Chinese semiconductor thread II

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SanWenYu

Captain
Registered Member
valysre said:
I have a few questions about the Chinese semiconductor industry, if anyone is interested in answering.
1) It seems that sub 14nm chips have been talked about a great deal regarding the Chinese semiconductor industry. Are there any real defense applications of such technology?
2) What are the motivations of the US to prevent China from producing sub 14nm chips? From a layman's view it seems that all the US has done is cut off its own access to a sizable market.
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Electronics in weapons do not yet need sub 14nm chips. They probably will never do to be resilient in harsh envs (high temperatures, exposure to strong electromagnetic fields/cosmic rays, etc). But the super computers in labs on ground, AI or not, can benefit tremendously from having chips of such high NA processes for speed and power efficiency. Super computers are of course critical in military, directly or indirectly.

The true motivation of the US is probably not just in military but across the board to keep China a few generations behind in semiconductors therefore dependent on the western technologies forever.
 
L

lube

Junior Member
Registered Member
valysre said:
I have a few questions about the Chinese semiconductor industry, if anyone is interested in answering.
1) It seems that sub 14nm chips have been talked about a great deal regarding the Chinese semiconductor industry. Are there any real defense applications of such technology?
2) What are the motivations of the US to prevent China from producing sub 14nm chips? From a layman's view it seems that all the US has done is cut off its own access to a sizable market.
Click to expand...

For 2), The other motivation is that the silicon valley lobbyists have convinced themselves and the US government the AI singularity is upon us.

Meaning exponential growth of AI and technology for countries with access to the leading edge. 14nm was meant to be some hard barrier where AI chips and computing is hugely inefficient and expensive, but the goalposts have shifted.

So the plan is, deal a big setback to China as early as possible so a 3-5 year gap in technology becomes a 30 year gap within the next 10+ years.
 
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tokenanalyst

Brigadier
Registered Member
There is this myth among national security circles, especially the older ones, that the military is the main driver of the Semiconductor industry, when in reality the military is the worst costumer of chips, if it was for the military with their long developing cycles and their slow hardware upgrades the semiconductor industry now would be stuck in the 90s.

You can map out how consumer electronics has been the main driver of the semiconductor industry

60s and 70s: TVs, radios, telephones.
80s and 90s: Personal Computers.
2000s: the Internet and 3D Gaming.
2020s: Machine Learning.

SiCs: EVs and Automation.
GaN: LED, Communications and Power applications.

If China needs to develop advance chips is not because their military, that is absurd, is because they need advance chips for their own economic development, for their companies to be competitive and for automation to keep productivity increasing. This is the pressure along with export controls that is pushing China semiconductor industry forward. EUV and advance lithography techniques is not a luxury anymore and is not a Chinese goverment project anymore, is a damn necessity now and if a company like ASML is not willing to provide China with the tools that China needs, the developing of this supply chain is a must and Chinese companies like Huawei are going to be the most active developers.
 
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tokenanalyst

Brigadier
Registered Member
lube said:
For 2), The other motivation is that the silicon valley lobbyists have convinced themselves and the US government the AI singularity is upon us.
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A bunch of California pampered kids who watched too much Hollywood movies role-playing in real life trying to convince a group dudes who can barely understand how their smartphone works that the end is near. Great.

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AI is a tool, a powerful tool but will only be a tool, nobody wants an AI to debate them about meaning of life, they want AI to make a workable snake game for once. That is the thinking of most AI companies in China, they want AI to be a productivity tools rather than be this do everything achieve nothing technology.
 
Maikeru

Maikeru

Major
Registered Member
Personally I have a rather more prosaic theory that the US simply wants to keep competition for Nvidia, Intel, Apple, Qualcomm and the like to a minimum so they can continue to rake in massive profits and have sky-high valuations.

As for the AI 'singularity', let me just say here and now, for the record, that I give absolute and unconditional fealty to Roko's Basilisk.
 
BoraTas

BoraTas

Major
Registered Member
valysre said:
I have a few questions about the Chinese semiconductor industry, if anyone is interested in answering.
1) It seems that sub 14nm chips have been talked about a great deal regarding the Chinese semiconductor industry. Are there any real defense applications of such technology?
2) What are the motivations of the US to prevent China from producing sub 14nm chips? From a layman's view it seems that all the US has done is cut off its own access to a sizable market.
Click to expand...
1) There are none. The vast majority of chips in industrial machinery are in 28-130 nm. Defense is usually even behind the civilian embedded space.

Here is a part for the new radar for the Patriot. The radar is just entering service as the next gen radar of the Patriot.
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What is uses?
The SIU35 uses the NXP PowerPC QorIQ P2041, Intel Core i7, and ARM Cortex-A9 microprocessors
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NXP PowerPC QorIQ P2041 uses 45 nm and is from 2009! The Intel Core i7 is a huge family and is at its 14th generation. But the first one was released in 2008. They haven't specified generation but I would bet money on it being from 2010 or earlier. The ARM Cortex-A9 is a reference design. It was first released in 2007. I can’t think of a more definitive public example than this part. These are the things you find in a mid-2020s long-range GaN AESA radar. 14 nm was reached in 2014 which means it is younger than things like the F-35’s APG-81.

2) The motivation is their natsec establishment, associated lobbies, and the people these fund (think-tankers and the media) belived they had a silver bullet to cause economic harm. I also believe their department of commerce employees have personal gain.
 
M

mrandolph

New Member
Registered Member
Use of high end semiconductors (those made by EUVL) in the military is mostly political rhetorics justifying a policy that is really economic warfare/punishment either for the broader public or for the WTO.

If you have a 5 year old mobile phone it is dated, if it is 10 years old it is basically useless. Military equipment needs to have a much longer life time - standards, compability need to move much slower. If you look at the Ukraine war - some of the weapons used there are more than 50 years old.

There are some use of high performance computing in the design of weapons - for example you can simulate a wind tunnel using a computer - that requires a lot of computing power. However the marginal utility of say doubling computing power is not very big.

There are some cases of using AI as a guidance mechanism rather using GPS. For example the Russian Geran drone uses an older NVIDIA Jetson module that allows it to navigate by camera.

AI also has big potential use in large scale surveillance. For example you can record all mobile phone conversations, feed it into a language model, and then flag people who are up to no good. See Israel/Gaza for examples of this.
 
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