Lind5

Actually, this is true. The big question is what's going on behind the scenes. China has been busy building up its own supply chain after the U.S. closed off shipments of any U.S.-based R&D to Huawei last summer. It also has made statements that Taiwan is part of China since then, which has left the U.S. without an advanced-node fab. Intel is at least a node behind both Samsung and TSMC, and the U.S. has no trusted foundry on U.S. soil capable of 7nm volume production, let alone 5nm or 3nm.

For the U.S., this is a potential disaster. If China marches into Taiwan, the U.S. will be left with no advanced-node manufacturing and it will have lost the technology race. It would take at least four to six years to recover, and by that time China would own the market. This is very scary for the U.S., which needs to develop AI chips at the most advanced nodes because density equals more accelerators and other types of processing elements. Even that isn't enough, which is why companies developing AI chips are stitching together chips that are larger than a single reticle. (https://semiengineering.com/the-risk-of-two-supply-chains/)

It goes further than that, too. The DoD needs AI chips, too. In the past, the DoD relied on older nodes. That's changed because it needs transistor density for AI. More MACs equals more performance. On top of all of this, TSMC owns the bulk of the fabless market. So this will happen. The big question is who's funding this move.

Good background info:New Security Risks Create Need For Stealthy Chips https://semiengineering.com/new-security-risks-create-need-f... Determining What Really Needs To Be Secured In A Chip https://semiengineering.com/determining-what-really-needs-to...

While most of these systems work well enough to identify a person, there are a number of well-known ways to defeat them. One is simply to apply newer technology to cracking algorithms used inside these devices. Improvements in processing power from one generation to the next, and a proliferation of information about where the vulnerabilities are, applies to biometrics as well as other technologies.How Secure Is Your Face? https://semiengineering.com/how-secure-is-your-face/

Where Is The Edge? https://semiengineering.com/where-is-the-edge/

This is a whole new layer of compute and storage between the cloud and the endpoint devices. It's still a client/server model, but it provides more control over the data closer to the source. This has a number of benefits. One is that you can control who sees that data. Second, response time is faster. And third, you can get rid of more useless data much more quickly and cheaply closer to the source of that data than if you have to send it.

https://semiengineering.com/chip-aging-accelerates/ “We are seeing an acceleration of aging where the chip breaks down. “They may be missing clocks or there is extra jitter. Or there is dielectric breakdown. And anytime something breaks down, there is an avalanche of new things you have to worry about. A lot of aging models advanced in an era where electronics were used sporadically. Now chips are running all the time. Inside of a chip, blocks are heating up, so aging is accelerated. From that you get all types of weird phenomena. A lot of companies have not revised their aging models, either. They assumed these devices would last three to four years, but they may fail sooner. And given that design margins from the beginning can be flimsy, aging can throw them off.”

Sadly, another "the sensor did it" scenario. https://semiengineering.com/dirty-data-is-the-sensor-malfunc... The tragic example of the Lion Air crash of a new Boeing MAX 8 aircraft, which on Oct. 29 killed all aboard, may be heading toward “the sensor did it” category. The black box recovered from the flight showed inconsistent data from one of the two angle-of-attack (AOA) sensors. With one half of the data apparently incorrect, it was enough to trigger this plane’s anti-stall system into a nose down action, which the pilots wrestled all the way into the Java sea.

Relevant material published this morning https://semiengineering.com/quantum-issues-and-progress/

also addressing this Open-Source RISC-V Hardware And Security https://semiengineering.com/security-and-open-source-hardwar...

While RISC-V continues to grow, there are still gaps that may limit where RISC-V is used in designs https://semiengineering.com/risc-v-inches-toward-the-center/

The hardware is now part of the attack surface, as well, and that will make it much harder to design chips that can withstand attacks years after they are initially designed. The attackers are getting smarter, and at this point anything appears to be a possible targethttps://semiengineering.com/designing-hardware-for-security/

as designs shrink to 7/5nm and beyond, quantum effects are emerging as a more widespread and significant problem, and one that ultimately will affect everyone working at those nodes. https://semiengineering.com/quantum-effects-at-7-5nm/

Quantum computing is coming. How quickly isn’t clear, although the first versions of this technology are expected to begin showing up over the next few years, with the rollout across more markets and applications expected by the middle of the next decade. https://semiengineering.com/quantum-computing-becoming-real/

There's no shortage of issues https://semiengineering.com/unsolved-litho-issues-at-7nm/ https://semiengineering.com/chip-aging-accelerates/

Mapping is important application for LiDAR technology. There's going to be a lot of growth in that space https://semiengineering.com/lidar-goes-back-to-the-future/

Momentum is definitely building on this, although still very much in the R&D phase https://semiengineering.com/a-new-memory-contender/

There are still some pieces that need to come together on this https://semiengineering.com/issues-and-tradeoffs-for-euv/ and https://semiengineering.com/unsolved-litho-issues-at-7nm/

I think Whole Foods/Amazon will provide some very stiff competition in this market

Here's some good overview type articles on ML: https://semiengineering.com/the-great-machine-learning-race/ https://semiengineering.com/machine-learnings-popularity-gro...

Employees like the urban work/eat/live concept with mass transit at their fingertips. San Jose will be great for that, especially with BART eventually coming. It will be interesting to see what happens with downtown rents.. I know there are a lot of new developments going up

Semiconductor Engineering http://semiengineering.com/

Gluten-free steel cut oats, almonds, walnuts and either blueberries or apples. I buy a 4 pack of the Red Mill oats and slivered almonds on Amazon. Much cheaper. Blueberries are frozen Whole Foods. For the oats, I make from scratch (18 minutes) but you can make a batch and keeps in fridge for a few days

Looking forward to part 2 of this series

should crack down on non-professional posts

Pain Points at 7nm also an interesting read http://semiengineering.com/pain-points-at-7nm/

I hear you.. but I'm guessing there is actually a larger number of people that would benefit from the bay area being less congested than the number of folks riding a bullet train to LA

Great...so our south bay becomes even more ridiculously congested. We need so much better mass transit to accommodate all this growth. Instead of spending billions on a bullet train to Los Angeles, can't we invest that money in better mass transit in the bay area?