Not sure if they’ll need *more* Germanium since the transistors are also getting smaller. The Germanium use should follow wafer consumption not number of chips or transistors being made. And ultimately still not sure how that would translate to unit cost. The unit cost of an A16 chip is 110 dollars. There are a lot of different input costs to that price. Can’t imagine Germanium being a big factor in that 110 dollars. How much damage are you doing if an A16 chip costs 130 or 150 dollars instead?
its not about production alone, it also makes R&D costs higher. If you need to spend 5k on consumables like SiGe test wafers instead of 500 its a huge blow to R&D efforts because much of R&D doesn't pay off so you're just throwing that 5k in the trash. which means either less testing before a product is rolled out or more projects get stalled/cancelled.
Sure, but in practice the scale of the effect is what matters. You can look at that question I’m raising about price as not just about substitution cost but also pass down R&D costs.
The problem of Loongson is other CPU designers will release desktop CPU with speed above 3G.
The news is now being picked up by other outlets (Global Times and People's Daily English) too... I think the technology has become mature enough now that there are official media reports... also the timing is very interesting as it takes place right before the Dutch export control on DUVi machines comes into effect in September.
To Russia and beyond.
in the next 5 years this machine will be a monopoly killer with a little help from CETC. (since they share the same component)