>>10249>what about OpenPOWERanybody know anything more about this ?
>>10254>How hard will it be for China to acquire the expertise, tech and build a manufacturing base for more advanced chips to catch up and keep up with the rest of the world?The important bottleneck in chip making is the lithography machines. The tech leader is ASML, that's a company in the Netherlands that is blocked by the US from selling to China.
(For the next paragraph smaller number = better)
China has made it's own lithography machines company and that one is called SMEE, they have machines in place for 28nm mass production at the moment, and they are working on getting mass production roll out of 14nm next year. The chip maker in Taiwan TSMC who is allowed to have ASML lithography gear is currently doing 7nm mass production and they are working on getting 3nm in to production at some time in the future.
China is behind 3 generations for the high end chips, but over100nm chips are still used in many applications. For chips that don't need that much performance they are already set. The small numbers in nm are most critical for portable devices because it means less battery drain and heat.
From the synthetic spec numbers it seems that China is catching up, how the realworld processing performance is stacking up, i don't know.
The US primary strategic goal of chip asfixiation has failed, china can self supply their strategic needs for chips. The secondary objective is commercial, they are trying to make Chinese products less competitive. That has had some effect but China is still able to source high end chips. And the US can't push too hard because China could cut the US off from TSMC. and the US is only now beginning to build out their own chip self sufficiency with new chip factories.
I guess that we should root for every side that is building out chip production because that means the chip supply gets better. This post was typed on a computer that's using 32nm chips (if i'm not mistaken)