Details Emerge on China's 64-Core ARM Chip
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I don't necessarily understand alienating billions of potential customers on either side, though. Intel and AMD should release mandarin documentation.
+ It won't. The international language already English and that won't change (India, North America, Europe - most of Africa, the Middle East are already English as international lang. even China esp. Hong Kong, Singapore) - but Chinese may become a 'sphere of influence' language in surrounding countries - much like Spanish or French. Of course it kind of that already.
+ The issue of not releasing documentation in English is odd, given that English docs would enable them to access maybe a 5x greater market. And for the cost of what? Clearly, it's a strategic decision on their part - there's some kind of impetus behind it. Possibly they don't think it's ready. Who knows? But it's not likely an oversight. It was a decision.
I believe that's what they said about Latin at some point!
When Latin was dominant, there was maybe 5% literacy.
Now, globally we have 90%+ literacy in most nations.
Most of that number only learn English as a second language. Second languages are much more amenable to change than native ones.
In most of these areas, English is not a 'second language', it's a 'second administrative language' with a de-facto official status.
Languages have incredible incumbency, now that English is fairly entrenched in most places, it's not going away.
Unless you think that China will start producing entertainment (TV, films, music), products, services - available only in Chinese - that the rest of the world 'really needs' - it's not going to happen. If China makes anything work well internationally, it's going to have to be in a local language or in English.
Even today - as China is a fairly large economy - there are very, very few people learning to speak Chinese as a second language. Though it is much more common than before - it's still rare.
Here's a hint: in the UK - even though they do most of their business with the continent - almost none of them speak another language. Why? Because there is very low utility - everyone else speaks English. So it's pointless for Brits to speak French, German, Swedish etc..
Note that this has nothing to do with the various spoken languages in China, most importantly Mandarin, which are relatively easy to learn for foreigners.
[1] Statistics drawn from that orifice where all off-the-cuff statistics are drawn, but you get the general idea
P.S. I'm not an English native speaker.
http://read.pudn.com/downloads100/doc/project/409708/IA-32%E...
This is a situation where free trade and national security can be in conflict -- it would simply be irresponsible for the US or China to trust non-domestic companies with military projects, satellites, etc. But most of the companies that work on those projects also compete in the consumer market, where government subsidies are considered trade barriers.
I'm sorry but this is not true.
Chinese companies are often a direct part of national strategy and are created by, led by, supported by and defended by the state.
The collusion between many Chinese companies often goes far, far beyond 'government contracts'.
It's rational for any government to prefer local companies for strategic purchases, particularly military etc.. Nobody is going to bat an eye if a state related carrier choses to buy planes from their national aerospace entity.
But China will force companies from other countries to give up their IP - then hand it over to state-owned or related companies, then 'hold up' the foreign company in approval processes and other forms of tariff barriers - while the 'state owned' company gets a head start in the local market.
And obviously having direct government ownership in many of these companies means a material intervention far beyond what the US does. The US does not own any piece of Apple or Intel, and makes investments in entities like GM only very reluctantly under negative conditions to keep them alive - not to promote a national strategy.
Finally - because of the heavy state owned banking system and the total political control over monetary policy - issues like lending and financing are also heavily politicized, which is another form of direct state intervention.
The means by which the US or UK intervene are on average completely different from how it's often done in China.
But it goes against an emotional kind of a 'morally relativistic' view of other cultures one must have to be politically correct.
A statement that is 'against China', even if factual, will be perceived as some kind of 'bigotry' or 'prejudice' or 'racist sentiment' by those with a social/utopian view of the world.
I find young people are especially like this.
But hey, feel free to have a persecution complex about this whole thing, and blame political correctness and moral relativism.
Totally false. I iterated several ways in which the Chinese government intervenes that the US and other countries do not.
In case you had trouble reading:
1) The Chinese government creates many companies companies for strategic purposes. The US does not. Some Euro companies do, in limited situations - mostly around energy, military and aviation.
2) The Chinese government takes a direct financial interest in many industries and companies. The US does not, again, unless it's a reluctant, temporary bailout which is a totally different thing. Even when they do 'bail out' - they don't sit on the board, or give orders - it's just financial.
