Chinese Chip Designers Slow Down Processors To Dodge US Sanctions (arstechnica.com) 55
Cutting-edge semiconductor companies tweak specs to comply with export controls. From a report: Alibaba and start-up Biren Technology are tweaking their most advanced chip designs to reduce processing speeds and avoid US-imposed sanctions aimed at suppressing Chinese computing power. Alibaba, Biren, and other Chinese design houses have spent years and millions of dollars creating the blueprints for advanced processors to power the country's next generation of supercomputers, artificial intelligence algorithms and data centers. These are produced offshore by the world's biggest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. But sanctions announced by Washington last month that cap the processing power of any semiconductor shipped into China without a license have thrown a wrench into their ambitions.
Both Alibaba and Biren had already conducted expensive test runs of their latest chips at TSMC when Washington unveiled the controls. The rules have forced the companies to halt further production and make changes to their designs, according to six people briefed on the situation. They mark another blow for Alibaba, the tech group founded by billionaire Jack Ma. Its shares have lost 80 percent of their value since Beijing canceled sister group Ant's initial public offering two years ago. The group's new chip was to be its first graphics processing unit and was close to being unveiled, according to three people close to the matter. The US export controls extend to third-country chip manufacturers because almost all semiconductor fabrication plants use American components or software, meaning the rules may amount to an embargo on all high-end processors entering China. Washington earlier restricted such imports from California chip companies Nvidia and AMD.
Both Alibaba and Biren had already conducted expensive test runs of their latest chips at TSMC when Washington unveiled the controls. The rules have forced the companies to halt further production and make changes to their designs, according to six people briefed on the situation. They mark another blow for Alibaba, the tech group founded by billionaire Jack Ma. Its shares have lost 80 percent of their value since Beijing canceled sister group Ant's initial public offering two years ago. The group's new chip was to be its first graphics processing unit and was close to being unveiled, according to three people close to the matter. The US export controls extend to third-country chip manufacturers because almost all semiconductor fabrication plants use American components or software, meaning the rules may amount to an embargo on all high-end processors entering China. Washington earlier restricted such imports from California chip companies Nvidia and AMD.
What is the limit of the cpus? (Score:2)
What makes these faster chips illegal? Are they literally saying "you cant do math over this speed" in the law?
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I'm sure they'll have the firmware set to inject 10 NOP calls per clock cycle during certification, with a free firmware update 6 months after they've been certified.
"5nm masking? No, our chips use 5.1nm masking so they don't fall in the sanctioned list."
Re:What is the limit of the cpus? (Score:4, Interesting)
Weapons. The Russians are taking computer chips from Microwave ovens and putting them in missiles.
The US wants to make sure that the chips that end up in Russia are S.L.O.W.
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Are the kinds of chips going into weapons very fast anyway? Seems like they want hardened designs, which generally means a larger process node. The smaller and faster the processor runs, the lower the energy needed to randomly flip a bit becomes.
The kinds of chips that are banned here are high end ASICs for AI and the like, with a little management CPU tacked on. I wonder if Russia has much use for them, militarily. Maybe AI for targeting or image processing from spy satellites.
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Yes. The world needs a more globally diversified semiconductor industry. No single nation should have control over who gets what.
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But the market tends to produce monopolies. Especially in this case where the fixed costs are extremely high, even for the low-end, needs highly educated employees, and any competition means margins so low that it's simply not worth doing.
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It's worth doing if an enemy state decides they'd like to cripple your economy. I expect China will prioritize developing domestic replacements for whatever American components TSMC uses. Some other countries might like to help out their efforts too. Even Europe might.
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If you think that Europe is interested in helping China out then I have a bridge to sell you.
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'Tis a gift to be simple.
Re:What is the limit of the cpus? (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes these faster chips illegal? Are they literally saying "you cant do math over this speed" in the law?
Here's an article from a month ago that has more details
https://www.protocol.com/enter... [protocol.com]
No FET transistors made with "14 nm process" or better technology, which is a FET with a gate size of 20 nanometers or smaller.
No memory with gate sizes of 18 nanometer or smaller.
No flash storage with 128 layers or more.
No fab gear or any other equipment that aids with photolithography.
Plus no services or tools to use any of the above.
So in a sense, yes, we are saying it's against the law to give them the hardware needed to do math faster.
They will eventually figure out how to build the fabs to make such hardware themselves, the same way we had to figure it out, but they are hoping the development and design process takes longer than signing a purchase order, and slow the progress down.
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Export restrictions start at 5 GFLOPS or more with 32-bit memory accesses (or wider). If you have a CPU that fast then it's a controlled munition and there is some complicated paperwork if you develop it here in the US and have any foreign workers. Things also get messy if you import it and re-export it, so there is a certain desire to carefully craft consumer electronics such that they avoid the export restrictions. It makes it easier to sell the products globally instead of having them stuck in China.
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5+5 = .. ...
.
you added it too fast. jail for you!
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The rule is you can't use US technology to make parts going to China that exceed a certain performance or which use certain technologies. Since almost all chip foundries, including ones in Taiwan, use some US tech somewhere, that amounts to a limit on performance of almost any chip going into China.
The problem is this will backfire in the long run. Chinese money is as desirable as any other, and while it will slow down tech going into China in the short term, companies like TSMC and others will now be hel
Re: What is the limit of the cpus? (Score:2)
I somewhat doubt Taiwan has any interest in helping improve china's access to technology. If the US didn't push that on TSMC, then its own government likely would. They even go further than that, they don't allow their own citizens who have the knowledge needed for this stuff to emigrate to China.
The only other major non-US player at the high end is Samsung, and I really doubt they have any interest in helping China either.
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I somewhat doubt Taiwan has any interest in helping improve china's...
