• u_tamtam@programming.dev
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    11 months ago

    Yup, though you are comparing 19th century tech to cutting edge tech: the PRC isn’t going to crack EUV lithography on its own any time soon

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago
      • China can’t make modern electronics

      • Okay they can make modern electronics but they’ll never design their own domestic brands

      • Okay they made their domestic brands but they’ll never achieve market dominance

      • Okay their domestic brands dominate their own market but they’ll never see export success

      • Okay they’re seeing export success in the EU, India, SEA, and the Middle East, but they’ll never make their own RAM or set teleco standards

      • Okay they made their own RAM and helped define the standard for 5G, but they’ll never make their own processors.

      • Okay they made their own processors but they’ll never make anything smaller than 10nm

      • Okay they made a 10mn chip but they’ll never make a 7nm chip

      • Okay they made a 7nm chip but they’ll never make a 5nm chip

      • Okay they made a 5nm chip but they’ll never crack DUV

      • Okay they cracked DUV but they’ll never crack EUV <------ YOU ARE COPING HERE

      • Okay they cracked EUV but they’ll never make a 4nm chip

      • Okay they made a 4nm chip but they’ll never build a chip factory around a large scale particle accelerator

      • Okay they built a large scale chip factory around a particle accelerator but…

      • u_tamtam@programming.dev
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        11 months ago

        You obviously fall into the trap of believing that hard science cares about politics, and that money thrown at problems as part of national strategic planning magically solves them. But for anyone else legitimately interested in understanding the topic better and having a glimpse at its complexity, those are great resources:

        If the above is too advanced, this can serve as a good primer and answers “how the heck did we get there”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt9NEnWmyMo

        Also, I never wrote that China will never get to EUV (or eventually something beyond that), just that it will take a very long time, because the complexity is spread across several very distinct scientific disciplines, integrating them is a challenge of its own (again, watch the videos), and packaging this into a system that meets the scale and reliability requirements to make it commercially viable hasn’t been reproduced to date.

        • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          EUV is complex, unlike nuclear weapons and energy, 5G, space stations, probes to the dark side of the moon and hypersonic missiles. Those things are simple.

          smuglord

          • u_tamtam@programming.dev
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            11 months ago

            EUV is complex. And more so than the accomplishments you mentioned: nuclear weapons were cracked in the 1940’s, probe moon landings in the 50’s and space stations in the 70’s. All have since been reproduced by several nations in isolation. That is not the case of state of the art lithography. No single nation “owns” it because it truly is a multinational endeavor.

            (And actual hypersonic missiles haven’t made it to the battlefield, and 5G is about commoditization and standardization, by the ITU, an organ of the united nations, so I’m not sure exactly how that adds to your rhetoric)

            smuglord

            Way to put your ignorance on display.

            • Krause [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
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              11 months ago

              actual hypersonic missiles haven’t made it to the battlefield

              Really? Then how come Russia has had them in service since 2017 and China deployed theirs in 2019? This is just cope from western “military experts” online that can’t deal with the fact that Russia and China have better missiles than America.

              • u_tamtam@programming.dev
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                11 months ago

                Again, not a military expert, but have you been living under a rock for several years and missed this whole Ukrainian “special military operation”?

                Russia’s hyped Kinzhal missiles, which promised to defeat air defence systems and be manoeverable at supersonic speeds are being shot down by 80’s era surface to air missiles. And I don’t think anyone has been in a position to assess China’s capabilities in the matter and I have no interest in discussing your beliefs.

                Edit: forgot to say this really has nothing to do with advanced lithography, anyways…

            • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              11 months ago

              Way to put your ignorance on display.

              smuglord

              Lecturing me about ignorance while deliberately misrepresenting bleeding edge next generation nuclear reactors and probes to the dark side of the moon as old tech.

              American hypersonics can’t even make it out of testing and Chinese ones are being deployed on warships already.

              Weak shit for someone pretending to argue from a position of knowledge

              • u_tamtam@programming.dev
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                11 months ago

                Lecturing me about ignorance

                Fair, how about you enlighten me about the present topic, then, instead of digressing? It does look like deflection and insults doesn’t make it prettier.

                • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  11 months ago

                  I’m not digressing at all. Your argument is that EUV tech is somehow exceptionally complex, therefore China cannot create it’s own version in a reasonable time frame. The direct response to that claim is to point to examples of complex technologies that China has mastered and advanced.

                  China leads the world in new patents and has mastered several technologies which even America has not. Given that the current leading purveyors of EUV are the frickin Dutch, not the Americans, there’s no basis to claim that EUV is exceptionally complex such that the world’s leading scientific and econmic power cannot reproduce it.

        • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          and packaging this into a system that meets the scale and reliability requirements to make it commercially viable hasn’t been reproduced to date

          Your overall point about EUV being difficult isn’t wrong, but this line is really where the typical liberal forecasting of China’s capabilities fall apart: they don’t give a shit about it being commercially viable, they give a shit about having the industrial capacity.

