China boosts in silicon...

[smatovic]

You may have read it, China wants to get independent from Western chips and
software within 3 years. So what does China have in hands concerning CPUs?
Here a little overview...

x86-64 - THATIC, a joint venture with AMD

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD%E2%80 ... nt_venture

x86-64 - Zhaoxin, a joint venture with VIA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhaoxin

MIPS64 - Loongson/Godson CPU

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson

SPARC - Galaxy CPU used in Tianhe-2 supercomputer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FeiTeng_( ... xy_FT-1500

Accelerator - Matrix 2000 used in Tianhe-2 supercomputer

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/nudt/matrix-2000

RISC - Sunway SW26010 with own ISA used in Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunway_SW26010

RISC-V - Xuantie CPU by Alibaba

https://www.techspot.com/news/81177-chi ... -risc.html

ARM

From Huawei mobile chips, over Phytium desktop cpus, to Alibaba server chips
there are many IP licensees.


Personally I would bet on the RISC-V ISA in the long run.

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Srdja

[smatovic]

Anandtech's deep dive into x86-64 Zen-based Hygon Dhyana CPU:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15493/hy ... 6-cpus-amd


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Srdja

[smatovic]

Hmm, things are getting interesting...

TSMC cuts off Huawei from chips from September on:

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/ts ... -september

Nvidia may buy ARM from SoftBank:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ompany-arm

It seems SMIC (Shanghai) is still on 14nm FinFET:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semicondu ... #Processes

Question remains open on which ISA/architecture China will bet, AFAIK RISC-V
still has no SIMD/Vector units defined for number crunching and alike.

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Srdja

[smatovic]

You may have read it, China wants to get independent from Western chips and
software within 3 years. So what does China have in hands concerning CPUs?
Here a little overview...

x86-64 - THATIC, a joint venture with AMD

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD%E2%80 ... nt_venture

x86-64 - Zhaoxin, a joint venture with VIA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhaoxin

MIPS64 - Loongson/Godson CPU

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson

SPARC - Galaxy CPU used in Tianhe-2 supercomputer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FeiTeng_( ... xy_FT-1500

Accelerator - Matrix 2000 used in Tianhe-2 supercomputer

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/nudt/matrix-2000

RISC - Sunway SW26010 with own ISA used in Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunway_SW26010

RISC-V - Xuantie CPU by Alibaba

https://www.techspot.com/news/81177-chi ... -risc.html

ARM

From Huawei mobile chips, over Phytium desktop cpus, to Alibaba server chips
there are many IP licensees.


Personally I would bet on the RISC-V ISA in the long run.

--
Srdja

Followup, here is another list from Wikipedia...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_a ... processors

I missed:

POWER(8/9) - Suzhou PowerCore CP1/CP2

Alpha - early ShenWei designs, maybe gen 1 to 3

IA64 (Itanium) - FeiTeng 1st gen


Looks like a Straight Flush approach in terms of CPU architectures, seems they
covered every 64 bit design.

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Srdja

[smatovic]

Silicon arms race continues...

TSMC invests $100 billion over 3 years:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tsmc ... SKBN2BO3ZJ

South-Korea plans to invest $450 billion over 10 years:

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/3 ... -dominance

US plans to fund $50 billion for chip research over 5 years:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden- ... 021-04-12/

EU commits to $145 billion investment for silicon:

https://www.eenewseurope.com/news/145bn ... r-industry

China still 5 years behind in silicon says TSMC founder:

https://www.fudzilla.com/news/52752-chi ... ehind-tsmc

China needs 5 to 10 years to catch up in silicon according to South China Morning Post:

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-leaders- ... conductors

Complete home-grown Chinese silicon seems to be 28nm:

https://www.verdict.co.uk/china-chips-m ... echnology/


Now with Microsoft and Apple running x86 emulation on ARM, I guess China will develop an own, home-grown, arch with x86 emulation.

The current chip plants seem to be in the $10 billion range, the next gen in the $20 billion range, Moore's Second Law seems to hold.

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Srdja

[Cardoso]

Does this mean China is determined to take Taiwan (and TSMC) in the next 3 years?

[Joost Buijs]

To be competitive with TSMC and Samsung China needs XUV lithography machines, the only company currently producing these is the Dutch ASML. They are not allowed to ship these machines to China because they contain a lot of American tech. It will take a lot longer than 3 years before China catches up.

[smatovic]

A home-grown 28nm process and imported 14nm/10nm might be already enough to decouple from the West to a certain degree but not to enter competition on all levels, Intel still sells successfully some of their CPUs on 14nm.

***edit***
From an chess programmers point of view, I find it interesting to ponder on what will sit in the upcoming Chinese desktops and mobiles.

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Srdja

[smatovic]

Does this mean China is determined to take Taiwan (and TSMC) in the next 3 years?

Haha:

"China 'Must Seize TSMC' If the US Were To Impose Sanctions, Says Top Economist"
https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/06/0 ... -economist

Rumor has it that China runs already three Exaflop systems not listed on TOP500:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/03/d ... tures.html

one with Hygon x86 CPUs+DCUs, one with Matrix-3000 accelerators, one with Shenwei 26010p processors.

AFAIK the US has three Exaflop systems in pipe, with Frontier already up and running, #1 on TOP500:
https://www.top500.org/news/ornls-front ... p-ceiling/

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Srdja

[smatovic]

update:

ARM not sending new chips to Alibaba - Neoverse V will not get a licence behind the bamboo curtain

ARM won't sell its latest Neoverse V series chips to Chinese tech giant Alibaba after concluding that the US and UK would not approve licenses to export them.

According to the Financial Times ARM has been hit by the new US government rules restricting China and Russia exports of powerful chips that could be repurposed for military use.

ARM believes its Neoverse V would fall into the category of high-performance processors affected by the new rules. While it could apply for a license, it would likely be turned down. This is the first time ARM has decided not to sell its most advanced chip designs to China.

ARM's latest Neoverse V2 core has the highest performance to date and its design originated in the US.

https://fudzilla.com/news/pc-hardware/5 ... to-alibaba

...RISC-V International has its seat in Switzerland and meanwhile RISC-V vector-set was defined:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V#Vector_set

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Srdja