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  • shabby - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    Looks like they're catching up to intel...
  • dullard - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    With Intel in the customer's eyes as the premium company, and SMIC as the low-cost company, that would leave very little room for AMD. Until AMD learns to sell themselves as a high-end premium product at a premium price, they risk losing out to companies like SMIC.
  • twtech - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    AMD no longer has their own fabs. And people are not looking at the current generation of Ryzen chips as a low-cost alternative - more like the faster alternative that happens to also be a bit cheaper.
  • Opencg - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    The real question is how will their 14nm perform. It's nice to have a nm but as we know there are many factors at play. Intels 14nm is still pushing higher single core than tsmc 7nm.

    Another question is how advanced of an architecture will they produce on this 14nm. I think amd is not going to liscense any current gen architecture in china anymore. It is largely an intellectual property and theft is a concern. This is the real area where china will struggle imo.
  • dullard - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link

    Fabs have nothing to do with it. If they produce a usable CPU, in China, at low Chinese prices, who then in Asia or Africa would buy AMD's CPUs? Why pay more unless AMD makes a highly compelling non-price based market niche for themselves?
  • dullard - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link

    Example: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/273063-amds-...
  • Alexvrb - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    SMIC is a fab company. AMD is a chip designer. The two aren't competitors in the slightest.

    Now, if you're talking about GF, yes - but GF has 12nm as well as various FD-SOI processes (including upcoming 12FDX). So they'll probably be OK for the foreseeable future.
  • bubblyboo - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    You sound like that one Intel fanboy that's always on the site.
  • nandnandnand - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    At least they have an appropriate username. Thanks for the incite, dullard.
  • Alexvrb - Sunday, August 18, 2019 - link

    *Insight
  • Alexvrb - Sunday, August 18, 2019 - link

    What? No way... Shabby may have made an ignorant comment rooted in what he recalled about AMD from over a decade ago, but there's NO comparison to Phynaz.
  • Santoval - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    Did you think you time traveled 10+ years to the past or are you trying to live up to your username? AMD no longer has a fab, and they haven't technically had one since 2009 that they span off their fab business as GlobalFoundries (GF). At that time AMD had a 34% stake in GF. In 2012 they sold their last ~9% share in GF, so since that time AMD is completely out of the fab business, with not even a small minority share in a fab.
  • dullard - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link

    Fabs have nothing to do with it. If they produce a usable CPU, in China, at low Chinese prices, who then in Asia or Africa would buy AMD's CPUs? Why pay more unless AMD makes a highly compelling non-price based market niche for themselves?
  • Jorgp2 - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    Now we just need AMD to do the same
  • Ironchef3500 - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link

    :)
  • Sychonut - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    Looking forward to their 14++++++ offerings.
  • webdoctors - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    Is 14nm Finfet equivalent to say 12nm at TSMC or equivalent to 28nm at TSMC?

    Not sure if everyone uses the same sizing terminology. 14nm seems amazing, MOST companies don't need the latest/greatest node, i.e. 5nm or 7nm. There's 100s of fabless chip design companies and outside of Qualcomm/Apple/Intel/Nvidia/AMD, most will love another cheap alternative to the bigname fabs.

    Should really help bring down BOM costs for pretty much everyone, from ICs in HDDs, TVs , tablets to cars.
  • ksec - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    Not 12nm, not even 16nm. ( TSMC's 12nm is basically TSMC's 16nm+++, they can't use 14nm due to how it rhymes with the word Dead in Chinese )

    The 14nm will be similar or even worst than Smasung's first 14nm, but still likely to be better than TSMC's 20n.m Not sure if that answer your question.
  • levizx - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link

    Funny you mention that, seeing the actual Chinese foundry is using what can't be used.
  • Azethoth - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    Neat, developed "entirely in house" by their hacking and industrial espionage group!
  • name99 - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    Industrial espionage from WHOM? I don’t think China wants to steal Intel’s process tech...
    So even if they DID steal it from Samsung or TSMC (something I highly doubt), what’s it to you?
  • Alexvrb - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    You're right I think they should steal tech from Korea, Japan, the US, and Europe, and then undercut all of their firms. Run these outfits out of business one by one (like they've already done to much of the manufacturing sector). That really would be SO good.

    "What's it to you?" - Man who can't see past his own nostrils
  • ZolaIII - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    What if I told you that so considered western world stole everything he got (language, culture, tehnitas, craftwerk...), falsified history & made rights to protect the so impaired order? Protecting something that never belongs to you just to make profits. Isn't that a criminal? Now Ih other civilisation copies that (even in its own culture copying isn't anything bad) then they are bad and need to be satanised for it just like the real owners. But the thrue is those things belong to the world whole as it is.
  • Notmyusualid - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    @ name99 - you, Sir, are deluded.
  • levizx - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link

    And you are excellent, you should be TSMC's head Attorney.
  • limitedaccess - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    SMIC poached from Samsung the person Samsung poached from TSMC.

    https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/08/former...

    https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=133246...
  • levizx - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link

    And TSMC said nothing to this. You guys surely know better than TSMC who actually sued SMIC in the past, multiple times.
  • voicequal - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    " so last year SMIC acquired an EUV step-and-scan system from ASML for $120 million, which was to be delivered in 2019."

    ASML better hold on to their hats. Selling leading-edge tech to a company that has aspirations to develop their own in house fab processes in a country that has shown no limit to what it will do to extract trade secrets from its foreign "partners".
  • vladx - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    Unlikely, lithography hardware is very hard to reverse engineer
  • ZolaIII - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    Buying cheap & having slaves is perfectly OK, not giving them a chance to fulfil their life's, that's the democatic way. If by chance those get aware & try to rise above it then they need to be stopped by all means.
  • voicequal - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    That is a highly romanticized view of the situation.