          The reason why EUV is more or less a cartel monopoly in the West is that it’s a cobbled together collection of scientific principles that work well enough that the first few companies that figured it out could make insane profits off of it, and then proceeded to patent the shit out of it to prevent anyone else from doing so. The engineering behind EUV is… not great from a reliability standpoint, most notably the fact that EUV has an average downtime of something like 10% (meaning your fabs are offline 10% of the year for maintenance), in large part because you’re shooting little droplets of liquid metals with a high intensity laser which tends to splatter and require cleanup. There are potential alternatives to this process for creating the kind of UV light you need for lithography, such as particle accelerators, that are theoretically superior but the R&D into those alternatives costs tens of billions of dollars with no guarantees that any of it will ever become profitable, so Western capital doesn’t bother trying.

          China doesn’t have that profit restriction. It needs the ability to produce bleeding edge chips to remove its reliance on an increasingly hostile West, and it has not only the engineering and scientific power to brute force that kind of R&D but the ability to devote a sizeable portion of its national resources to doing so. It doesn’t matter if its profitable, it matters if they’re able to decouple a critical industry from the West and ignore sanctions accordingly, and that has infinitely more value than a shareholder dividend, so they will put the resources into doing so and, inevitably, they will figure it out. And from what we’ve seen over the past 2 years since the trade wars have started, they’re not only succeeding but doing so ahead of expectations, in large part because increasing tensions have made life a living hell for Chinese scientists and engineers abroad working in these industries due to racism and suspicions of spying which push them to emigrate back to China and lend their expertise there instead.

          In 20 years, chips made in mainland China will be competitive or even superior to their Western counterparts unless the West undoes 50 years of neoliberal rot overnight and replicates what the CPC is doing for silicon manufacturing or the CPC collapses and China experiences the same shock doctrine that the former Soviet states did in the 90s, and neither of those outcomes look likely right now.

          • mranachi@aussie.zone
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            11 months ago

            Making the light is a relativity easy step, it’s mirrors that are hard af.

            But China will develop euv tech and beyond, and I hope they will do it in a new way and advance human knowledge.

            And I hope this nationalistic freakshow will just melt away, as it’s a ball and chain on humanity.

          • u_tamtam@programming.dev
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            11 months ago

            Hey, thanks for the constructive comment :)

            [China] don’t give a shit about it being commercially viable, they give a shit about having the industrial capacity.

            True, but I don’t think the end-goal is to “just” achieve technical sovereignty. Answering local demand requires production at a large scale

            The reason why EUV is more or less a cartel monopoly in the West is that it’s a cobbled together collection of scientific principles that work well enough that the first few companies that figured it out could make insane profits off of it

            I really wouldn’t put it that way, if you check my 3rd link out, you’d see that there were a few competing technologies on the table, and the topic was researched by national labs and a lot of public funding as well. Japan was also a leader and significant contributor but ultimately failed. It’s not nearly as clearly cut as “bad imperialistic USA locks it down for rest of us”: there is real international competition, and real international cooperation.

            I can’t predict where we will be at in 20 years. No matter what, we will be many generations beyond EUV. Other approaches that were deemed unfeasible before (=today) might turn practical in the future as fundamental research advances, and I suspect China will be strong in those areas, and, as you said, perhaps a leader.

        • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          just that it will take a very long time, because the complexity is spread across several very distinct scientific disciplines, integrating them is a challenge of its own (again, watch the videos),

          Dutch managed it, why wouldn’t the chinese, with a centrally planned economy that can directly integrate the different disciplines, be able to?

          packaging this into a system that meets the scale and reliability requirements to make it commercially viable hasn’t been reproduced to date.

          Communists in shambles - how could anyone fund science for the sake of progress instead of making money?

          • u_tamtam@programming.dev
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            11 months ago

            Dutch managed it, why wouldn’t the chinese, with a centrally planned economy that can directly integrate the different disciplines, be able to?

            • Dutch didn’t, not alone, far from that. Have a stab at the first link I posted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmgkV83OhHA

            • This will also show a long list of “honorable mentions” who failed, including the Japanese attempts (which, as you should know, aren’t exactly new to the game, way ahead of China and largely self-reliant in the matter, unlike China whose semiconductors industry has been centered around import of foreign tech)

            • I didn’t write that they “wouldn’t be able to”, I merely pointed the actual reasons why this is extremely hard (perhaps the hardest current Engineering feat, or why I find this whole thing fascinating), with speculations that this will take a while

            for the sake of progress instead of making money?

            no need to stretch it: if China wants to meet the ever growing domestic demand (either military or civil), China need fabs churning chips reliably. Simple as that.

            • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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              11 months ago

              Dutch didn’t, not alone, far from that.

              As opposed to the chinese, who are completely alone, all 1.whatever billion of them.

              which are[…]largely self-reliant in the matter

              You just fucking said it required cooperation you dumb cum juggler, now you’re saying they failed despite not cooperating?

              I didn’t write that they “wouldn’t be able to”

              I cannot sufficiently describe how much I hate your stupid reddit tier “um, akshumally I didn’t use those exact words therefore you’re completely misrepresenting what I said!” You won’t shut up about how hard and difficult and borderline impossible it is and you want me to believe you’re not trying to say they won’t be able to? You’re certainly not arguing that they will.

              if China wants to meet the ever growing domestic demand (either military or civil), China need fabs churning chips reliably.

