The best China has is an internationally uncompetitive "7nm" fab and that's the best they'll have until they can manufacture EUV machines domestically.
So the EUV blockade has absolutely been effective and the fact that the PRC is paying so many shills to convince westerners otherwise just shows how behind they are.
I noticed that people love pointing how far AI field has advanced in a few years and extrapolate next few years. While at the same time being dismissive of Chinese semiconductor manufacturing process. In similar vein I also remember claims that TSMC Fab in Arizona can never work, and yet it does. So I don't know man, I wouldn't underestimate what a billion of enterprising people can do. Especially when paired with the system that has a pipeline of funneling smart people into elite schools.
I don't think the US is underestimating China... I do think that the US is preemptively shoring up a domestic posture against long term changes. It would be a pretty bad strategy to continue to outsource everything and continue to see a massive trade imbalance with the outside world for a prolonged period of time.
> It would be a pretty bad strategy to continue to outsource everything and continue to see a massive trade imbalance with the outside world for a prolonged period of time.
It's not actually a strategy at all. It's the organic result of being the global reserve currency. Foreigners want American dollars so that they can trade with everyone else and are incentivized to do whatever it takes to get it.
Also, the "massive trade imbalance" is only an imbalance in goods. When you take services & the flow of foreign investments/loans into consideration as well, things don't look anywhere near as uneven as Donald Trump would like you to believe.
It’s not even just the flow of services Trump is ignoring: an iPhone is made in China but the design and software is done in the USA, most of the parts come from other countries, most of an iPhone’s value isn’t originating from China.
Trump wants us to give up high value jobs in designing hardware and software so we can make less working in factories again.
No... not everyone is capable of doing hardware or software design... There are over 350 million people in the US. There are nowhere near that many software/hardware jobs.. or other IP generating jobs. Not only that, but corporations are bringing in a lot of people to do those jobs as well, driving down those wages.
It's not even just jobs, it's also the tax revenue itself.. the population is overburdened with taxes and increased prices combined with relatively lower wages due to excessive inflation the past few years. While tariffs can increase prices, they can also eat into the margins of foreign production leading to more insourcing of jobs.
Beyond those aspects is being able to handle production of critical infrastructure in times of supply constraints... such as war or a global pandemic. You can increase from 50% production of medications to 100% of domestic needs pretty easily, but scaling from 0% is almost impossible in any reasonable time frame.
We already have a low unemployment rate and we have plenty of low paying jobs even in manufacturing that are going unfilled now. Surely those workers have to come from somewhere, and China is really eager to switch places with us. A decade from now Americans will probably be manufacturing stuff for rich Chinese consumers who would rather work jobs in product design and software development that we used to do, and we will owe it all to Trump and the voters that put him in power.
Taking this as an earnest question—no, I don’t get that sense from that word. To me it describes the direction of an error, not the error itself.
It’s a thing you’d prefer to avoid, sure; but some degree of prognostic uncertainty is totally routine (in fact I would call that definitional: no predictions are truly certain until they’ve come to pass, and by the time that happens it’s usually too late to act). It’s not “bad” any more than mortality is “bad”—it just is, whether or not we wish it were; wisdom lies in managing it as best you can.
In the sense that the gp used the word, I think they allude to a tradeoff: you can reduce the probability of an underestimate by increasing the probability of an overestimate. I took their comment to imply that it would be wiser to risk an overestimate than to risk an underestimate on questions of “can Chinese society achieve a massive goal on a tight timeframe if their leadership decides it’s important.”
No I get what the GP meant. Your comment sounded like a triviality from Lapalisse a bit, because I cannot think of any occurrence where underestimating something is a good thing. Bit like “15 min before my death I will be alive”. But Lapalisse too didn’t mean it literally, he just wanted it to sound like that, it seems it’s what you did.