    Here's a different perspective:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora
  • ZolaIII - Sunday, August 18, 2019 - link

    That's romanthism try with 50 real war's in the last 50 years in which USAF killed real people under false pretensions and for their interest.
  • sa666666 - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link

    Hmm, found the Chinese apologist. Everything you wrote in this entire thread is basically absolving China of all wrongdoings.
  • ZolaIII - Tuesday, August 20, 2019 - link

    I never even once mentioned China & certainly didn't thought only about it when I wrote. You feel the guilt for national wrong doings of your own nation? Well don't feel it only for things you did.
  • sa666666 - Tuesday, August 20, 2019 - link

    It's obvious you're talking about China, which can do no wrong in your eyes. Also, I feel no "guilt" whatsoever, as I'm not even from the US. So how does that fit into your narrative?
  • ZolaIII - Tuesday, August 20, 2019 - link

    It doesn't fit at all. Why should it? It's only obvious to those uneducated one's that suppose things & aren't aware of essence. I might tell you a story about democracy that sent all of it's legions into war. The war that lasted for a 100 years against people who didn't know or believed in slavery. After those 100 years there whose no winners but the peace has emerged & all the Ilirs become citizens & free men & that made much more of an democracy than it ever whose. It will happen again.
  • yeeeeman - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    I see Trump has brainwashed a lot of people here. While USA was reaping the benefits of capitalism and enjoying the low cost labour of China people, China people worked. And they worked their asses off for a living and by doing this they learned to improve, to get creative and make their own businesses, while Americans learned to eat more McDonald's and watch more tv shows. That is called falling behind because of lazyness and ignorance. It was to be expected that China would become a power from day one when everybody moved their manufacturing in China for higher profits.
  • eddman - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    "It was to be expected that China would become a power from day one when everybody moved their manufacturing in China for higher profits."

    This is exactly it. Western countries moved almost all of their electronics manufacturing to china to take advantage of the cheap work force and yet are surprised that the country, which is not afraid of or answers to anyone, has put all that western cash injection to good use, copied their technologies, and now has become a global power.

    Western countries themselves transformed china to what it is today. They did it to themselves; all they can do now it tolerate it.
  • senttoschool - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    In addition, the Chinese people actually value science, math, and engineering. In American schools, you're ridiculed as a nerd/geek if you're an intellectual. In China, you're worshipped. This is why China mints 7 million engineers/year.
  • s.yu - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    That's up until high school but no further.
  • Santoval - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    ASML's EUV step-and-scan systems cost ~$120 million largely because they are insanely complex and time intensive to design, develop and manufacture, while even assembling them is anything but trivial. The Zeiss optics (not lenses, mirrors - at the wavelength these systems operate all lenses are opaque) alone require grinding and polishing down to variations of a few tens of nanometers at most.

    Even if the Chinese fully reverse engineered these systems (which is virtually impossible, but let's assume they did) and came up with a complete design, manufacturing them truly be a feat. The reverse engineering, manufacturing and optimization process combined should take 5 years at a minimum. By this time ASML would have developed and released systems which were two to three generations more advanced, so they wouldn't worry too much. The Chinese would have spent tens of millions and by the time they released the clone of that ASML system it would be already be nearly obsolete.
  • MASSAMKULABOX - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    They HAVE to develop their own tho, its a matter of national security. As DT(potus) could decide to cut off their access to western tech, completely. Its already started with china producing their own design x86 (AFAIK) cpu's, own ram ..most mobos . What the next 5-10 years will bring is worrying , manuf moves from China to Vietnam, India Burma Bang-Ladesh then ?
  • vladx - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    No they don't, ASML is a Dutch company which doesn't do any R&D in US to be liable to a US ban.
  • voicequal - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    ASML must be so confident about their next generation tech that they can openly provide current leading tech to an arguably aggressive would-be competitor and still expect be ahead after 5 years.
  • Zizy - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link

    The only would-be competitor to ASML is Nikon, or some other technology (like NIL).
    China gains nothing by competing here. Cutting off access means their 5 year roadmap gets hurt. By the time problems arise policy will change several times. This isn't like near instant pain of losing access to chips or software.
    China will play in this market only if they see some value in getting strategic dominance - but that means surpassing ASML, not just being a cheaper clone for home market. I don't see that happening - the only reasonable scenario could be China achieving breakthrough in NIL, which would then replace ordinary litho.
  • ZolaIII - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link

    To be quite honest even with second generation scenes (this years model) all EUV problems aren't ironed out.
  • ZolaIII - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link

    Scanners*
  • levizx - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link

    Maybe you should tell TSMC that? Surely you know soooooooo much better than their lawyers, who in the past actually got SMIC to payout for infringements.
  • Death666Angel - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    No one cares that Italy is now in Greece, according to that map? :D
  • TesseractOrion - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    Well spotted Death666Angel! :-)
  • ironwing - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    That totally distracted me from finishing the article. San Jose being somewhere in Kansas or Nebraska I could chalk up to just centering the marker on the U.S. but getting the wrong peninsula for Italy is beyond the pale (literally, the pale is in Ireland).
  • movax2 - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link

    China has become an absolute leader of motor vehicle production since 2009. It's matter of time when they would start to dominate a market of semiconductors. Want it or not.
  • RaduR - Wednesday, August 21, 2019 - link

    Zhaoxin CPU is x86 VIA (defunct Cyrix ) based.
    Haygo is a n x86 CPU based on AMD Ryzen

    Now they have everyting they need to manufacture it and reduce dependency on Intel/AMD and US IP embargo.

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