How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

Posted by artninja1988 6 days ago

How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips(www.japantimes.co.jp)

469 points | 605 commentspage 5

Dave_Wishengrad 5 days ago|

[dead]

alexgotoi 5 days ago||

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maxglute 5 days ago||

Most of that entire network is easy to replicate, as in it's not technically hard, the hard part is validation, no one in PRC wants to use unproven PRC inputs if risk is 100m wafer run goes to trash. Hence PRC now basically insuring domestic fabs on risk runs using domestic inputs, which are being validated on full scale production, instead of taking 5 years to verify, it'll take 2. Export controls help this, i.e. domestic resist basically required now after JP export controls.

The hard part, i.e. optics, light source. Zeiss had like 3k engineerings, Cymer 1k, ASML 13k during EUV commercialization process. PRC can (and is) just throwing bodies at problem, lots of parallel execution with clear second mover road map. That and as this article suggest, they're literally poaching people with the tacit knowledge which will help speed run. I'd wadger they get there sooner than later.

pstuart 5 days ago||

China seems to be doing well on supply chain integration (with the exception of the trust part).

Being how strategic this is, I imagine that the investment won't be entirely laissez faire and there will be lower tolerance for cheating in this endeavor. I think that ultimately they'll do quite well with their efforts.

mk89 5 days ago||

> China’s prototype lags behind ASML’s machines largely because researchers have struggled to obtain optical systems such as those from Germany’s Carl Zeiss, one of ASML’s key suppliers, the two people said.

So, now they just need an old retired Chinese that worked for Zeiss and build a prototype for the optical devices they need.

They use armies of graduates just to literally copy, when they could build something new or different.

zelphirkalt 5 days ago||

Is "Manhattan Project" supposed to be sounding threatening or something? Is anyone in on Japanese newspapers and whether they often us such rhetoric, when reporting things about China? It reads really kind of idiotic. As if chips are to be equal to atomic bombs and could be dropped on Tokyo any moment now. Maximum alarmist. That on the background of recent clumsiness of the Japanese PM ... It starts to paint a certain picture.

zoklet-enjoyer 5 days ago|

When I hear Manhattan Project, I don't think about the outcome. I think about the massive amount of effort for a singular goal that might not even be possible.

bgwalter 6 days ago||

We learn that before 2023 EUV lithography was worthless. "AI" is the only reason why China would want this technology!

EDIT: Given the dramatic downvotes, I repent: China will use these EUV machines to build AI sharks with lasers that will swim towards Taiwan! Is this better?

culi 5 days ago|

How did "we" learn that?

bgwalter 5 days ago||

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animistically 5 days ago|

Complex systems evolve by learning. They grow more complex. Same for the brain as for organizations and societies.

China is a redistribute centralist State. It has to be: a narrow coastal region is hyper wealthy and to maintain territorial integrity it requires a strong government to tax there and spend elsewhere. Hence the infrastructure and construction boom. The high debt is a feature of the system, these are State backed enterprises that live on subsidy.

The upshot is this limits complexity. ASML is in NL for a reason. NL is a feature of Western Europe decentralization. Arguably, Europe conquered the world because its internal fragmentation fostered a rapid gain in complexity.

The US has cemented this into its own constitution and political culture. All talks about "Europe innovation" and "China catching up" are moot. Europe became a colony of the US post WWII and the integration needed to foster internal peace capped its capacity to grow complex. The US is now the most complex society on Earth and no other region can cope with that much complexity on that scale. Both Russia and China are held together by trading complexity off centrality.