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. bigcat12345678 · 1789960301 · focus · HN ↗

         As other comments pointed out, that was always China's plan, the value here is really that when the Chinese overlord annillate the world's industrial competition, they'll have the moral high ground of being out of self-reliance and hostility by western monopolists.

         Edit:

         And, that, my fellow keyboard high-minded thinker but powerless corp peons, was also part of the China's plan all along.

         1. fangspire · 1789965791 · focus · HN ↗

            [dead]

            1. lazide · 1789983065 · focus · HN ↗

               Yes, they literally named it the ‘one child policy’. It was just overly successful.

               1. peterfirefly · 1789984973 · focus · HN ↗

                  The official one child policy didn't actually have much of an impact. Birth rates had already fallen a lot, despite the official "lots-a-children" policy.

                  The one child policy is gone now but birth rates haven't really moved upwards.

                  1. nixon_why69 · 1789985543 · focus · HN ↗

                     It's debatable and impossible to disentangle from living standards going up, but a lot of the economy is built on assumptions of one child, from apartment sizes to personal transit (ebike can do 2 adults + 1 small child).
                  2. ricardobayes · 1789991559 · focus · HN ↗

                     Of course it had an impact, if nothing else, a cultural one. It basically eradicated the concept of large families.

                     1. pixl97 · 1790003463 · focus · HN ↗

                        So China has similar family sizes as the US that had no one child policy.

                        It's difficult to near impossible here to determine which counterfactuals would actually hold true. Based on other world wide trends it's very likely that Chinese family sizes now would only be slightly higher than if the policy didn't exist. In the modern world there are just a huge number of different factors working together to decrease family sizes.

                  3. lazide · 1789994523 · focus · HN ↗

                     Not what I heard from friends who were subjected to it, and their parents.

                     It was insanely disruptive.

                     1. peterfirefly · 1790010418 · focus · HN ↗

                        Of course it was devasting for some families. That is never the same thing as saying that it affected China's birth rate much (which it didn't).

                        There were forced abortions (sometimes very late), there was forced contraception, forced sterilization (I think), and lots of punishments for people who broke the policy.

                        There were also others who got around it fairly easily by paying a bribe and by not registering their "surplus" child/children (especially if they were girls). That of course caused some problems down the road.

                        That still doesn't mean that it affected China's birth rate much. It was already low (and had fallen steadily) when the policy was instituted. It also had plenty of exceptions for rural China and ethnic minorities.

                        1. lazide · 1790032200 · focus · HN ↗

                           Uh huh [<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;One-child_policy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;One-child_policy]

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