? Please tell me that you're saying this ironically because the USA doesn't even care enough about its own people to implement universal healthcare.

I think the article says in a few lines almost everything that needs to be said. This particular expert opinion was laconic but comprehensive.

I love the use of the word "laconic" to describe that sentence. As the Spartans said to King Phillip of Macedon... "If".

There is a reason Huawei was excluded from supplying components for building critical 5G infrastructure in most European countries.

To this day, we still don't know what those reasons are and since exposing Huawei would do nothing to harm national security but would do everything to gain public favour, the fact that they've said nothing tells me that this is just the US rigging the system in favour of their tech and companies. I'm no fan of China, but I'm also not stupid enough to think that the USA cares about any interests that aren't its own.

Whether that reason was based on fear or undisclosed information I don't know

And THAT right there, is the problem.

In my country, the dominant telecommunication company is planning on suing the government, over the increase in cost of
having to use other suppliers than Huawei, which they were planning to use extensively. For one I feel better knowing that the entire
5G network in my country isn't based on one Chinese supplier.

You're just as screwed if it's one American supplier.

I assume the same logic was used when the US imposed sanctions on certain Chinese companies.

Yup, logic that was never explained and is probably a pack of lies like "Weapons of Mass-Destruction".

The use of US developed technology

The equipment for fabbing silicon isn't American, it's Dutch.

China doesn't respect IP, what they have it's mostly stolen, even their military equipment

It appears that the USA doesn't respect IP either by telling other countries who they can and cannot sell their technology to.

China will do what it likes, they always have.

Funny, that sounds exactly like the USA, eh?

Well if that's the excuse, I thinks it's high time for the US to do whatever the f**k it wants. Let's see how that works out.

We've been seeing the USA do whatever the f**k it wants for the last 50 years. Things have not gone well. Where the hell have you been?

 

[dragontamer5788]

We've been seeing the USA do whatever the f**k it wants for the last 50 years. Things have not gone well. Where the hell have you been?

I see your 50 years and raise you to 138 years (aka, year 1885)

There's certainly issues with our politics and behaviors. But abstractly just shitting on everything without context isn't helpful IMO. I've hoped to elevate the discussion with my previous points by drilling into the specific issues at play with the geopolitics with this US Government vs China vs TSMC/Taiwan thing going on.

The biggest play, right now, is the rise of Chinese Wolf Warrior diplomacy in recent years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_warrior_diplomacy), turning them into a far more aggressive state today, than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Why are they becoming so militant? Why did the Chinese build a Navy that now outnumbers the US Navy? Why are the Chinese building the world's fastest missiles that can pierce any anti-missile defense system? The answer is obvious, they're preparing to fight the USA, and based on simulations and wargames, it seems like they're doing a good job at these preparations.

All diplomacy has to be in context. The growth of Chinese chipmaking capabilities, especially with regards to RADAR / targeting systems that directly lead to improved missiles, is making it really easy to see where the next decade is going.

Well, at least easy for the people paying attention. And I hope enough people are paying attention to the issue.