Comment by throwaway4good
2 years ago
They are certainly accelerating. I think the consensus is that it is within fabrication there is a "chokepoint".
In terms of design, China has world class companies. However in terms of fabrication and especially semiconductor manufacturing equipment, they are still somewhat behind.
Also x86 is very sticky - it is going to take them a decade to get rid of that.
> In terms of design, China has world class companies.
And not just companies. This is currently the world's top open-source RISC-V development https://github.com/OpenXiangShan coming from the Chinese Academy of Science.
(Whether China will remain investing in RISC-V, given that the US government has started to pressure US RISC-V development to limit their involvement with China is another question.)
Interestingly, they've got binary translators for both ARM and x86 which were demoed in Geekerwan's video. Apparently, they're apparently donating a compilation farm for a Debian repository. Definetly interesting to see how Lithography will develop independently in China, and if it will ever pass the EUV chokepoint.
A decade or two isn't a long time, politically.