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Touching the Elephant – TPUs

(considerthebulldog.com)
199 points giuliomagnifico | 10 comments | 06 Dec 25 12:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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alecco ◴[06 Dec 25 15:16 UTC] No.46173948[source]▶
I'm surprised the perspective of China making TPUs at scale in a couple of years is not bigger news. It could be a deadly blow for Google, NVIDIA, and the rest. Combine it with China's nuclear base and labor pool. And the cherry on top, America will train 600k Chinese students as Trump agreed to.

The TPUv4 and TPUv6 docs were stolen by a Chinese national in 2022/2023: https://www.cyberhaven.com/blog/lessons-learned-from-the-goo... https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/superseding-indictment-charge...

And that's just 1 guy that got caught. Who knows how many other cases were there.

A Chinese startup is already making clusters of TPUs and has revenue https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/3334244/ai-start-...

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Workaccount2 ◴[06 Dec 25 15:21 UTC] No.46173985[source]▶
Manufacturing is the hard part. China certainly has the knowledge to build a TPU architecture without needing to steal the plans. What they don't have is the ability to actually build the chips. This is even in spite of also stealing lithography plans.

There is a dark art to semiconductor manufacturing that pretty much only TSMC really has the wizards for. Maybe intel and samsung a bit too.

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aunty_helen ◴[06 Dec 25 16:21 UTC] No.46174480[source]▶
For China there is no plan B for semiconductor manufacturing. Invading Taiwan would be a dice roll and the consequences would be severe. They will create their own SOTA semiconductor industry. Same goes for their military.

The question is when? Does that come in time to deflate the US tech stock bubble? Or will the bubble start to level out and reality catch up, or will the market crash for another reason beforehand?

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1. snek_case ◴[06 Dec 25 16:50 UTC] No.46174714{3}[source]▶
China has their own fabs. They are behind TSMC in terms of technology, but that doesn't mean they don't have fabs. They're currently ~7nm AFAIK. That's behind TSMC, but also not useless. They are obviously trying hard to catch up. I don't think we should just imagine that they never will. China has a lot of smart engineers and they know how strategically important chip manufacturing is.

This is like this funny idea people had in the early 2000s that China would continue to manufacture most US technology but they could never design their own competitive tech. Why would anyone think that?

Wrt invading Taiwan, I don't think there is any way China can get TSMC intact. If they do invade Taiwan (please God no), it would be a horrible bloodbath. Deaths in the hundreds of thousands and probably relentless bombing. Taiwan would likely destroy its own fabs to avoid them being taken. It would be sad and horrible.

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2. renewiltord ◴[06 Dec 25 18:23 UTC] No.46175406[source]▶
If they invade Taiwan, we will scuttle the plants and direct ASML to disable their machines which they will do because that’s the condition under which we gave them the tech. They’re not going to get it this way.

They’ll just catch the next wave of tech or eventually break into EUV.

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3. mr_toad ◴[06 Dec 25 19:56 UTC] No.46176143[source]▶
> Wrt invading Taiwan, I don't think there is any way China can get TSMC intact.

There are so many trade and manufacturing links between China and Taiwan that an outright war would be economically disastrous for both countries.

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4. dpe82 ◴[06 Dec 25 20:42 UTC] No.46176446[source]▶
That doesn't mean they won't try anyway; political ideology often trumps rational planning.
5. adgjlsfhk1 ◴[06 Dec 25 20:54 UTC] No.46176523[source]▶
imo the most likely answer is that asml funds a second source for the optics that isn't US controlled and starts shipping to China. The US is losing influence fast.
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6. overfeed ◴[06 Dec 25 20:56 UTC] No.46176536[source]▶
> Why would anyone think that?

That'd be the belief in good old American exceptionalism. Up until recently, a common meme on HN was "freedom" is fundamental to innovation, and naturally the country with the most Freedom(TM) wins. This even persisted after it was clear that DJI was kicking all kinds of ass, outcompeting multiple western drone companies.

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7. renewiltord ◴[06 Dec 25 21:57 UTC] No.46176922{3}[source]▶
We’re not above stuxnetting them if it comes to it. They operate at the pleasure of the US with US tech.
8. jandrewrogers ◴[06 Dec 25 22:40 UTC] No.46177237{3}[source]▶
It would likely take ASML decades to develop an alternative EUV light source not encumbered by US defense technology, at which time it may not matter.

Everyone is still dependent on a single American manufacturer for this tech after decades of development. This strongly suggests that it is considerably more difficult than just "funding a second source".

9. snek_case ◴[07 Dec 25 11:38 UTC] No.46181024[source]▶
It's probably true that free enterprise helps a lot, but China has that in large part. Even though the CCP calls itself communist, China is very capitalist in a number of ways. But I guess China is showing us that capitalism can exist without democracy.
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10. overfeed ◴[08 Dec 25 16:10 UTC] No.46194008{3}[source]▶
> capitalism can exist without democracy.

It's not exactly a new idea. This was the CIA's operating principle in the western hemisphere since before the cold war.