And then the American government helps to speed up the process by banning Intel to selling CPUs to Huawei and affiliates
The reason China is forcing themselves to use shitty, slow, and inefficient processors is because they’re indirectly injecting billions in the industry in this way, because no consumer would ever buy a zhaoxin CPU, which is slower than a celeron while more expensive than a core i7.
So, government using shitty processors = after a decade those shitty processors should improve to parity.
Now, if also consumers are forced to use the shitty processors, then the industry has even more incentive to improve
That Huawei CPU is mostly marketing as doing 5nm chips with duv machines is possible but yields much less because it needs more steps. It’s also the same design of 4 years ago
Loongson makes sense for government use because it can act as a drop in replacement for x86, but it’s pretty clear the chips SMIC is making for Huawei are what’s going to the consumer market. These chips are only a generation behind the bleeding edge.
You’re right that yields might be low currently, but all that means is that it’s just less efficient to produce chips, and it’s not like the problem is insurmountable. Meanwhile, silicon as a substrate is hitting limits now, there’s nowhere to go past 2mn because you start having problems like quantum tunnelling effects. So, it’s not like western chips can keep improving indefinitely without radically new designs.
And then the American government helps to speed up the process by banning Intel to selling CPUs to Huawei and affiliates
The reason China is forcing themselves to use shitty, slow, and inefficient processors is because they’re indirectly injecting billions in the industry in this way, because no consumer would ever buy a zhaoxin CPU, which is slower than a celeron while more expensive than a core i7.
So, government using shitty processors = after a decade those shitty processors should improve to parity.
Now, if also consumers are forced to use the shitty processors, then the industry has even more incentive to improve
the shitty processors in question https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/china-poised-to-break-5nm-barrier-huawei-lists-5nm-processor-presumably-built-with-smic-tech-defying-us-sanctions
No, it’s this, they mostly want x86 for government use https://www.tomshardware.com/news/loongson-launches-3a6000-cpu-matches-14600k-ipc
An article that lists the CPU: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/china-bans-intel-and-amd-cpus-for-government-offices-and-servers-plans-to-switch-to-domestic-made-alternatives
That Huawei CPU is mostly marketing as doing 5nm chips with duv machines is possible but yields much less because it needs more steps. It’s also the same design of 4 years ago
Loongson makes sense for government use because it can act as a drop in replacement for x86, but it’s pretty clear the chips SMIC is making for Huawei are what’s going to the consumer market. These chips are only a generation behind the bleeding edge.
You’re right that yields might be low currently, but all that means is that it’s just less efficient to produce chips, and it’s not like the problem is insurmountable. Meanwhile, silicon as a substrate is hitting limits now, there’s nowhere to go past 2mn because you start having problems like quantum tunnelling effects. So, it’s not like western chips can keep improving indefinitely without radically new designs.
So Chinese chip makers sell more and more of the sub-parity chips, what incentive do they really have to improve?
Patriotism + unlimited funding = innovation
Strangely this reminds me of when China pegged its currency to the dollar.