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United States China Government Hardware

US To Reportedly Sanction 200 More Chinese Chip Firms (tomshardware.com) 80

The U.S. is preparing to impose new sanctions targeting 200 Chinese chipmakers and potentially restricting the export of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). The move is intended to further hinder China's semiconductor and AI advancements. Tom's Hardware reports: The update sheds light on the Biden administration's recent efforts to impose stricter regulations on chip manufacturers in China. The latest swarm of sanctions reportedly targets roughly 200 Chinese firms. US companies are prohibited from exporting select technologies or products to the targeted firms. The report suggests that the US Department of Commerce aims to push these new regulations before the Thanksgiving break - or November 28. Neither the Department of Commerce nor the Chamber of Commerce responded to Reuters' request for comments.

Moreover, another wave of sanctions is set to follow in December - targeting the export of HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) - primarily to choke China's advance in the AI domain. The impacts of these restrictions are materializing given that Huawei's Kirin SoCs and Ascend AI accelerators will reportedly remain stuck at 7nm technology until 2026 as SMIC fails to procure cutting-edge Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) machines from ASML.

US To Reportedly Sanction 200 More Chinese Chip Firms

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  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @05:22AM (#64972993)

    ProTip: Protectionism only works if the other side cannot step up. The Chinese can. Unfortunately. Hence this move is as stupid as they come.

    • ProTip: Protectionism only works if the other side cannot step up. The Chinese can. Unfortunately.

      To an extent, but so far no one but ASML have cracked EUV lithography. Intel have pushed DUV further than anyone, working well at about 10nm, but that's probably as far as it'll go. The only alternative is Canon's NIL, which has just launched after 20 years in development but is as yet unproven.

      China is very good at electronics manufacturing, and competing is very hard because the deep, complex supply chains, e

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        China does not need to replicate what ASML can do to be able to compete.

        • China does not need to replicate what ASML can do to be able to compete.

          If the Chinese want to compete with anybody that makes 7 nm, 5 nm and 3 nm nodes they are going to have to replicate what ASML does with their EUV lithography machines lithography or independently develop a functional equivalent if they can't buy EUV machines from ASML. As things stand Beijing seems really pissed over the Netherlands ordering ASML to cease maintaining even the older DUV machines they already sold to China so I expect there is quite a lot of fire where that smoke comes from [asiafinancial.com]. Not that I'm hol

          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            China wants to compete. Soundbits like "7nm, 5nm and 3nm" are irrelevant. With the current pathetic state of software, they can probably do better in most cases if they just focus on the software side. They will certainly be able to do good enough.

            • China wants to compete. Soundbits like "7nm, 5nm and 3nm" are irrelevant. With the current pathetic state of software, they can probably do better in most cases if they just focus on the software side.

              What evidence is there of that? Last I heard their forks of Linux have all been shitty, and every piece of software I have ever got from China (they often come with shitty little pieces of hardware like micro-keyboards) has been absolute trash even if you put language issues aside.

              • by gweihir ( 88907 )

                Well, in that case there is no need to worry and all these sanctions are not needed anyways, are they?

                My take is that most commercial trash is commercial trash in China as well. But there is not just the commercial trash.

            • So far they haven't. Rather the contrary.

              • by gweihir ( 88907 )

                In that case, why the sanctions?

                • To prevent them from getting high technology to compensate for that they can't write software.

                  I'm not sure how you're reasoning here.

                  • by gweihir ( 88907 )

                    That "argument" is just bullshit. The bad quality of the reasoning applied makes it obvious this is domestic political posturing, not anything that is intended to have a real effect.

          • by leptons ( 891340 )
            You probably didn't notice it because you have your head up your ass, but there has been significant investment in creating chip fabs inside the U.S. - no we are not 100% there yet, but there is progress and huge investments happening. Go look up "the CHIPS act" of 2022. Just because you don't think it's happening doesn't mean it isn't, because well... you're an idiot.

            https://www.semiconductors.org... [semiconductors.org]
        • Compete where? The issue is what are you trying to achieve. Are you trying to prevent China from having the capability to build advanced weapons or mobile infrastructure? Then you're absolutely right.

          Are you trying to prevent China from competing with Intel or NVIDIA, then you're absolutely wrong. Some industries rely heavily on cutting edge silicon manufacture. Most industries don't. You can't lump the entire country together in the one phrase "able to compete".

          • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            It will be interesting to see what sanctions do to things like China's AI efforts. American companies seem to have decided that throwing computing power at AI is the key to success. That's very rarely been the case in computing. If restricting China's access to processors encourages them to put more emphasis on developing better algorithms or innovative hardware it very well could be just shoving them into a big win.

        • China does not need to replicate what ASML can do to be able to compete.

          To compete how? They can solve the computation problem for their research clusters by throwing literally twice as much hardware at it, but they can't solve the problem that their chips are slower than ours so nobody will want to buy them. Who are they going to sell to, Russia? Nobody else is desperate enough to buy old technology. And Russia is having cash flow problems...

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's a hell of a gamble to assume that China won't develop competitive technology.

