Chinese semiconductor industry

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4Runner

4Runner

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quantumlight said:
Let me give you one example, Apple A5 chip fab by Tsmc then shipped to China to assemble by Foxxconn. So in an all out blanket chip embargo scenario, Apple is barred by US gov from sending its A5 chips to China... without this critical component, Apple cannot make its ipad and iphone inside of China. Foxxconn will have to pull out and assemble elsewhere... As a consequence of that, when Apple pulls out it also kills off the entire ecosystem that it supported in China and all the supply chain around that.

Repeat this for Dell, Hp, Lenovo etc , for example Dell cant make a laptop in China if its not allowed to ship the intel processors into China...

Are you telling me China can fab 5nm, 7nm? or that China can produce Intel chips on its own?

So what Dell will redisegn its laptops to use SMIC 45nm? I think not, it will just move its factory to India or Vietnam or whatever.

Overnight this will destroy China's export economy, and how long do you think it will take Xi Dual Circulation to ramp up? By that time China economy will have already crashed and there will be nothing left to bootstrap to circulation in the first place.

In a postPeak world the rate limiting factor is resource extraction/consumption, if US can take out China from the global economy picture then resource inputs become a lot cheaper, it can offset for the pain of uprooting and rerouting global supply chains around China and to cheaper places like India, Vietnam all the while AI automation ramp up means there will be much fewer sweatshops needed to be ramped up to begin with since its all robots now...

This saves US hegemony and puts the ball in China's court where the only recourse is for China to initiate a hot war (retake TW, etc etc) which would once more play to US advantage since China cannot defeat US kinetically if its China offense vs US defence in any hot war situation.. If China cant go to war, and it cant fab the chips, what are its options really? By the time it figured out 5nm the world would have moved on and China would have permanently lose vast majority of its export business as foreign companies would have nearly all pulled out by then

Short of nuclear war, this IS the worst case for China... America CAN try this scorched earth strategy. China MUST be prepared.

I am mainland not Tiawan... Im voicing my concerns because I grew up in US I know how US gov thinks, if I was US gov this would be what I would do

One fallback model of U.S. supremacy is to plunge the rest of the world back into the dark ages through hybrid warfare—while the U.S. controls the key systems of communication, information, surveillance, finance, rent extraction, along with the corridors of maritime transport. Chips are the new oil and semiconductor supply chain the digital OPEC.

This chip embargo is the best hail mary they got and the US will not pass up thd chance to use this ultimate card

China should never depend on its enemy showing mercy, this is the most severe move US can make to collapse China
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China's manufacturing ecosystem is more resilient than most people understand. Using your hypothetical scenario, Apple will end up with dramatically shrinking margins and will likely endure less quality in the process and much longer time-to-market. That combination would kill AAPL. So is Dell and on and on. Certainly, China would suffer an economic shock. But after said and done, comparatively it would damage US economy way more that China economy. Given the economic and financial conditions US is in now, only maniacs would contemplate your hypothetical scenario. If US could do it with relatively lower cost, it would have likely had done that already.
 
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Nutrient

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gelgoog said:
It is not the first generation.
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Okay, I stand corrected. Let's just say that the KX-6000 will not be Zhaoxin's last generation.


Plus the Zhaoxin KX-6000 is a 16nm CPU which uses like twice the power of an old 28nm AMD CPU and has slightly worse performance than it.
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As I said, some people like to be dismissive. And I'll repeat what I said about that: the important point is that the Zhaoxin KX-6000 works. It works well enough to prevent China's PC market from suffering much if Intel stops supplying chips to the Middle Kingdom. In fact, if the Intel ban should happen, China will take an enormous chunk of the world's market for PCs away from Intel, and Intel (and the US) will lose.
 
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gelgoog

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Those Zhaoxin KX-6000 chips are manufactured at TSMC...

From what I have read so far it looks like the Loongson CPUs have better power efficiency but have lower X86 performance than Zhaoxin.
 
daifo

daifo

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Nutrient said:
Okay, I stand corrected. Let's just say that the KX-6000 will not be Zhaoxin's last generation.




As I said, some people like to be dismissive. And I'll repeat what I said about that: the important point is that the Zhaoxin KX-6000 works. It works well enough to prevent China's PC market from suffering much if Intel stops supplying chips to the Middle Kingdom. In fact, if the Intel ban should happen, China will take an enormous chunk of the world's market for PCs away from Intel, and Intel (and the US) will lose.
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At this point, based on the technical metrics and price/value, the only people that would consider choosing Zhaoxin over Intel/AMD would be Chinese, countries under sanction, afraid of nsa backdoors, or people that want to experiment with alternative cpu. As stated by the reviewer , there is not even general linux kernal support for it. He had to use UOS which cost about 100usd.
 
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Nutrient

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gelgoog said:
Those Zhaoxin KX-6000 chips are manufactured at TSMC...
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I covered that point already. The KX-6000 uses a 16 nm process, so SMIC's 14 nm equipment should have little trouble making the chip if a complete embargo should happen. Face it, the Zhaoxin KX-6000 works, it will continue to work in spite of sanctions, and it will improve. And this will contribute to mainland China's dominance of future chip production.
 
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Nutrient

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daifo said:
At this point, based on the technical metrics and price/value, the only people that would consider choosing Zhaoxin over Intel/AMD would be Chinese, countries under sanction, afraid of nsa backdoors, or people that want to experiment with alternative cpu.
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If it's good enough and cheap enough, it will sell. The important aspect of the Zhaoxin KX-6000 is that it works.
 
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gelgoog

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Nutrient said:
If it's good enough and cheap enough, it will sell. The important aspect of the Zhaoxin KX-6000 is that it works.
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That's the point we've been talking about. It isn't cheap or good price performance. This is something for government users to be honest.
Perhaps their next processor at 7nm will be better, but once again that will be manufactured at TSMC.
Also, sure, SMIC could manufacture it, but even SMIC does not have a 100% sanction proof production line, especially at those nodes as we've seen.

I think it is a decent advance in Chinese CPU design and it does have its uses but this is not going to be something someone not sanctioned or not part of the Chinese government is going to be particularly interested in.
 
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