China boosts in silicon...

Discussion of chess software programming and technical issues.

Moderators: hgm, chrisw, Rebel

smatovic
Posts: 2991
Joined: Wed Mar 10, 2010 10:18 pm
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Full name: Srdja Matovic

China boosts in silicon...

Post by 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
smatovic
Posts: 2991
Joined: Wed Mar 10, 2010 10:18 pm
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Full name: Srdja Matovic

Re: China boosts in silicon...

Post by smatovic »

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

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


--
Srdja
smatovic
Posts: 2991
Joined: Wed Mar 10, 2010 10:18 pm
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Full name: Srdja Matovic

Re: China boosts in silicon...

Post by 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.

--
Srdja
smatovic
Posts: 2991
Joined: Wed Mar 10, 2010 10:18 pm
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Full name: Srdja Matovic

Re: China boosts in silicon...

Post by smatovic »

smatovic wrote: Sat Dec 14, 2019 8:36 am 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.

--
Srdja
smatovic
Posts: 2991
Joined: Wed Mar 10, 2010 10:18 pm
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Full name: Srdja Matovic

Re: China boosts in silicon...

Post by 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.

--
Srdja
Cardoso
Posts: 363
Joined: Thu Mar 16, 2006 7:39 pm
Location: Portugal
Full name: Alvaro Cardoso

Re: China boosts in silicon...

Post by Cardoso »

Does this mean China is determined to take Taiwan (and TSMC) in the next 3 years?
Joost Buijs
Posts: 1599
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2009 10:47 am
Location: Almere, The Netherlands

Re: China boosts in silicon...

Post by 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
Posts: 2991
Joined: Wed Mar 10, 2010 10:18 pm
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Full name: Srdja Matovic

Re: China boosts in silicon...

Post by 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.

--
Srdja
smatovic
Posts: 2991
Joined: Wed Mar 10, 2010 10:18 pm
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Full name: Srdja Matovic

Re: China boosts in silicon...

Post by smatovic »

Cardoso wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 12:06 am 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/

--
Srdja
smatovic
Posts: 2991
Joined: Wed Mar 10, 2010 10:18 pm
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Full name: Srdja Matovic

Re: China boosts in silicon...

Post by 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

--
Srdja