If Taiwan steps in, they risk further antagonizing China. They risk alienating billions on billions of foreign investment, which will go to where the least restrictions on sales markets are. No, is Taiwan was going to stop TSMC, they would have done it long before the US did. And TSMC themselves don't care. TSMC isn't Taiwan. Before the US stepped in, TSMC was already helping China. They are a publicly traded company who's sole purpose is to make money for their shareholders and most of the major shar
Re: What is the limit of the cpus? (Score:2)
If Taiwan steps in, they risk further antagonizing China. They risk alienating billions on billions of foreign investment, which will go to where the least restrictions on sales markets are. No, is Taiwan was going to stop TSMC, they would have done it long before the US did.
You obviously don't keep up with current events then. Actually this isn't even current, it's past tense as this has been going on for some time.
https://www.datacenterdynamics... [datacenterdynamics.com]
https://www.reuters.com/breaki... [reuters.com]
https://www.reuters.com/techno... [reuters.com]
And yeah, TSMC doesn't really care about China.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/1... [cnbc.com]
More than half of its revenue comes from the US, where a whopping 10% comes from China. TSMC also likely isn't happy with the Chinese government poaching its employees. Any time they're giv
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1) Large companies here (Taiwan) have influence over the government, but not the power that many western countries are use. When the government here lays down a law (which they did.) about talent poaching and hiring to or from mainland China, they follow it.
2) TSMC, at least from what I've been reading (focustaiwan.tw, a government news agency and taiwannews.com.tw, an independent news source) they are moving
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Confusing? (Score:2)
"...shipped into China..."
"...imports from California chip companies Nvidia and AMD."
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Yeah, they could've have done a better summary. After all, why should Chinese chip makers care about US sanctions?
Sounds like the problem is that Chinese companies are designing powerful processors, but there aren't any Chinese fabs capable of actually producing them.
And the countries such as Taiwan, that normally produce them, are honoring the US sanctions.
Do you want a Taiwan invasion? (Score:2)
Because that's how you get a Taiwan invasion!
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The factory in Taiwan is useless for China to confiscate it wont work
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Not quite sure why someone modded this flamebait. I suppose you don't understand what is being discussed or how anything works. Hint: You can't sanction China for selling to China, which would be exactly what happens after an invasion.
Will increase research into distributed computing (Score:2)
Re:Will increase research into distributed computi (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's a place where China has done substantial research already. They commonly hold a sizable number of spots on the Top500, some of them even with their own chips with loads of little cores.
Motorcycles, Again (Score:2)
Re: Motorcycles, Again (Score:3)
Yeah but before everyone knew you could tune the hell out of turbo 4 cylinders it was *really* fun to stomp on some V8s and watch these people go from not believing a 4cyl could be fast to acting like their car eas broken or something as the fall behind.
In 2006 a Mustang GT made 300 horsepower and 300ftlbs of torque. I had an FIA homologated 2006 Evolution IX with a turbo 2.0 running 35psi built to the gills and a low 4.6 to 1 final drive with active differentials laying down around 550 horsepower the wheel
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How long before Chinese chipmakers begin trottling their CPU cores but pack more in each die?
Since 2016 [wikipedia.org]. (Result) [top500.org]
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This is more like the economic games we played with the USSR - much more serious, and carefully designed to hamstring them without triggering a shooting war. Using economic pressure (can we please just admit that it’s a form of warfare) to communicate our displeasure with them going back to having a full-scale
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Was thinking the same thing. Just adjust the datasheet to limit the maximum clock speed, or take a single substrate that would normally carry 16 chiplets and have it only carry 8, with a little bridge between two of them.
You would hope that the law was well written enough to cope with that, but as you say, it's happened before...
I am ignorant here (Score:2)
How are these sanctions actually written, are there actual rules around things like IPC efficiency or is it just operations per second? How is the 'speed' of chip determined, is it by its potential as binned or is it by what clock signal parts is specified to be paired with?
What I am getting at is - can one of the big fabs build some modernish chip design on a modernish process say 10-14nm and sell it to China on a pinky-swear they won't turn the clock up faster than 2GHz, when it would run perfectly fine a
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Step away ... (Score:2)
Expect unintended consequences (Score:2)
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China is dependent on foreign companies [cnbc.com] for current fab tech. They can work it out [brookings.edu], but it's not going to be overnight. Intel has proven that it's not trivial :)
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I will be quite surprised if China manages to build an indigenous top-tier semiconductor manufacturing capability. And impressed. Their GDP per capita ranks right in between Bulgaria and Malaysia.
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I actually read your link. That Brookings article does NOT say that China can work it out. It ends with the conclusion that there are massive challenges ahead and the way is uncertain for everyone.
Hmm, should have linked the other half of the sentence. Anyway, they're not idiots, they're just behind and their culture retards progress. But then, so does ours, it's just better at attracting the immigrants we need to get it going again. They will work it out, but who knows how long from now?
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Re: Expect unintended consequences (Score:2)
Brookings and CNBC are pretty much pure propaganda outlets at this point. So, I recommend looking elsewhere or using your own brain.
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Yeah, but everyone else is dependent on foreign companies for fab tech, except for the EU which is where it comes from. There are some decent fabs using other tech in Japan and the US, but the cutting edge stuff all comes from ASML in The Netherlands.
And a "tweaking utility" will suddenly appear (Score:1)
How are the sanctions specified? (Score:2)
If the sanctions target the fab process, then a redesign of the chip shouldn't matter. If the design of the chip matters, then the US has to trust that the chip designers are telling the truth. Similarly if the chip characteristics or capabilities matter. Just like how it's challenging for a consumer to tell if a manufacturer is fudging benchmark results, how can the US tell if a manufacturer is being honest in characterizing a processor?
And the Chinese response will be ... (Score:2)
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