Okay? There's a lot of chips you can make that aren't the cutting edge. You don't need a 4090 to do AI, as evidenced by all the AI we did before the 4090. You definitely don't need a (random Intel chip) 14900HX to do general-purpose computing, as evidenced by all the general-purpose computing we did before the 14900HX.
For that matter, the 14900hx was already based on a refined 7nm production process, which China already has started using, though maybe not as effectively yet. As you mention, prior to the 4090's 3090 was on an 8nm node, already behind current China capabilities.
If each node provides a 10-15% improvement in power, performance and area, how many of those need to compound until your already uncompetitive 7 nm is 10x less efficient, slower and more expensive?
Being behind doesn't mean they're permanently stuck where they are today - but aren't our processes running into the wall of soon trying to make transistors smaller than an atom?
> Being behind doesn't mean they're permanently stuck where they are today
Without EUV, they very much are.
> but aren't our processes running into the wall of soon trying to make transistors smaller than an atom?
No, the finest pitches are still in the low double digit nanometers in 2 nm processes. The "2 nm" nomenclature hasn't denoted a physical dimension for decades.
One should remember that EUV is necessary only for obtaining profit from the mass production of integrated circuits.
For making a limited quantity of chips, for research purposes or for some special applications where the price is irrelevant, there would be no problem for China to make today ICs with e.g. a 2-nm CMOS process, by using electron-beam lithography. (Obviously, for developing a 2-nm process many other problems must be solved first, but lithography is not a roadblock, so the process can be developed before having EUV lithography, because test wafers can be made with e-beam lithography.)
Moreover, they have enough money and people to ensure that an alternative EUV technology will be developed, eventually. I might take them 5 to 10 years, but not more than that.
The attempts to sabotage China should have been started more than a decade earlier in order to have chances of success. Now it is too late and the cleverer way would have been to try to accelerate progress in USA, instead of trying to hinder progress in China, by using means that have totally discredited USA as a product supplier all over the world (i.e. by using the dubious legal theory that USA can dictate what to do to the owners of products that include components "made or designed in USA").
You are ignoring the possibility of technological disruption.
Apple disrupted Nokia and Blackberry. ARM is currently disrupting Intel.
What if someone lands on a break-through using a completely different tech: what if X-ray lithography [1] becomes viable enough that they don’t have to acquire state-of-art EUV machines from ASML?
[1] X-ray lithography was abandoned in the 80s but it is being revisited by Substrate https://substrate.com/our-purpose. They are an American company that hopes to make it commercially viable by being cheaper and far less complex than EUV.
Substrate is a scam; their marketing is misleading and they have yet to answer to the fundamental reason why X-ray and e-beam failed over 40 years ago (despite it being generally agreed they were the future of litho and optical would soon be dead): writing one line at a time is extremely slow compared to optical which can scan a whole reticle in a fraction of a second.
E-beam is still used for making DUV/EUV masks where the low write speed can be tolerated but no one in the industry thinks it will replace EUV in the silicon litho steps any time soon.
But lay people eat this crap up and journalists turn a blind eye either because they're literally paid PRC shills or because clicks are everything now a days.
I think you're general point is completely true, but Substrate is a bad example, since the people running it don't appear to be semiconductor experts and it's probably a fraud.
Apart from gaming and llms, most of the chip applications including all of military and consumer electronics is more than happy with 7nm process, whatever that means (proper nanometers those ain't).
I know some people live in the IT bubble and measure whole reality by it, but that's not so much true for the world out there. They have ie roughly F-35 equivalent, minus some secret sauces (which may not be so secret at the end since it seems they stole all of it).
You are making a mistake of thinking of them as yet another russia, utterly corrupt, dysfunctional at every level and living off some 'glorious past', when reality is exactly the opposite.
Their "7 nm" relied on multi patterning DUV which leads to restrictive design rules, more steps and masks and lower yields, which is why I put it in quotes and said it's uncompetitive.
The last DUV node was 10 nm, that's the best logic node they have which is comparable to TSMC/Samsung/Intel's 10 nm.
