China’s top chipmaker may be in hot water as US lawmakers call for further sanctions after Huawei ‘breakthrough’::Shares in SMIC, China’s largest contract chipmaker, plunged on Thursday, after two US congressmen called on the White House to further restrict export sales to the company.

  • Blapoo@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    67
    arrow-down
    18
    ·
    1 year ago

    “Hot water”? They seem pretty content about the breakthrough.

    Man, US penalizing foreign breakthroughs is pathetic.

    • CosmoNova@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      48
      arrow-down
      24
      ·
      1 year ago

      You don‘t get it. Huawei and the CCP made some propaganda about how the sanctions totally don‘t work and claimed they were able to produce a chip that is 5 years behind. It is however more likely it was a big bluff and they didn’t produce it themselves. So their plan of saying „Your sanctions only force us to innovate and will hurt you in the end so you might aswell lift them“ completely backfired. The US saw their propaganda and probably judt thought the sanctions weren‘t hard enough if China keeps getting chips supplied to them. Hot water is a nice euphemism for what China is in right now.

      • j4yt33@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        27
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Where do you get that from? How do you know the chip is 5 years behind? In the article it says that people were surprised how advanced it is. Genuinely curious

        • GenEcon@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          12
          ·
          1 year ago

          The chip design is top notch. The manufacturing is 3 generations behind. Its manufactured in 7nm. Current state of the art is 3nm. So more like 3–4 years and not 5, but still behind.

          We can’t say anything for certain though, since besides the manufacturing width, yields are important too. If they manage 7nm in a high yield its a completely different story than 7nm with a low yield. In a capitalist system no one would go 7nm with a low yield, but in Chinas system economical viability isn’t a priority.

          • HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            11
            ·
            1 year ago

            The real thing that matters is if they reach “good enough”. 7nm/5nm/3nm is a useful technical milestone, and a measure of the quality of their tooling, but at the end of the day, the question is if they can make parts that fulfills a real product need without foreign dependencies.

            Size is not everything-- don’t forget when Intel stumbled on 10nm repeatedly, yet they were still printing money with 14nm+++++ because the process was “good enough” to deliver a chip people wanted.

            I also have to wonder if the music is going to slow down for some of the IC industry soon. Yeah, we can feed every transistor that can be fabbed into AI/ML, but flagship smartphones are getting both expensive and ridiculous. Are enough people buying a $1500 phone, whose main feature is that it folds into an origami crane, that it can drive new process nodes? Or will a mature 7nm design provide enough performance and battery life for 90% of customers? What’s the current killer app for more than a $200 phone? Maybe the camera, but image sensors have completely different manufacturing constraints.

      • HaggierRapscallier@feddit.nl
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        1 year ago

        Five seems like an exaggeration. I heard around three.

        probably judt thought the sanctions weren‘t hard enough

        They act in their own interests, you make it sound like sanctions are the state of nature.

        • iopq@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          It’s around the level of A12 from 2018. Now, Android phones from 3 years ago are also this level, but still

        • CosmoNova@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          They act in their own interests, you make it sound like sanctions are the state of nature.

          It is common practice in China itself. It is how they have dealt with pretty much everything so far. Why is it surprising the US follows suit?

          I heard 3 generations behind which is about 5 years. They also used components from south korea against sanctions. It is not fully domestic and that should hardly be a surprise.

  • JTode@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    35
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    The fiction of the last 30 years is revealed to those with eyes to see.

    All this time the capital class and their lackeys have been saying “Russia is a our superfriend now and China wants to be democratic so we are helping them by using their slave labour and don’t you feel guilty for questioning our supremely good intentions here!”

    And meanwhile it’s the same old global power struggle, but you can make SO MUCH using slave labour, it was just too tempting to send every bit of our labour - even our high tech - over to their factories.

    • FaeDrifter@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      The CCP be like “oh no, I have this enormous population of exploitable laborers with minimal workers rights, sure hope some wealthy western capitalist don’t use them and make us rich in the process”.

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Thats ironic as fuck. Because nowadays chinese citizens have healthcare and north americans dont

        Apparently, if what you say is true, all paid for by working class north americans

  • ram@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    Ultimately though, does this matter? The smartphone userbase in China and India are a combined 6 times the size of the USA’s and are growing. Furthermore, the USA imports most of their tech from China, while China keeps their wealth largely internal. Even if the USA were to completely cutoff trade with China, it’s not like China’s doing nearly as much importing of manufactured goods, especially in the low-end, and it’s not as though China would be at a loss for trade partners even if every US ally followed suit.

    Cutting off trade to China, at least by what I can tell, would hurt the USA far more than China, or am I wrong?

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Shares in SMIC, China’s largest contract chipmaker, plunged on Thursday, after two US congressmen called on the White House to further restrict export sales to the company.

    TechInsights, a research organization based in Canada specializing in semiconductors, revealed shortly after the launch that the smartphone contained a new 5G Kirin 9000s processor developed specifically for Huawei by SMIC.

    Texas Republican Michael McCaul, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was quoted by Reuters as saying he was concerned about the possibility of China trying to “get a monopoly” in the manufacture of less-advanced computer chips.

    Chinese state media have touted the development as a sign the country had successfully “broken US sanctions” and “achieved technological independence” in advanced chipmaking.

    Meme makers on the Chinese internet have even crowned US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo the unofficial brand ambassador for the Mate 60 series.

    The memes poke fun at the idea that US sanctions, which are implemented and enforced by the US Commerce department, may have indirectly led to the launch of the new phone as China’s homegrown firms had to work with available technology.


    The original article contains 706 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 74%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • CosmoNova@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Chinese state media have touted the development as a sign the country had successfully “broken US sanctions” and “achieved technological independence” in advanced chipmaking

      They touted about it just enough to be heard but not nearly enough for how big of a deal that would be if it actually were true. I mean most people only read about it now that the US as announced further sanctions so I have my doubt it was anything but a propaganda campaign.

      Meme makers on the Chinese internet have even crowned US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo the unofficial brand ambassador for the Mate 60 series.

      The memes poke fun at the idea that US sanctions, which are implemented and enforced by the US Commerce department

      That isn‘t actually what the memes are really about. It was probably a backfire to photos taken of high ranking CCP officials and celebrities using iPhones because those are still huge status symbols in China. Many of them endorsed Chinese brands but privately used iPhones which is a pretty big blow to their propaganda machine. They have recently made the rounds on social media. So of course CCP shills photoshopped pictures of the US commerce secretary using Huawei who was visiting China at the moment. China also then announced their politicians are no longer allowed to carry apple products. Paired with the likelyhood that their domestic chip turns out to be a hoax, China is in quite a mess. And I didn‘t even talk about the floods in Shenzhen and Hong Kong that the CCP definitely does not want the world to see right now. It‘s a tragedy and definitely won‘t help their technology branches, many of which call these cities their homes.

  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    31
    ·
    1 year ago

    All of China is making fun of Usa, and all Usamericans start crying and throwing tantrums like nasty little children. Even their seniors in parliament.

    What a show.