TSMC cuts off client after discovering chips sent to Huawei
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I know instances of Easter eggs finding their way into chips back in the day. Feels possible.
But I don't think we need more ways for the US gov. to track us.
There would have to be some 'know you customer' type of tracking for ordering from electronics suppliers to avoid liability. Like with banks.
DigiKey rejecting your order because who knows what their black box said.
It would hardly help versus people that can afford front buyers anyway.
And even if it would work the microchips still end up in bombs dropped on children since the gov. hand them over willingly in the first place.
Each chiplet will itself have up to 100,000 transistors and include a two-way radio, data encryption engine and way to detect tampering—all while consuming under 50 microwatts (50 millionths of a watt) and costing less than one penny each. Identifying information on each dielet would be read using a penlike probe plugged into a smartphone.. a dielet would be inductively powered by the probe, which would communicate via radio frequency signals when placed within a half millimeter of the chiplet. The probe would relay encrypted information to an app on the smartphone.https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/data...
1-Wire, unique 48-bit ID. I don't remember the year it was introduced, or cost.
IIRC, their 1-wire temp sensors also have that (at least they did about 10 years ago when I was messing around with hobbyist electronics):
Well, if your company goes bankrupt because engineering didn’t work with the product guys you don’t have a job anymore.
Probably too much effort for the gain though. For military chips maybe?
This is not going to end well for anyone.
On the other hand remote hardware disable being already in all military equipment the US sells to allies, just in case they ever change their mind, would be a cool conspiracy theory.
Computing is heading down a very dark path if people are seriously suggesting stuff like this.
It also trashes their R&D. Imagine if every LLM researcher in America had to smuggle in Iranian cores to do any work.
One of the saddest stories of the 21st century is China’s decline into despotism. They didn’t have democracy, but they had internal political competition and a peaceful transfer of power. In an alternate world, Xi is comfortably retired while China and America drive a new century of human prosperity.
Although I do want to endorse the idea that their political system is probably going to undermine the successes of their businesses. From the outside it looks like a disaster waiting to happen.
> their political system is probably going to undermine the successes of their businesses
I do agree with this
US starts trade war, banning Chinese industries, weaponize supply chain, exchanges, collaboration in attempt to destroy Chinese economy, cause 1.4B to go back to proverty. What is US' aim here? Make 1.4b ppl suffer so they will listen to US's demands? To prove a political point? Please tell me is there any Chinese person US haven't attacked? US only loves Chinese if they are dissidents because they help the US destroy China from within. Chinese person just make up a story China government did something bad to me and they get an invitation to Congress. And Congress has stopped even pretending they care to help these Chinese anymore, they use this to justify more attacks on Chinese people and make more Chinese people suffer. US government: yes we care about Chinese ppl and that's why we ban all of their products, destroy all their labor, now these Chinese are jobless can't afford food on the table, what? The supposed solution to lack of freedom is more bans and oppression.
We can build a prosperous, mutually respected, win-win world today, no conflict, no attacks, no suffering, if US allows it to be. You are attacking people, and you can stop. Did we steal 5G, did we steal EV batteries? Last I heard Huawei is paying billions to Qualcomm for 5G patent licenses, dispute can be negotiated with good faith and mutual respect. But it doesn't work if one party just to demonize you and want you dead so he can be only kid in the block. China does want to buy US goods, but the one we want to buy you don't sell. We are happy to pay 10k for Nvidia chips but you stopped selling not us. World is large enough for US and China to both succeed.
If the most meaningful attack someone has to face is their country getting stuck with a few tariffs, that person leads a charmed life.
Ok, now you've got "something" here even resembling a netlist (lol), what do you do with it? Keep in mind: you don't actually have the manufacturing technology to use this IP. By the time you do, the IC you reversed is no longer state of the art.
I think state-sponsored corporate espionage would be a lot more fruitful and cheaper.
Is "highly efficient manufacturing" a euphemism for low paid labor and slave labor?
As far as I know pretty much any product that moved production to China did it because of low labor costs. It's also been reported that companies have also exited China into other low paid labor countries in the region.
Meanwhile the only factories that return to the US are exactly the ones that invested in automation and efficient manufacturing, as it's the only way to beat the low costs.