3) The Chinese government owns the banking system - and government officials require state banks to make investments in specific companies. The US does not do this.
4) The Chinese government has political control over their 'Central Bank' and has currency and capital controls. They use these measures for a lot of things - but one is to create financing for the state banks to make their industrial investments. The US does not do this.
5) The Chinese government requires foreign entities to give up Intellectual Property in order to sell into their market - even for consumer products etc. The US does not do this.
6) The Chinese government uses IP gained from this practice - and from industrial espionage to create state-owned competitors. The US does not do this. (There's little for the US to steal, admittedly, they will do this for military programs - but not commercial ventures).
You must had difficulty reading?
I totally contradicted your comment.
The means by which China intervenes is fundamentally different than the means by which the US and Western countries intervene.
Everybody knows this.
It's not contentious, it's not a secret, it's not a conspiracy theory.
You're arguing against everyone in business.
I'll gather that most Hackernews readers have basically no exposure to these things - that's ok - it's 'hackernews' not 'international business news'.
> 1) The Chinese government creates many companies companies for strategic purposes. The US does not. Some Euro companies do, in limited situations - mostly around energy, military and aviation.
This is a distiction without a difference. As you said, some European countries do this too. The US has done so also in the past. Even though it does not do so today, that doesn't really change the outcome -- US defense companies are not state-owned, but they promote the state's strategy and interest just as much as they would if they were state-owned. They also get a lot of money from the state, probably far more than any state-owned Chinese companies get.
> 2) The Chinese government takes a direct financial interest in many industries and companies. The US does not, again, unless it's a reluctant, temporary bailout which is a totally different thing. Even when they do 'bail out' - they don't sit on the board, or give orders - it's just financial.
This is another distinction without a difference. The Chinese have influence on companies by taking a direct financial interest, but that's not the only way it can be done. The US has just as much influence on a lot of US companies, and implements its financial interest through government contracts rather than direct investment. These are simply different ways of achieving the same outcome.
> 3) The Chinese government owns the banking system - and government officials require state banks to make investments in specific companies. The US does not do this. 4) The Chinese government has political control over their 'Central Bank' and has currency and capital controls. They use these measures for a lot of things - but one is to create financing for the state banks to make their industrial investments. The US does not do this.
Again, ownership is not required for influence to exist. Anyone who lived through 2008 and TARP in the US cannot possibly claim there is no political influence in the banking system. Yeah, the Chinese do it more than the US does -- but that is a difference of degree.
Your point #5 is factually incorrect. There are problems with Chinese IP law to be sure, but there is not a legal requirement to give up IP rights to do business in China. Companies that register their IP in China are entitled to legal protections, just as they would be in the US. If those protections are not enforced, that's a difference of degree, not of kind.
> 6) The Chinese government uses IP gained from this practice - and from industrial espionage to create state-owned competitors. The US does not do this. (There's little for the US to steal, admittedly, they will do this for military programs - but not commercial ventures).
I'm sure the US does this, and you admitted as much when you said they do this for military programs. Companies with military contracts overlap into the commercial and consumer space quite a bit, so it does affect the commercial market. Yeah, China does more of this -- but that is a difference of degree.
The bottom line is that when both countries do a thing, and one of the countries does more of that thing than the other country, that's a difference of degree.
You seem rather attached to state ownership as some kind of differentiating feature, but it's really not. China exerts influence by ownership and direct investment; the US exerts influence via government contracts, which are a form of indirect investment. The outcome is the same kind of thing -- government influence over companies. China does it more, which is a difference in degree.
You have not identified any fundamental differences here. All you've done is show that China does the same things the US does, but more, and possibly more effectively.
Yes - it is - dude.
Buddy - I'm not arguing wit you.
I'm not trying to make a point.
This is well established stuff.
There is no debate here.
You've painted yourself into a corner, saying that 'night is day'.
You're making a fool of yourself.
Phytium is a subsidiary of China Electronics Corporation which itself is a state-owned enterprise.
