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Comment by cpursley | Hacker News Reader

Gotta start somewhere. Everyone sucks at some process until they don't.

Also worth pointing out the Overton Window has shifted from "China can't silicon." to "China's doing crappy 7nm." in a span of only a few years.

The copium levels in the atmosphere here are reaching critical levels.

I haven’t seen any “China can’t silicon”. They are catching up sure, and they will eventually do 7nm well, but it seems like instead of praising China for progression, the pro-China people are like “see the west sucks China has 7nm!!!” When the reality is that the 7nm is as good as CPUs 15 years ago. Let’s appreciate that China isn’t siting around doing nothing and improving the competition. But not overhype something.

Sucking at a process is part of learning to do it better. But only if it is on a path of learning; practicing the skills that will be useful later.

They’ve stuck with DUV, which everybody else in the world decided was a dead end. Sticking with DUV may cause further progress to be impossible for all we know (maybe somebody should ask Intel). Going to EUV will require a different set of skills. They’ll have to replicate ASML’s machines to do so. Nobody else has figured it out. Their process on figuring out DUV tricks doesn’t tell us anything about their progress making that other type of machine.

I'm laughing at your comment because you seem to assume that China is doing nothing in EUV. I have somewhat inside knowledge and I can tell you that they have multiple teams working on multiple approaches.From SSMB to LPP, they are leaving nothing to chance.

I have been repeatedly pointing out that we don’t know, not claiming that they aren’t making progress. Do you deliberately misread your insider information as well?

>Their process on figuring out DUV tricks doesn’t tell us anything about their progress making that other type of machine.

Yet you have no problem proclaiming it's leading them to a dead end.

It is a dead end path. They probably are exploring multiple paths in parallel. ein0p claimed that their progress down the dead-end path is evidence that they are making good progress down the productive path. It isn’t. That’s all I’m pointing out.

Don’t read more into the post than that. I’m not going to defend an affirmative claim that they aren’t making progress. They have a ton of engineers and are willing to invest in the field, so it is entirely plausible to believe that they’ll catch up.

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