              That’s not what commercially viable mean, buddy.

              • u_tamtam@programming.dev
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                11 months ago

                Dutch didn’t, not alone, far from that.

                As opposed to the chinese, who are completely alone, all 1.whatever billion of them.

                no need to speculate, China is not at the same level today (or we wouldn’t even be having this discussion in the first place), no matter how populous. Would it help catch-up? Probably! You are the one bringing this up, not me, so…

                You just fucking said it required cooperation you dumb cum juggler, now you’re saying they failed despite not cooperating?

                Was this a difficult sentence to read? Should I break it down for you? Those two things can be true at the same time (which is essentially what I wrote):

                Today’s China has neither.

                You won’t shut up about how hard and difficult and borderline impossible it is and you want me to believe you’re not trying to say they won’t be able to? You’re certainly not arguing that they will.

                Well, I’m sorry that a well-sourced post with actual engineering and historical facts, meant for the legitimately curious and interested people here makes you so angry. What can I say other than “you probably didn’t check-out the links and are arguing in bad faith/for the sake of it” and “you are letting your emotions blur your comprehension, i.e. putting words in my mouth”.

                That’s not what commercially viable mean, buddy.

                Commercial viability is the likelihood that a product or service will be successful in the marketplace.

                Unless the CCP starts distributing indigenous chips asking nothing in exchange, which I find unlikely to say the least, those will be traded (against hard money, work, resources, …) on some form of market. I’m not really into arguing about semantics, so you do you.

        • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          You obviously fall into the trap of believing that hard science cares about politics

          Look in the fucking mirror champ

          You’re trying to tell me a rapidly developing, well-resourced country will hit some arbitrary technology threshold because communism. You know, the political system that put the first man in space a generation after most of the USSR wasn’t even literate.

          • u_tamtam@programming.dev
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            11 months ago

            You’re trying to tell me a rapidly developing, well-resourced country will hit some arbitrary technology threshold because communism

            Don’t you think that you are over-reading a little? I never brought up communism nor any socio-economical ideology for that matter. Quick tip for you: try to read some about economics and China if you nurture any expectation that it is a communist state other than in name.

        • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          You definitely know you’re winning when you’re constantly complaining about your opponent. You hate communists yet allow them to live in your brain rent-free. Interesting.

            • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              11 months ago

              Love turning mental health discourse into a snide bitchy weapon to imply that someone pursuing a disagreement is simply mEnTaLlY iLl

              Who hurt you? Help is available.

            • ferristriangle [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              11 months ago

              No one is attacking your “factual and informative” comment.

              No one is disputing the difficulties you’ve highlighted. What is being disputed is your assertion that those difficulties are relevant to your assertion that China won’t be able to achieve this.

              And the subject of the conversation is a technology that humans have already developed and is in use. So what is it about China/the PRC that would cause you to assert they are incapable of building/employing this technology?

              Your argument is that “Hard science doesn’t care about politics,” so I assume you don’t want to imply that you’re critiquing the capabilities of China’s political system. So what’s left? Is it racism? The removed can’t achieve what other humans have already proven is possible because the removed is subhuman?

              You are making a political statement whether you intend to or not, you don’t just get to whine about how you were only talking about the science and why is everyone being so mean when you only started a discussion about the science to reinforce (or deflect from) your original assertion.

              • u_tamtam@programming.dev
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                11 months ago

                your assertion that China won’t be able to achieve this.

                Well, except I did not only NOT write that, I even wrote the exact opposite, see: https://programming.dev/comment/5899890

                Also, interpreting my messages with your ideologically colored lenses doesn’t imply that this thread invites political discourse. I’m sure you’ll find many people here willing to vent their frustrations with you in easily ignorable threads of their own.

              • u_tamtam@programming.dev
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                11 months ago

                Because every single thing must revolve around America, only one thing can be bad at a time, and if I’m not with you I must be against you.

                • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                  11 months ago

                  , only one thing can be bad at a time,

                  Oh, were we talking about something being bad? I thought we were just having a non-politically tinted discussion about science and technology

                • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  11 months ago

                  and if I’m not with you I must be against you.

                  Neutrality is support of the status quo, there are no parties that neither support nor oppose it.

                • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  11 months ago

                  I mean, it’s the most powerful empire ever to exist, one built on ongoing slavery and genocide. It’s difficult to find global problems that don’t lead back to the amerikkkan ruling class.

          • u_tamtam@programming.dev
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            11 months ago

            And what does that have to do with advanced lithography? I’m not some military expert and I doubt you are either so why waste your time spreading your unsubstantiated beliefs?

            • JuryNullification [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              11 months ago

              Those beliefs are very well substantiated. Fuck, you could even find this shit on Wikipedia. Look for “DF-21” and then look at the news articles about the American tests blowing up.

    • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      “Okay, China built a jump gate to Alpha Centauri, and I’m currently working as a Bloodbag for Immortan Joe, but seriously, when are these tankies going to admit that communism and fascism are the same?”