        The have in telecoms, radio, batteries, vehicles, self driving, aircraft, weapons, and are getting close on rocketry. In fact their space programme has done some firsts and NASA is now rushing to get anything at all back from Mars because it looks like China will be first to do that as well.

        Oh yeah and Wukong was a AAA game, pretty well received, so now all the western game devs and panicking. Actually Chinese GPUs are coming

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          "Gamble"? I would call it "utterly stupid". Because, first, they do not actually have to develop the same tech. They just have to develop something that works as well or even only is "good enough". With the current bloat and inefficiency in software, they probably can make better products with worse base-tech if they simply focus on that. Remember that currently 10 year old CPUs still run most things just fine and that is the 10...14nm generation.

        • The have in telecoms, radio, batteries, vehicles,

          Yes.

          self driving,

          Debatable. As in they are looking to be competitive in an area of self driving that I think is fundamentally flawed and won't succeed.

          aircraft,

          Kinda, but only kinda. The Comac 919 is a big step forward, but it's still a bit behind, 10% or so in fuel burn compared to the A320 Neo. There are only so many gains to be had, they will catch up eventually. It does of course rely on LEAP turbofans for that as well, so it has state of the art western

          • Let's also not forget that China's lead in telecoms came from taking IP from Nortel. They didn't have to do any of the work to get to near that point, they copied all of the basic research. That lead is temporary unless they manage to copy a bunch of data from someone else for the next surge. I wouldn't rule that out of course, but the idea that China has superior research or engineering is daft, and that is what it takes to move tech forwards. The battery chemistry research is also mostly happening outside

            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Let's also not forget that China's lead in telecoms came from taking IP from Nortel.

              That's just an outright lie. Sorry drinkypoo, but it is.

              They were accused of copying some head files that were used for interoperability. If that was enough to destroy Nortel, their tech was shit anyway. And weren't we on the side of headers and trivial code not being copywritable anyway, as Sun found out when trying to sue Google over Java source files?

              That didn't get them ahead, R&D did. Huawei have many key patents on telecomms tech, especially wireless. It can't be stolen because they invented it, i

        • They haven't really though. Yes, in telecoms, audio and radio, where fairly low tech electronics are used, but they're not doing great on the cutting edge. Never have, and they have problems doing so in large part due to a culture and society which rewards shortcuts and cheating, and at the same time punishes successful entrepreneurs.

          In GPU's, games, software and the like, they are not coming along at all. Yes, there is Wukong (which uses UE5, but rather badly), and some gachas, but not much else. Again, th

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            5G and WiFi 7 are cutting edge. 4096-QAM is insane. They did a lot of work with operating below the noise floor as well.

            • No consumer RF is cutting edge, except satellite, so no. What's cutting edge today are semiconductors in CPU's, GPU's, NN engines and the like. Software such as OS'es, Deep Learning (and derivatives such as LLM's), active cybersecurity efforts. Additive machining of durable materials, and the like.

              In military it gets more complex, but outside of some material sciences and drones China hasn't really shown much which is up with the rest. There are a lot of unknowns here though, as they have new stealth planes

              • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                I don't think you know a lot about consumer RF... It's not just the technology itself, it's the ability to cost reduce it and make it reliable on consumer channels, and then mass produce the chips.

                • I don't think you're getting the point. The claim was that denying China access to cutting edge technology will lead to them making it themselves.

                  Cutting edge technology. Not mass produced consumer goods.

                  China will continue to be capable of manufacturing mass produced consumer goods, and iteratively improve on it. That's not in question, and nobody except you pretends that's even something we're actually talking about.

                  What they will not be able to make are NN specific high performance chips, capable operati

  • by Archtech ( 159117 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @06:46AM (#64973061)

    All these sanctions and tariffs come oddly from people who are always expatiating about the marvels of free market capitalism and free trade.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      They do not come from the free traders, very few of which support el Bunko. They do, however, come from the rich folk who do support him knowing full well how they will profit from a captive pop.

    • All these sanctions and tariffs come oddly from people who are always expatiating about the marvels of free market capitalism and free trade.

      ... and who can't shut up about how they 'thrive on competition'. Well boys, here's some Grade-A competition, now stop whining and THRIVE!!

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It makes more sense if you append "for me, not you" to the end of their sentences.

    • All these sanctions and tariffs come oddly from people who are always expatiating about the marvels of free market capitalism and free trade.

      You're not wrong but that doesn't mean national security doesn't exist or matter. It's all about priorities and one priority is simply above the other.

    • The time when republicans were capitalist-free-market and democrats were socialist-protectionist is at least 20 years in the rearview mirror. The distinctions are different nowadays.
  • As long as our country is losing phenomenal amounts of money to this incredible boondoggle, why are we encouraging them to avoid sharing our pain?

  • Everything - and I mean everything - in China is owned by the Chinese government. If one Chinese owned company is allowed to import such chips, they will transfer them to others.

  • It's freaking ridiculous the US is telling others they are not to export HBM chips, even though they are not even made by or in the US. The chinese have just as much right to those as others. Stop bullying others.

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