They've also managed to pump out really cheap solar panels and EVs, but it's not clear to me how much of that is upgraded automation vs government subsidies.
Manufacturing electronics in China hasn't been about labor costs for a decade. It's still about costs overall but instead of people it's access to the right machines, close enough to where everything else is being sourced and final assembly is done etc.
Everyone can see this. Only (some) white Americans don't want to acknowledge it, or need to explain it away.
No, it might have once but Chinese labor isn't that cheap anymore. It means a well educated population, stable government, good infrastructure and other manufacturers in proximity.
>They've also managed to pump out really cheap solar panels and EVs, but it's not clear to me how much of that is upgraded automation vs government subsidies.
The price of solar panels has followed Wright’s Law for about 5 decades, there's nothing out of the ordinary about the last decade. If all the reduction in price was subsidies the Chinese government would be subsidizing about 90% of the price of every panel. Same thing for batteries.
> China’s decline into despotism
Things are very different now with a one-man cult of personality.
See, e.g., https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/chi...
They told the same during the Hu era and they will write the same to Xi successor. The enmity is structural.
I think the US and the west would be doing the exact same things to China regardless of what happened with Xi.
When China decided to design phones instead of manufacturing them for American companies, that's when their fate was sealed and the west (and Japan) took action. China wanted to move up the value chain. The west wanted China to remain as their factory.
The "China bad" propaganda is just to convince western commoners that doing these things to China is justified.
It's about economics and power. Always is. Always has been.
>“When governments permit counterfeiting or copying of American products, it is stealing our future, and it is no longer free trade.” So said US President Ronald Reagan, commenting on Japan after the Plaza Accord was concluded in September 1985.
But Japan and Korea weren't/aren't nearly the threat of China due to size.
Dec 2023, https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/manufacturing/usc...
> there is a functioning system in place where companies request permission to sell certain products to China, and the DoC approves exports of products that offer lower performance but still belong to the latest generation of technologies developed in the U.S.. the idea of a strict ban on advanced technology exports to China does not match reality.. "There are Swiss cheese holes in it. And right now, chipmakers are driving cars through them."
Hopefully the Linux kernel does not become theatrical collateral damage, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41919670
TSMC told US of chip in Huawei product after TechInsights finding, source says
[1] https://huaweicentral.com/huaweis-global-smartphone-shipment...
https://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/manufacturing/....
TSMC produced in 2023 16 million wafers, apples die size is about 105mm2 which fits around 230 chips per wafer... say its 200 good chips... thats 3.2 billion chips.
3.2B to 120k is a rounding error.
So they cut off Nvidia? Or do Nvidias customer order chips directly from TSMC and it's one of those clients?
It would be funnier if it was Nvidia, but probably not.
China has their own ASML and TSMC, they are just behind. But not as far as the west likes to think.
The problem with US is that Google and finance pay engineers too much. They get the most talent so they can show you better ads and make better trading algos. In the US the government works against you, whereas in China the regulation burden is none.
South Asia sure, large quantity, low (average) quality.
East Asia if you include Japan and Korea has pretty good engineering talent, I'd say, lots of people would run circles there around US graduates, it's more that their economies are hampered in other ways by demographic shifts, bad investing environment (Japan mostly), and monopolies that don't innovate and control the government (mainly Korea).
Chinese engineering is pretty damn good now. But it takes time still to catch up to the highest levels of technology, but they have a government investing in its people, in its infrastructure, in its companies. The only question is whether the government will run out of money before the plan unfolds or the demographic time bomb hits.
As long as you cut all the bloat (i.e tracking code in html..).
At the end of the day it all depends on the person and their skill level using the tech.
Users will blame you if Jira works more slowly on your devices than on Apple’s.
They’re still able to access compute now, albeit at a higher cost. But in the future when scale and margins are much more relevant than today, that won’t be the case.
Market forces to develop IC tech (lithography, foundries, patents, etc..) inside China are surging. So by the time they really need quantity, it’s much more likely they’ll have a domestic high end IC supply chain implemented.
Obviously nobody could really predict the timelines with good certainty, but it seems like a good development for them long term.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
If massive resources must be diverted from R&D and into evading sanctions, it's harder to catch up as quickly or cheaply.
Meanwhile: TSMC and the collective West are also making significant strides.
They also have some of the best models out there already, so if they are being slowed down on AI development, it's clearly insignificant.
