US chip export restrictions may actually be an advantage for China's AI Infrastructure. Chinese companies are forced to speed up developing their own AI chips
> Compared with our initial baseline on the same hardware, we achieved a 3× improvement in end-to-end serving performance, reaching hardware efficiency and per-token cost comparable to mainstream NVIDIA GPUs. This demonstrates that Chinese chips can support frontier-model inference efficiently and economically at scale.
The other part is that it’s a bit of a meme here to say that the chip restriction is actually helping China (or shall I say, coordinated effort?). For once, we know that China has put a lot of pressure on the US to relax these controls multiple times. In addition to large chip smuggling networks (e.g. 22% of NVidia’s worldwide revenue magically comes from Singapore, and the ratio has been growing).
Lastly, assuming acceleration in AI (which we ARE seeing), there might not be time to China to catch up. The best estimate right now is that the first EUV chips from China will not come out before 2030. By that time who knows how powerful AI will be.
All I’m saying is that the discussion is so one sided and a bit baselesss with no nuance, that it seems either a meme/groupthink in the community or coordinated. If anything, the data suggests that the US should increase its export controls and better track the tech supply chain if it wants to further curb Chinese progress.
Or, to put it bluntly, you are a proponent of the trade war.
never heard of this 'talking point' . who is even saying this?
but your supposed corollary was
> China wasn’t working hard to build their own chips
kind of dishonest ?
The unnatural and sudden nature of the US chip embargo has galvanized the Chinese companies to speed up development. It makes economic sense to do so rather than pay inflated rates to essentially smuggle a necessary good, while never knowing if the embargo will be tightened and those under-the-table supply chains dry up as well.
Yes, there was a plan, but what was planned for 5 years from now is being done today, because if you wait 5 years, you'll be so far behind thanks to the effect of the embargo.
Because if the AI is just really good at writing software, I am not sure why China has to "catch up". Seems to me China can just treat AI like other technologies. Let the US pay most of the R&D costs, then come after and treat the technology as a commodity. Sell it better and cheaper and at scale.
I am not sure why it's a big deal for China if China is a few months behind the US in terms of the very frontier AI. Just like I'm not sure if it's a big deal which country has the biggest super computer in the world.
I am not inventing a winner take it all scenario, that is what driving the race.
If AI cannot stop nuclear ballistic missiles, then how does AI give the US power over China? Seems to me that after AI we have the same mutually assured destruction we have today. In which case America cannot really stop China from progressing or threaten China too much.
Seems to me being super human intelligent does not inherently guarantee power. Just like the smartest person in the world does not always win in a fist fight or a gun fight or war. I.e. Stephen Hawking might have been smart, but he did not have physical strength and power. Power and smarts are not always related.
And we already see AI’s super human ability in computer systems. It will be able to be Omni present and completely control every computer in any place, and bribe and social engineer and mimic any person digitally. All while doing in an instant what a team of humans would require years.
I’m really surprised by the lack of logical thinking in HN when it comes to China.
If someone is capable of doing something, and your goal is to prevent them from doing it, the worst thing you can do is to make it necessary for them to do it.
[edited for grammar]
Just leave that damned prophesied hero alone. Don’t banish them, don’t attempt to kill them while they’re young, or send them on an impossible quest. Your entitled meddling is exactly what puts them on their path. Some level of boring coexistence may have been an option.
Also note that grandparent comment is about both folklore and current events.
Winners: Huawei, SMIC, CXMT,Chinese ASML-competitors, OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta.
Losers: Chinese AI labs, Nvidia, AMD, TSMC, Micron, SK Hynix, Samsung, Intel.
Any company that depends on Nvidia hardware such as OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS are winners. It means less competition for Nvidia chips and services. If you think Nvidia chips are expensive now, imagine if Chinese companies can buy them freely. Also for American AI labs, it also means they can stay ahead of Chinese AI labs in compute capacity.