If they manage to sell 64-core ARM chips for 50$, even using just 28nm (maximum available on mainland China foundries -AFAIK-), it could hurt Cavium badly and start worrying Intel.
This isn't going to be fabbed in China, almost none of the chinese SoC's are fabbed locally the foundries are not built for that the process is too old and overall they are not intended to produce such complex silicon, there is much more to a process than just the lithography and even that is not straightforward because you actually need to do tricks to get to sub 28nm today as you often end up using higher wavelength light since extreme UV and other similar technologies aren't there yet.
The 64-core SoC's are going to be multi-100$ parts, probably closer to the 1000$ mark regardless if they are chinese or not, Cavium SoC's are about as expensive or even more expensive than some of the Intel parts they are competing against.
If China introduces a 64 core ARMv8 SoC at 50$ Intel won't be worried, it would panic to the point of them using the backdoor everyone on HN think they have via AMT rigging the election so Trump can win and then convincing him to nuke China might actually happen.
That said a 50$ 64 core ARMv8 SoC is pretty much impossible to make even in China, by China, for China.
Allwinner A20 (4 core ARMv8 Cortex A53, 512KB L2 cache, 128KB L1 cache, 2 core Mali 400, video interface, etc.) costs 6$ in volume. So I guess just in plain die area, the 64 core Mars ARMv8 (32MB L2 cache) could take just 8 times the area of Allwinner A20, without including L3 cache. That would mean 48$ just in silicon, with naive extrapolation. Also, there are two versions of the chip: the high-end ("Mars") and a low-end ("Earth"), may be without L3 cache ([1]).
With progressive die reduction, it could be even cheaper, if demand reaches enough critical mass (e.g. billions of chips for routing devices, servers, etc.).
In addition to Cavium, there is another potential competitor: Mediatek (after Atheros aquisition), selling crazy cheap SoCs for SOHO routers. What if they start in the high-end and server market? (they would need just IP available from ARM for the inter-core memory routing, for making cheap SoCs).
[1] https://tweakimg.net/files/upload/HC27.24.320-Mars-64core-Ga...
Larger dies would have smaller yields simply because say you have 25% defected dies with an 4 core SOC, when you scale it up to something 8 times it's size your defects are going to have a very severe effect on your yields to the point where you can't actually produce SoCs above a certain die size simply because it's more likely than not that all or almost all of them will have defects.
Also the older A53 copy paste SoCs are cheap, the licensing is cheap, and little to no R&D went into them, Allwinner, MediaTek etc. all have sub 10$ bargain bin SOCs (The A20 is after all a 3-4 year old 55nm SOC that wasn't cutting edge when it came out ;)) but their high end SOCs aren't dirt cheap they are just sufficiently below the likes of Qualcomm and Samsung to be competitive.
Don't get me wrong eventually can get there, but the question is do you even need to get there, by the time you can get a Mars like SoC down to a 50$ price point would that SOC be even relevant? Technology constantly evolves x86 and even ARM CPUs are not cheaper, they even increase in costs in as the likes Samsung and Qualcomm charge more year after year and even MediaTek is now stepping into the higher costs higher margins game also.
Also, in some places A64 chip is told to cost 5$ in volume: http://www.phonedroid.net/blog/allwinner-a64-incredible-5-ta...
No. That kind of cost reduction came mostly from process shrinks and there have been plenty of articles on HN explaining why that's coming to an end in the very near future. Even Intel, the process leader, had to end its "tick-tock" cycle with its latest set of chips.
Wow! I suppose when you have 64 cores to feed...
But what's the play here besides promoting indigenous development? Alone, these cores are not remarkable, and getting 64 of them fed constantly is only useful for long-running HPC workloads.
To me the most interesting thing here is the 'Hawk' interconnect that allows some of these dies to be replaced with custom processing units; hardware encode/decode blocks sn a common option in consumer devices today, but any custom block can be made for specialized workloads.
All I know is that will be extremely expensive and low yield, and as far as I know, they haven't shown any of these "CMC" chips.
120W for the base chip, and even more power for L3 and DRAM (plus them being off die) will make it even higher latency. This is pretty DOA in terms of being a real competitor against Intel.