It is not unbelievable for the race to AGI (or whatever close enough approximation of it is necessary for dominance) to possibly be a "first to the posts wins forever" sort of race.
We can't even secure our key technologies. Security at TSMC being a consideration, but not just them.
The US is allowing NVIDIA to keep selling strategic assets to whoever can afford them, like they're selling mining picks in a gold rush.
The legislation to restrict their sales to China was almost laughable. NVIDIA actively worked to do the bare minimum to comply with it. China is still a key market for them. I've seen projections of $12bn in sales of AI chips to China (though this is hearsay from financial news sites).
Is that really a long term profit motive, pissing off the US government who will inevitably investigate their monopoly in the space one day. Good monopolies, like the cable companies that enable mass surveillance on the population, get to entrench to the point that no level of incompetence can unseat them. I'm sure they could use a little "AI safety" legislation that only their graphics cards can provide.
Or is NVIDIA's motive political neutrality? Hedge their bets and hope they can balance on the tightrope long enough for a few political cycles to make the US forget, while avoiding alienating China due to the possibility China will eventually win the race?
There are constant reports of industrial espionage, both within the US and all along our critical supply chain internationally. Admittedly, it's a lot easier to steal from an open society than a closed, homogeneous one. But where are the armies of advisors to assess critical infrastructure or even help assess threats on an ongoing basis. We should _almost_ be treating our and our allies high tech industrial infrastructure like they are weapon and munitions factories in a wartime environment.
But assuming we're still at the start of the race, and not quite at that level yet -- there doesn't seem much fostering of future development going on to properly position the US for success. Specifically, development of companies and of future talent.
There's no industrial knowledge-share program (think, 'open source initiative for critical algorithms and tech, but only for allies, and only for those who can meet security criteria'). There's no equivalent of anything like the Manhattan Project. AGI _will_ have the same, if not higher, social and political impact than the Manhattan Project.
Instead we've got... DARPA, running years behind the curve as always. They're not an organization to win a race.
As far as future talent goes.. There are no special schools or training programs to develop talented youth into important contributors in the space. We can't even get autistic savants through school or into those places they'll potentially thrive or work magic in. Particularly if they happen to have been born poor or can't properly navigate a social system.
Even above-average, over-achieving kids aren't being incentivized to focus their development into areas of strategic interest. We're leaving our talent pool to the market, which operates way too late to properly foster early development, and leaving too much early development up to broken or ineffective educational institutions.
China has a much larger pool of talent to develop. They have a more directive government with long term planning capacity. They have a much stronger industrial base that is only lacking some key technologies. They've got enough electrical power, or at least capacity to develop it, to run all the hardware. They have much better industrial espionage and cyber capabilities.
We have.. a short lead in knowledge. Industrial deals with key allies that are dependent on a dollar that is frankly at risk of collapse any year now with no plan in sight for getting national debt to where we could conceivably be able to pay off _the interest_ on it. A few individual talents pushing forward the technology. The willingness of billionaires to open their wallets for a ton of useless things in hope of striking a rich vein of something salable. A political system which will reward said billionaires for that investment by not taxing their profits towards a social safety net for those who will inevitably be displaced by more productive technologies.
To simplify that, almost the only thing we have driving the bus at this point is corporate greed. What kind of AGI will come out of that?
Will it be better than an over-controlling one which is personally and politically manipulative, that is feared will come out of China?
Anyway. That's my not-so-crazy rant for the day.
The winner of that race is AGI, not the hairless apes that happen to be near the geographic region where it was born.
"I agree, Mr. President. In fact, they might even try an immediate sneak attack so they could take over our AI space."
"Yeah. I think it would be extremely naive of us, Mr. President, to imagine that these new developments are going to cause any change in Chinese expansionist policy. I mean, we must be... increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other AI space, in order to train more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking out our models in superior exaFlOps when we emerge! Mr. President, we must not allow... an AGI gap!"
Is this from a movie or show, or some kind of over-the-top dialogue you're having between made-up characters in your head?
EDIT: Found it. It's indeed from Doctor Strangelove:
> TURGIDSON: I mean, we must be... increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other mineshaft space, in order to breed more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking us out in superior numbers when we emerge! Mr. President, we must not allow... a mineshaft gap!
