Thread

1. HarHarVeryFunny · 1789937583 · focus · HN ↗

   On a related note, I was reading yesterday that apparently the real bottleneck for Chinese production of AI accelerators is HBM production, not processors or ASML equipment.

   The lack of ASML EUV machines certainly hurts, and pushing DUV so hard results in abysmal yields of good chips, but you can compensate by running more wafers or making smaller chips, and the net result is that Huawei's Ascend production volume is limited by CXMT's HBM capacity not processor dies.

   The problem is that HBM manufacture requires many steps (die thinning, via drilling, plating, alignment) where the equipment used by everyone else (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron) is also blocked by sanctions, so the Chinese are having to develop all of this themselves too, which they have, but yields are currently low, even when using shorter HBM stacks.

   1. jacquesm · 1789951954 · focus · HN ↗

      The only thing the West is achieving here is that sooner or later China will be able to compete on their own terms rather than ours. It may buy some time but the end result is very predictable.

      1. stingraycharles · 1789952664 · focus · HN ↗

         It baffles me how shortsighted the policymaking here is. Like, what did they expect to happen?

         1. georgemcbay · 1789969516 · focus · HN ↗

            > It baffles me how shortsighted the policymaking here is. Like, what did they expect to happen?

            As someone who is myself 'old af' by tech standards (I'll be 53 very soon) the main problem is that the policymakers are all 70+ years old.

            Their concept of what China even is is forever stuck in pre-2004 thinking from back when they still had significant neuroplasticity.

            Vote these fucking fossils out, kids, before it is entirely too late.

            (And, yeah, before someone inevitably brings it up, some exceptions-that-prove-the-rule older policymakers/politicians do avoid this trap of getting stuck in the past, but most don't)

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