The American hardware makers lost the lobby fight in Washington.
In the short term maybe yes, in the long term, maybe they are the winners, they can build on top of cheap inference stack and eventually win on pricing
I don't think your information is entirely accurate.
Just logic.
Intel being up 100% has nothing to do with China market being restricted. They could be up 200% instead if the China market is free.
Nokia shares were also up after the iPhone got announced. Current share prices don't really mean much in rational future outcomes, just FOMO, vibes and speculation of clueless masses of investors. They can also swing wildly up/down.
Half-arsed export restrictions are the best of both worlds for these firms: enough of an incentive to take homegrown hardware seriously, yet not aggressive enough to cause meaningful handicap in the meantime.
What's the alternative other than a military/naval embargo?
In addition to Huawei who make the Ascend series that Ziphu are using, there are also at least a half dozen or so other Chinese companies also making their own AI accelerators.
Seems to work for them.
Almost everyone knew that these sanctions would backfire within a few years. You can't really put sanctions that have noticeable negative effects on bigger economies. They only work for small to medium economies. I believe sanctions on any economy in top 10 would fail.
Nvidia are likely more concerned about AMD taking market share, and I suspect that geopolitics will leave US/China GPUs with largely non overlpping customer bases.
That's not what's happening in the auto-industry, Chinese EVs are easily outselling American ones. Why would GPUs be any different?
This is another example where we might ask "why would it be any different?"
It'd be ironic if Europe ended up banning ASML (a Dutch company) from shipping to US instead!
Mark Carney said earlier today at the EU, "the goal is not self-sufficiency, but collective resilience." It is through collective action that they can find more resilience to our American Antics.
ASML's Dutch EUV machines depend on importing US made EUV light sources from California to build them, and depends on sales of their machines to the US to stay afloat since they're not exactly flying off the shelves domestically.
So maybe the EU is not that stupid and suicidal to cripple their economy further by cutting off one of their biggest pay-piggies for no reason.
In fact, as an anecdote to your hypothetically scenario, the US is the one with the most leverage since if they want, they can ban the export of EUV light sources to ASML and sell them instead to Canon and Nikon, sinking ASML and propping up Japan's semi industry instead, if relations sour and they see Japan as a warmer ally than the EU. Hypothetical.
FYI, the US is only 10-15% of ASML's sales. The bulk of their machines go to China, Taiwan and South Korea.
It's on US soil and subject to US laws and export controls. That's all that matters.
So until China solves the ASML problem, there won't be any flooding.
A bit late for that now that they are moving into early production with their own.
Which they are in progress on: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/how-china-built-its-manh...
China have been really squeezing all they can out of DUV machines, but I'm not sure how much node size really matters for AI competition - more of a cost issue (more chips/power for same FLOPs) than anything, and TSMC & NVIDIA's healthy profit margins need to be considered too.
What is the timeline like? 1 year? 5 years? 10 years?
Small numbers perhaps, but this is happening right now.
What will the numbers be in 5-10 years time? Who knows, but ASML took about 5 years to go from 20/yr to 100+/yr.
Of course politically the world may well be quite different in 5 years time, as may be the AI market.
We also don't know how small of nm chips they can manufacture. If it's 20nm, it's practically useless for advanced AI chips.
Now, the US is left out in the cold with little influence left, themselves now the ones with an anti-missile shortage.
You seem to misunderstand what Protectionism is. This is not an example of it not working. If anything, it is any example of it working. Because Protectionism is about protecting your industry from foreign competition - exactly what China decided to do.
Brazil is one to watch if they manage to achieve political stability, as is Nigeria if it can transition from being a petrostate.
So I think it can be summarized as “it all depends” and “skill issue.”
Slightly similar is US sanctions on NK & Russia causing a restriction of foreign currency - so they turned to cyber crime to get it...
You can’t really hurt a country that has a culture with a positive attitude toward growth.