Explaining the context would spoil parts of the movie so I'll instead suggest watching it if you haven't.
TSMC is not yours, is Taiwan sovereign or not? According to you, it's not, but when China claims it, it suddenly becomes sovereign? very conveniant
> There are constant reports of industrial espionage, both within the US and all along our critical supply chain internationally. Admittedly, it's a lot easier to steal from an open society than a closed, homogeneous one. But where are the armies of advisors to assess critical infrastructure or even help assess threats on an ongoing basis. We should _almost_ be treating our and our allies high tech industrial infrastructure like they are weapon and munitions factories in a wartime environment.
Right,
https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/290615/revealed-m...
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-the-nsa-spies...
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-security-agency-spie...
You are being engineered to support the idea of a full scale war with China, it won't go well for americans if you decide to choose that path
Make getting into and out of key industrial facilities more difficult for the unauthorized, both physically and digitally. Enhanced background checks on employees who have access to critical technology.
Expand those security requirements to international technology partners. If it's a race, incentivize partners to support our interests.
China does all of these things. If you would consider the US bad for doing so as well, how would you consider China for being better at it?
Nobody is suggesting that we invade Chinese factories. But suggesting we secure our allies industrial facilities is somehow 'engineering support for a war with China'?
You would have the US just.. give Taiwan over to China, against the will of Taiwan's own people, and against US financial and strategic interest? Or else _we're_ the bad guys if China invades?
According to this article, Taiwanese still want to do business with China, so your suggestion is to prevent Taiwanese to do business with China, against their will? wait, something doesn't sound right, i can't pin point it just yet!
> Expand those security requirements to international technology partners. If it's a race, incentivize partners to support our interests.
Well, again, according to this article, Taiwanese wants China as partners, at a least as business partners
You keep contradicting yourself.. oh wait...
> incentivize partners to support our interests
oh right! your interests above theirs! now it all make sense! thanks
And you're extrapolating what must be a very obscure reference in the article into some kind of supporting evidence for your argument. All to support your words against, apparently, some perceived made-up position that you think I have.
According to this article, Huawei is barred from doing business with TSMC, and when Huawei violated the sanctions through a third party, TSMC cut off that third party and reported them.
Incentivizing partners is NOT 'your interests above theirs'. If the incentive is not good enough, they don't have to take it. If the incentive is good, then both your interests and theirs align. Neither is 'above' the other.
Now, if you steal by violating sanctions, and you wargame a blockade of their territory, you are being a threat. You are NOT offering them more of what they want until they happily offer you what you want. Instead, you are pushing them to act based on fear of you. THAT is 'your interests above theirs!' style of diplomacy and business negotiation.
I can tell you're not approaching this conversation with any form of sincerity in your arguments. I won't speculate about why you would do this. But I'm just not going to engage anymore.
I am not sure if I understand. You have a country on Earth where the vast majority of people is one kind and happily co-exists with 56 minorities.
Can you point me to another country (the size does not even matter) where this happens like this?
> Soon after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, 39 ethnic groups were recognized by the first national census in 1954. This further increased to 54 by the second national census in 1964, with the Lhoba group added in 1965. The last change was the addition of the Jino people in 1979, bringing the number of recognized ethnic groups to the current 56. The following are the 56 ethnic groups (listed by population) officially recognized by the People's Republic of China.
They do not.
And I would not say that Tibetans nor natives from Xinjiang are happy with their current situation. The central govt has actively promoted the domination of Han people in these regions for more than 30 years. It has a real cultural impact.
Another thing from GP: 8% of 1.5 billion is a huge number of people!
As I understand, Japan and Korea are the most ethnically homogeneous countries in the world.
You mean free market capitalism? That would be way to crazy.
Neverminding the race to AGI, these cards can power things like targeting system, drone swarms, and other weapon systems. In any military conflict that is increasingly powered by non-human devices, it will be the speed and quality of AI which matters most. Which is part software, and part hardware.
Perhaps more importantly, though, our development of AI could be significantly enhanced by cheaper access to NVIDIA's devices. Which would be the case if we didn't have to compete as much with China, who have positioned themselves as adversaries, to buy them.
Once there, those chips are used to build Western-branded products, Chinese-branded products and some, I'm sure, are re-exported to Russia.