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Comment by mrlonglong | Hacker News Reader

Got any real legitimate sources?

How can one "steal" something as complicated as 7nm? Did SMIC find a full manual on literally hundreds of thousands of small little decisions that go into making something as complicated as advanced chip manufacturing?

Perhaps they hired people from TSMC? Maybe paid them more? Seems like capitalism then.

Also, this is what happens when the US deny China tech. Yes, they'll fall behind shortly but they have the manpower, will, and intelligence to fill the gap sooner or later.

If the US wants to maintain tech advantage, open up immigration and make it super easy for intelligent people to immigrate and live here. And welcome them instead of being racists to them so they stay.

It goes beyond that to some pretty profound issues of sovereignty. Does one country have the right to ban a second from bettering itself by nonviolent means?

The whole foundation of IP law is pretty shaky. We've seen fast progress in places that ignore it (eg, open source software, Chinese manufacturing). The argument for why it is fundamentally a good thing are very questionable.

In this case, it is a tool to cripple the power of the government of 20% of the world. If China wants to ignore IP law because it is holding them back, who has the right to say no? I wish my government would loosen up on IP law.

The US has historically been flexible with foreign IP when it suited the US's interests.

Oh,but Samuel Slater was many lifetimes ago; after reaping the benefits, we have evolved and now know that it is wrong. /s.

TechInsights reverse engineered one of SMIC’s 7nm ASICS and claims a lot of similarities with TSMC’s N7 process.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/china-chipmaker-smics-7nm-...

I haven't read the actual TechInsights report. Did they plainly accuse SMIC for copying or simply stated that some parts of the node are similar?

I see that Tomshardware has added additional commentary to make it seem like TechInsights' report is evidence that SMIC has copied TSMC.

Western media has a way of spinning any advancement China makes as copying the west. Perhaps this is one way for westerners to feel superior and deny that the Chinese are capable of similar feats.

China is capable. But, this would be SMIC’s third time being caught stealing from TSMC.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-smic-lawsuit/california-j...

Copy or not, if it bears resemblance to TSMC N7 that is very impressive.

> If the US wants to maintain tech advantage, open up immigration and make it super easy for intelligent people to immigrate and live here. And welcome them instead of being racists to them so they stay.

Worked fine in WWII. It's in time somebody reinvent this wheel.

Apart from the wheel there is a second ingredient to your recipe that is not as easy... we're getting close though.

I'm wondering if you were sarcastically hinting at Japanese internment camps, or making a straight reference to Operation Paperclip (that procured services of Nazi scientist, but that was after WWII)

They did hire TSMC staff and got sued on that pretext. They settled.

"If the US wants to maintain tech advantage, it'd better stop being so American!"

Walk around Silicon Valley a little. How many high tech workers, CEOs, and founders are immigrants or children of immigrants? If I have to guess, I'd probably say 80%.

Today's Silicon Valley: the blueprint for a successful civilization. Are 80% of Guangzhou's high tech workers, CEOs and founders immigrants?

Nope. As far as I know, they've done everything with almost all internal talent.

Fascinating. No need for immigrants at all. I wonder why...

Having your pick of talent from a population of 1.2B people would be my first guess

The US has ~300 million. Surely that's a sufficient pool to provide all the personnel needed.

China (and East Asian countries in general) heavily emphasize STEM careers. There are more honor roll students in China than there are students in the US.

There's no need for Chinese software companies to pay $500k/year for a single senior software engineer like some SV companies. There are a lot more them in China.

Part of it is the East Asian culture. Part of it is that the US has been wealthy for so long that the student population choose arts and humanities over STEM. When your family is/was poor, you'd rather go into STEM.

It's only a matter of time, in my humble opinion, that China surpasses the US in technology - especially with the US' tougher stance on immigration, polarizing society, and unfriendliness to immigrants. For now, the US is still clearly in the lead after a ~100 years head start.

So...cheap labor is the solution. Good to know. It must be very convenient for Chinese companies to have a deep pool of qualified talent that is unwilling to relocate in order to get a massive salary increase.

Many are willing to relocate, mostly to US for SV wages, but US is increasingly hostile to PRC talent. That said, PRC pipeline generating as much STEM talent as OECD combined, too much for west to brain drain and absorb and % of talent with English fluency is limited. See recent record youth unemployment... it's not great but also not terrible problem to have. Meanwhile US has massive STEM gap but also increasing distaste for incubating PRC talent because espionage.

America is the country with the world's largest total population of immigrants. As a percentage, we're up there, looking at

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/immigrati...

many of the countries above us are pretty small, or EU members with freedom of movement among member states.

So, it is more like saying "If the US wants to maintain tech advantage, it better keep being American!" (and of course there's nothing that makes a patriotic American happier than having people who want to join us).

there is no claim for this. SMIC does have ex-TSMC employees amongst staff though, so perhaps this is what you mean

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