this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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I mean, we do the same thing, for the same reasons, with our government and defense procurement orders these days. This isn’t that weird. It’s only weird in that they’re clearly cutting themselves off from the best high-volume x86 CPU manufacturers that currently exist, but aside from that, the geopolitical and strategic calculus adds up.
Gee, now it makes me think there's an ulterior motive to conquering Taiwan..
Yes, all of the most advanced chip making factories are in Taiwan. It's the biggest reason that the US passed the CHIPS act and also why there is so much geopolitical tension around Taiwan.
Why did you think there was so much focus on Taiwan? Boba is great and all, but surely it doesn't merit the protection of the US Navy. 😁
TSMC is like the world’s biggest shield right now.
I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the person who came up with the name Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors revealed their idea. I've got an image of someone sitting on their hands, eyes wide and shaking slightly as their desire to share it tries to burst out of them!
It's probably the modern reason, but before semiconductors there was already a lot of nationalistic tension around Taiwan.
Intel is back in the game with PowerVia after the endless blunder that was 10nm.
In grander strategic terms Taiwan is, technologically, erm, dispensable. Both Europe and the US can, independently, make chips that are good enough, that are fast enough, to be used in any application the question is whether they're cheap enough for high-end commercial use. The military doesn't care if a chip costs twice as much and is twice as heavy the propellant and warhead of the rocket weigh magnitudes more anyway.
Where Taiwan is indispensable is being a thorn in China's side which has strategic value all of its own.
China's version of Cuba.
Not really. The most advanced manufacturing sites are still in laboratories in the United States and Europe, it's just that they are not suited for mass production.
The entire reason they haven't tried yet is because they know they can't do it without TSMC being scuttled.
Well the thing is Taiwan's official name is the Republic of China and they, just like the People's Republic of China, consider themselves to be China. Officially it is a reunification (by force if necessary) of the two China's. Its not like North and South Korea where they are officially separate countries because they both consider themselves to be one country. It's a complicated situation from a civil war and colonization from Japan.
Tell you what's really hilarious is listening to Chinese (mainland Chinese, any province) completely lose their shit and turn into a rabid psychopath driveling screaming moron as soon as anyone says "Taiwan number one!".
They act like it's the most offensive possible thing that can be said apart from Xi looking like Winnie the Pooh.....because he does of course.
Nationalists are a funny bunch.
They consider themselves to be China, but don't want to be part of the People’s Republic, I wonder why..
No, the Republic of China considers itself to be the official Chinese government and that other government, the People's Republic of China, is a rouge state. The RC doesn't have the military might to bring them under control and the PRC feels the same about the RC. It's like if Texas and other southern states went rouge, declared themselves the United States of America, claimed all 50 states as part of America, and DC called BS and also claimed all 50 states. If no force is used to reconcile then only negotiations remain and that is where China is now.
"consider themselves to be China"
"reunification (by force if necessary)"
Your own statement conflicts itself. If Taiwan considers itself part of China, why would force be necessary?
Taiwan doesn't consider itself to be a country? Taiwan seems to disagree with that.
This post is full of dumb.
What they tried to say is, that Taiwan also considers mainland China to be their rightful territory. Taiwans official name is Republic of China, Mainland China's official name Peoples Republic of China.
Both consider themselves to be the rightful government of the whole China (including both mainland China and Taiwan). Both do not consider the other parties rule to be legitimate.
It really is comparable to Korea or pre-unification Germany. Both governments are united in following the "one China principle".
Ok since my "post is full of dumb" let me provide some reference material so you can enlighten yourself. Here is a Wikipedia article on the One China policy. Here is on from the Taiwan page.
EDIT: Also I never said that Taiwan considers itself part of China. I said that the Republic of China considers themselves to be China, as in, the official Chinese government. The PRC also considers itself to be official China and it considers Taiwan to be a rogue state, like how Catalonia was going rouge in Spain except the Republic of China considers itself the govt of China.
Hey China I made you this sweet horse statue in the form of an x86 processor -- You should put it in the town square to show it off and then all go to sleep....
x86 is dying, legacy processing. It's all GPU's and ARM processing now. Apple is leaning hard into it so they set themselves as a leader in AI in the future.
You very obviously don’t understand the truly enormous power of technical inertia.
Except a lot of infrastructure runs on legacy software. There's stuff built on like windows 2000 that is still used by hospitals and governments.
There's a lot of critical infrastructure running on Windows 3.1. A lot of very expensive machinery runs on proprietary software only released as x86 binaries, from autoclaves to MRI machines.
Oh, and here's the fun part: Basically the only appeal Windows has is its legacy software support. 'My games just work.' 'My software just runs.' That wasn't the case with the ARM editions of Windows, you couldn't just run a .exe. So they either have to do emulation, which in most cases WINE under Linux works better, or lock you into their app store which is Apple but 1,000 times shittier.
You're not wrong, but most of this legacy software runs on legacy hardware as well. Win 2k isn't supported by most modern hardware
Which is why China is incentivizing people to switch to their ARM based OSes that run on Linux 4, I suppose
Gaming though. The gaming situation on non-x86 cpus is passable at best. AFAIK you can't put a 4070ti in any non x86 system right now and have it work. Are there even any commercially available non-x86 systems that have pcie 16x slots?
The death of x86 is inevitable I just hope we can still play computer games on cheaper homebuilt systems afterwards because having to replace your entire system just to upgrade the integrated non upgradable gpu is no longer better or cheaper than consoles. I absolutely fucking doubt even indie developers, let alone others are going to downgrade graphics to let their games run on cheaper systems when this happens and everything becomes 10x more expensive.
Try an AMD card, much better chances because open drivers. There definitely have been people who got dedicated GPUs to run on ARM boards via the not even a handful of pcie lanes meant for m.2 storage.
I wouldn't be too sure about ARM because Qualcomm definitely is eyeing alternatives and other licensors might not exactly mind not being reliant on litigious bastards. That alternative is RISC-V. Most ARM licensors are making chips for products where apps don't really care about the architecture, that is, Android.
To actually make a dent in the completely entrenched x86 market we'd need probably chips with dual insn decoders. I certainly wouldn't put that past AMD they don't like being fused to Intel at the hip.
You're getting down voted but in all honesty, you're not wrong. All it takes is one x86/64 alternative to show the world that Intel and AMD aren't the only players in the game. Apple did it with ARM and the m1 chip, now we're hearing reports of Microsoft actually putting a real effort into ARM and making their own chips for AI instead of that half-assed Windows on ARM initiative. I for one love this competition, because that only benefits the consumers.
If x86 is going to die, Apple has to be defeated at all costs or else computers are going to become 10x expensive once they establish a monopoly. I hope someone starts making real progress in ARM system stuff. If they do away with expansion ports and make it so the gpu, ram, and cpu are all on one chip even on the competing non-x86 non-M1 systems then everything's fucked though.
ARM computers are positively repugnant. This abobination of an architecture MUST be exterminated.
They're not great, yet, but they're pretty cheap and really small. They'll probably get a lot better in the future though, remember the speed of x86 CPU's was once measured in MgHZ. I remember my first P4 with one whole GgHZ of speed, before even dual core CPU's.
Now I'm curious to know why.
Take any pc, install any random OS. Take any arm based cell phone. Try installing ANY different OS. ARM is an hardware prison and a e-waste manufacturer.