Huawei's new chip breakthrough likely to trigger closer US scrutiny, analysts say
Huawei's new chip breakthrough likely to trigger closer US scrutiny, analysts say
www.reuters.com
Huawei's new chip breakthrough likely to trigger closer US scrutiny, analysts say
It's not clear to me what the end game is. Supposedly, we don't want China to be able to make 7 nm chips since those are useful in advanced military applications. So the sale of EUV machines to China is blocked. But now it seems they can make 7 nm chips without EUV. The yield is lower, so supposedly the EUV ban has an impact. But military applications don't care about yield since the volumes are much lower than mass market products. So what exactly is being accomplished? Is it just a matter of conducting general harrassment against Chinese industry to kneecap their economy? Or is there some clearer aim than that?
Low yield has cost implications. This is especially true in consumable applications like guided missiles etc. Sure, the really high end cruise missile where they may make only 10,000 may not be affected greatly. However, the small $2500 anti-tank missile might be if you'd planned on making 500,000 of them.
Also consider "military applications" breaks down into two categories: Domestic consumption and Export. A country might spend whatever is necessary for its own military, but export buyers have to pay full price and that may preclude expensive low yield ICs.
Yeah, I dunno. For these kinds of military products, the volumes are just a drop in the bucket compared to consumer electronics, even if you factor in weapons for export and low-end equipment (which I'm not sure would even be using 7 nm chips). A consumer product that shipped 500,000 units would be an epic failure. LG got out of the cellphone business because their yearly sales were "only" 30 million units. If Russia had 500,000 cruise missiles, Ukraine would be one big smoking crater by now.
Maybe I'm talking out of my ass, and the policymakers have done the math and know what they're doing. But at surface level, the justification doesn't seem to line up.
All of this is media trying to translate the new cold war into terms people who grew up in the pre-AI world can understand, to bring the public along with policy they wouldn't otherwise grasp.
The truth that the national security people on both sides understand is that ASI is coming and whoever builds it first has a good shot at essentially winning the IRL tech victory, and the only way to defend against ASI is your own ASI. Whoever has the most, best chips has the best ASI.
If the Chinese or US build one unchallenged that's it. That really is the end of history. So they are both going to do everything in their power to slow down the other and accelerate their own progress.
ASI?