But L3 is another story, for sure.
This setup has lots of memory boards in sockets, some distance from the CPU. If you're not sharing memory, it might be faster to have fewer CPUs per chip and put the CPUs and the memory on the same board.
Intel's Xeon Phi experiment hasn't produced anything cost-effective and workable yet, but if they can get that to run at low power they might have an answer to the swarms of ARM systems on the horizon.
http://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/processors/xeon/xeo...
No 64 cores, but 16 X86 Xeon Cores @ 1.3ghz with HyperThreading will give pretty much any high end ARM SOC a run for their money, a TDP of 45W also doesn't hurt ;)
Intel has made a bet that by the time ARM would get their performance to x86 levels Intel would get their power consumption to ARM SOC levels and Intel seem to have been correct on that bet.
The Xeon Phi is also pretty interesting Knight's Landing and onwards provides pretty good performance for deep-learning and other applications that companies like NVIDIA were swinging at, it's still not on the same performance level as NVIDIA's top tier of compute products but it's close and the x86 compatibility is likely to have a sufficient advantage in certain scenarios to make the Xeon Phi really competitive. NVIDIA was planning on having x86 compatibility for it's HPC parts however both AMD and Intel killed that dream in court.
China is aggressive and very intelligent with their goals and roadmaps in complete contrast to other emerging mega-nations like India, and sadly even in contrast to Europe which seem to have both the financial and the human capital to become a world leader however lacks the the will and the uniform vision to achieve that.
Don't get me wrong Europe is doing some amazing things in research especially in the academic scene and programs like Horizon 2020 are pretty impressive but they are peanuts in the grand scheme of things, China on the other hand says in 10 years I want to be able to make X and they get there doesn't matter if X is canned goods or high end CPUs.
China is the US in the 50's be the 1st in everything, do huge national projects to get there, invest in science, technology and education all for the national pride and glory. As much as I'm "scared" of China I really admire their moonshot spirit in the past decades if they won't implode before getting there I hope they'll end up being benevolent overlords.
Or they could just invade Taiwan for its fabs.
All of them use various sub-wavelength techniques like using multiple stencils and masks to create aperture / fresnel lense like effects etc.
Pretty much since you have multiple measurements for "feature size" like fin, gate, interconnect pitch etc. companies are just naming their process roadmap to show "progress". I don't think even Intel's 14nm process actually has a 14nm "feature size" and if it does I don't know what measurement they are basing it on.
http://images.anandtech.com/doci/8367/14nmFeatureSize.png http://images.anandtech.com/doci/8367/14nmFinfet2.png
Phytium is a subsidiary of China Electronics Corporation which is a state owned enterprise.
If they can't produce a cost-effective, power-efficient system with 64-256 cores then ARM will eat their lunch in a good chunk of the server market and NVidia will destroy any hope they had to get back in the supercomputer game.
I'm not saying Intel can't do it, but they sure are in a bind now. Their flagship product is a stupidly expensive 14 core Xeon that only appeals to a narrow market segment. They really don't have an answer for ARM when it comes to massively parallel server installations, and those companies, the Google and Facebook types, buy a lot of hardware.
They come with PCIE lanes and 2 10Gig ethernet on board the SoC and you have CompactPCI form factor AIB cards with Xeon Ds already. https://www.men.de/products/cpu-boards/g25a/
This is what Intel has to combat the threat from ARM and beyond, these SOCs are quite popular now for both compute heavy industrial use (e.g. collision detection systems for aircraft, boats, and heavy duty vehicles) and for small form factor servers.
SuperMicro for example offers Micro-Blade server where 56 Xeon-D SoCs are fit into a 6u chassis that's 896 cores / 1792 threads in a single 6U server or 6272c/12544t in a full 42u rack.
http://ark.intel.com/products/family/87041/Intel-Xeon-Proces...
Wholeserver implementations are available from vendors like SuperMicro and HP.
Small form factor barebones micro-ATX/flex-ATX are also available from vendors or as OEM parts.
Google even google shopping has links for the more commercial general purpose parts.