☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆

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Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: January 18th, 2020

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  • There are strong incentives for China to push the boundaries with semiconductors. Data processing and analytics is becoming an essential tool in many domains. Being able to process huge volumes of data faster than your adversaries becomes a really powerful strategic advantage. For example, if you can accurately model patterns in global trade, then you can allocate resources better than your competition. That’s just one example where having powerful processing capability is crucial. It’s pretty clear that Chinese leadership sees the potential here, and I expect we’ll see some amazing things happening in the coming years.



  • I expect China will be able to make EUV machines domestically within a few years. What’s more exciting is that China is actively exploring alternative computing substrates. If one of those pans out, then it could make silicon look like vacuum tubes overnight. For example, stuff like this looks very promising https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2095927323004206

    The reality is that we’re now hitting physical limits of what you can do with silicon effectively. There’s really no path forward past 1nm. Whoever manages to scale up production f a new computing substrate first will have a huge advantage going forward. China is most likely to get there before the west because it’s a state driven effort.

    Meanwhile, the west largely relies on companies and competition to drive innovation, and it’s not profitable for companies to invest huge amounts of money into research that will take many years to bear fruit. Instead, they focus on short term profits and squeezing what they can out of current technologies.



















  • I don’t think numbers on a computer matter all that much though. US can issue as much currency as it likes, but it’s the material reality that matters in the end. In order to prop up Europe, US needs to produce weapons to send there, same with Israel, and Taiwan. US manufacturing capacity is pretty limited at this point, so they have to pick where to allocate the resources.

    Meanwhile, Europe has major problems with its energy supply, and so far the US has been profiteering from selling LNG to Europe at high prices, and poaching European industry. So, we can already see that the whole relationship is turning predatory. This will only get worse going forward. Ultimately, people living in Europe don’t give a shit about stuff like AI, crypto, and so on. They care about being able to feed themselves and keep lights on.