> everyone else is trying but haven't really shown much promise
What was the incentive/funding for their attempts? In a non-national-security scenario it makes sense not to try too hard because you can just buy ASML's solution.
With China it's a bit different, if they decide it's a matter of national security and pour Manhattan-project-levels of money/resources into it, they could make faster progress.
Well yeah. No one is saying that China cannot do that. Just that the political calculus is that it's better for China to spend their resources on that, rather than building up troops and warships.
Force Chinas growth to be more expensive. It has nothing to do with not believing China can do it, it's about slowing them down in a task we believe that they can do.
> Just that the political calculus is that it's better for China to spend their resources on that, rather than building up troops and warships.
Note that this calculus only makes sense if you invade China while they are busy with the EUV machines, otherwise they catch up technologically and then build all the scary military.
Of course, the the calculus doesn't make sense at all, because the obvious order when you can't do both is you build enough military to feel safe first, then you try for the tech race.
Their plan was to buy those chips and equipment and have the troops/ships/weapons sooner.
Now China has to build EUV themselves, then mass produce chips. It slows them down regardless and costs them resources.
Cut off the market before it becomes a problem.
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Militarily, delaying China into 2040s after the USA has stealth destroyers of our own (beginning production in late 2020s, mass production in the 2030s) means China has to fight vs 2030s era tech instead of our 1980s era Arleigh Burke DDGs.
What, do you want to have the fight in late 2020s or would you rather have the war in late 2030s? There is a huge difference and USAs production schedule cannot change. But we can change Chinas production schedule.
> the obvious order when you can't do both is you build enough military to feel safe first, then you try for the tech race
Literally zero actual wars with a technological component have progressed like this. (The first tradeoff to be made is the one Russia is making: sacrificing consumption for military production and research. Guns and butter.)
That's not true. Mass/quantity can still resist/delay/push back until you're exhausted and done.
We're not anymore in the swords vs guns era. We're talking about hypersonic missiles vs super intelligent hypersonic missiles. Still, all it takes is 1 dumb missile to pass through the defenses and an entire city can be wiped off. At the end of the day, they don't care if a missiles didn't reach the precise target. As you can see in Ukraine, Russia is bombing all types of buildings, they don't give a damn about schools, kindergarten or so.
> We're not anymore in the swords vs guns era. We're talking about hypersonic missiles vs super intelligent hypersonic missiles
These are still hypotheticals. Every war since the Civil War has had a decisive technological component. If the model doesn't apply there, this time probably ain't different.
Yes. Concern around Soviet space and missiles capabilities overtaking America’s directly lead to Kennedy changing his mind on no boots on the ground.
(The Vietnam War started with America betting on BVR, with the long-seeing but minimally-agile F-4 Phantom. Soviet MiG-21s, on the other hand, blended into civilian traffic. This lead to disaster. When the MiG-25 rolled out, we countered with the F-15 Eagle. But it came too late, which meant we couldn’t establish air superiority with long-range aircraft alone.)
Note: I’m not saying this was the decisive component. It was one among many, and not the most important. But if we had F-15s at the outset, when the Soviets had MiG-21s, there is a better chance the skirmish would have stayed in the skies and Vietnam would have stalemated like Korea.
> it's about slowing them down in a task we believe that they can do.
But it's not slowing them down. It's forcing them to accelerate development ( aka investing more into the sector ). Has china invested more or less? It's amazing how blind people are to this counterintuitive fact.
> Oh, and your plan is to just give them the chips they want directly?
"Give them"? I love sneaky propagandists. No, make them pay for it. It's what we do to our "allies" so that they are dependent on american tech.
> Of course investing into chip development is slowing China down.
From a myopic narrow point of view. But viewed more broadly, it has accelerated china's tech development.
> Its slower to build their own than for us to give them those chips.
In the short term, but not the long term. Just like banning china from participating in the international space station forced china to accelerate their development of their space program.
