this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
267 points (97.5% liked)

World News

32317 readers
872 users here now

News from around the world!

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago (63 children)

Yup, though you are comparing 19th century tech to cutting edge tech: the PRC isn't going to crack EUV lithography on its own any time soon

[–] [email protected] 37 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (56 children)
  • China can't make modern electronics

  • Okay they can make modern electronics but they'll never design their own domestic brands

  • Okay they made their domestic brands but they'll never achieve market dominance

  • Okay their domestic brands dominate their own market but they'll never see export success

  • Okay they're seeing export success in the EU, India, SEA, and the Middle East, but they'll never make their own RAM or set teleco standards

  • Okay they made their own RAM and helped define the standard for 5G, but they'll never make their own processors.

  • Okay they made their own processors but they'll never make anything smaller than 10nm

  • Okay they made a 10mn chip but they'll never make a 7nm chip

  • Okay they made a 7nm chip but they'll never make a 5nm chip

  • Okay they made a 5nm chip but they'll never crack DUV

  • Okay they cracked DUV but they'll never crack EUV <------ YOU ARE COPING HERE

  • Okay they cracked EUV but they'll never make a 4nm chip

  • Okay they made a 4nm chip but they'll never build a chip factory around a large scale particle accelerator

  • Okay they built a large scale chip factory around a particle accelerator but...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (55 children)

You obviously fall into the trap of believing that hard science cares about politics, and that money thrown at problems as part of national strategic planning magically solves them. But for anyone else legitimately interested in understanding the topic better and having a glimpse at its complexity, those are great resources:

If the above is too advanced, this can serve as a good primer and answers "how the heck did we get there": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt9NEnWmyMo

Also, I never wrote that China will never get to EUV (or eventually something beyond that), just that it will take a very long time, because the complexity is spread across several very distinct scientific disciplines, integrating them is a challenge of its own (again, watch the videos), and packaging this into a system that meets the scale and reliability requirements to make it commercially viable hasn't been reproduced to date.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

and packaging this into a system that meets the scale and reliability requirements to make it commercially viable hasn't been reproduced to date

Your overall point about EUV being difficult isn't wrong, but this line is really where the typical liberal forecasting of China's capabilities fall apart: they don't give a shit about it being commercially viable, they give a shit about having the industrial capacity.

The reason why EUV is more or less a cartel monopoly in the West is that it's a cobbled together collection of scientific principles that work well enough that the first few companies that figured it out could make insane profits off of it, and then proceeded to patent the shit out of it to prevent anyone else from doing so. The engineering behind EUV is... not great from a reliability standpoint, most notably the fact that EUV has an average downtime of something like 10% (meaning your fabs are offline 10% of the year for maintenance), in large part because you're shooting little droplets of liquid metals with a high intensity laser which tends to splatter and require cleanup. There are potential alternatives to this process for creating the kind of UV light you need for lithography, such as particle accelerators, that are theoretically superior but the R&D into those alternatives costs tens of billions of dollars with no guarantees that any of it will ever become profitable, so Western capital doesn't bother trying.

China doesn't have that profit restriction. It needs the ability to produce bleeding edge chips to remove its reliance on an increasingly hostile West, and it has not only the engineering and scientific power to brute force that kind of R&D but the ability to devote a sizeable portion of its national resources to doing so. It doesn't matter if its profitable, it matters if they're able to decouple a critical industry from the West and ignore sanctions accordingly, and that has infinitely more value than a shareholder dividend, so they will put the resources into doing so and, inevitably, they will figure it out. And from what we've seen over the past 2 years since the trade wars have started, they're not only succeeding but doing so ahead of expectations, in large part because increasing tensions have made life a living hell for Chinese scientists and engineers abroad working in these industries due to racism and suspicions of spying which push them to emigrate back to China and lend their expertise there instead.

In 20 years, chips made in mainland China will be competitive or even superior to their Western counterparts unless the West undoes 50 years of neoliberal rot overnight and replicates what the CPC is doing for silicon manufacturing or the CPC collapses and China experiences the same shock doctrine that the former Soviet states did in the 90s, and neither of those outcomes look likely right now.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

Making the light is a relativity easy step, it's mirrors that are hard af.

But China will develop euv tech and beyond, and I hope they will do it in a new way and advance human knowledge.

And I hope this nationalistic freakshow will just melt away, as it's a ball and chain on humanity.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Hey, thanks for the constructive comment :)

[China] don’t give a shit about it being commercially viable, they give a shit about having the industrial capacity.

True, but I don't think the end-goal is to "just" achieve technical sovereignty. Answering local demand requires production at a large scale

The reason why EUV is more or less a cartel monopoly in the West is that it’s a cobbled together collection of scientific principles that work well enough that the first few companies that figured it out could make insane profits off of it

I really wouldn't put it that way, if you check my 3rd link out, you'd see that there were a few competing technologies on the table, and the topic was researched by national labs and a lot of public funding as well. Japan was also a leader and significant contributor but ultimately failed. It's not nearly as clearly cut as "bad imperialistic USA locks it down for rest of us": there is real international competition, and real international cooperation.

I can't predict where we will be at in 20 years. No matter what, we will be many generations beyond EUV. Other approaches that were deemed unfeasible before (=today) might turn practical in the future as fundamental research advances, and I suspect China will be strong in those areas, and, as you said, perhaps a leader.

load more comments (52 replies)
load more comments (52 replies)
load more comments (58 replies)