> From a myopic narrow point of view. But viewed more broadly, it has accelerated china's tech development.
Yes. I'm fine with this.
Weakening China in the short term means pushing the Taiwan war timeline by years. Years that we will spend building up the DDG(X).
As I said before and I'll say again: USA is weak in 2020s but strong in the 2030s. We only need to delay China by a few years and the DDG(X) changes everything.
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You need to understand that I make my view based on the perceived strength of the US Navy. The US Navy is getting huge upgrades and a few years of delay makes an incredible difference.
> For what? The US Navy will play no role in a war between china and taiwan.
Uhhhhh, Taiwan is an island dude. That's either Marines or Navy. I'm betting Navy will do the heavy lifting given that China is missile heavy.
Marines might be used to shore up anti-landing defenses if China decides to send boots on the ground. But ideally the US Navy prevents the landing entirely.
Said war taking place while we have 1980s-era Arleigh Burke Destroyers would be an attack while our Navy is at our weakest. Anything we can do to delay said war until after the DDG(X) upgrade is to our advantage.
> No offense, but who gives a shit about taiwan? Not americans. Only chinese people care about taiwan.
I'm American and I care? That's why I'm arguing on this point.
Current wargames suggest that USA will be willing to dedicate like 2 carrier strike groups for the defense of Taiwan. I'm not sure if it's enough (especially with the aging Arleigh Burke destroyers), but that's the level of commitment mostly assumed in this scenario if not more.
We have like 14 Carrier strike groups for a reason. We can spare two of them to this task, maybe more.
If you ask PRC shills, it's just around the corner because this one Chinese lab demonstrated a very small part of the system.
And a surprising number of westerners fall for that crap.
My guess is that it's at least 10 years away, but that could obviously change depending on what resources they're willing to commit.
But even at that point they'll be 2 decades behind ASML's EUV tech so it probably won't be competitive.
GP must have been asking for the non-PRC shill opinion.
> My guess is that it's at least 10 years away,
That doesn't sound at all like a lot. China has a uniquely effective industrial espionage... industry, combined with a very thick geopolitical skin and disregard for international demands. This helps accelerate any process that others have already perfected.
We'll start to see the real deal if/when China eventually catches up to the leaders in every field and the only way to pull ahead is to be entirely self propelled (you can't take advantage of someone else's draft when you're in front of the pack).
There are things which needs time, even with all or almost all the information at hand, just like with atomic bomb. I’m not sure whether this case similar to that, but that ASML in front for so much time indicates that their moot is probably not just information.
The US finished developing a nuclear bomb in 1945, by 1949 the Soviet Union had their own. I agree that it is probably not the same, there are a lot more moving parts in modern chip design. In fact, I have no idea how close Chinese companies are to developing SotA chips. But I do see China being consistently underestimated in western media and think tanks, so my intuitive reaction would be to cut that timeline in half if it is what western experts believe to be plausible.
See also: military jet engines. They can't replicate high end engines from Pratt & Whitney or GE even though I'm guessing Chinese intelligence services have a huge amount of relevant information. I don't know why that is.
It's probably hands on experience that's missing. Even with the all the technical details, often times there's practical details on using this machine or tiny tweaks that need to be made to get it working well.
According to this video (Asionometry - guy from Taiwan, hardly a PRC shill) Chinese EUV are now tested in Huawei factories and should come into production in 2026.
“The company's commitment to innovation is highlighted by its substantial investment of 179.7 billion yuan ($24.77 billion) in research and development (R&D), accounting for 20.8 percent of its annual revenue. Its total R&D investment over the past decade has reached 1.249 trillion yuan ($172.21 billion).”
I rewatched the whole video and did not find where he said that. Quite the opposite, he says Chinese EUV academic research is at 2005 levels and is rather unimpressive.
So the EUV blockade has absolutely been effective and the fact that the PRC is paying so many shills to convince westerners otherwise just shows how behind they are.