[HN Gopher] Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Semiconductor Edition
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       Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Semiconductor Edition
        
       Author : pantalaimon
       Score  : 57 points
       Date   : 2022-02-15 13:24 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (interconnected.blog)
 (TXT) w3m dump (interconnected.blog)
        
       | ngcc_hk wrote:
       | Fundamental issue of a giant investing on alternative is that it
       | is very hard to eat your own lunch.
       | 
       | The essay strangely said arm was a threat but so would be risc-v.
       | Not any risc is in play what is risc-v that cannot do but only
       | arm can, any vice visa. And that also both is a threat to x86. By
       | investing less or struggling upgrade to x86, it just weaken x86.
       | 
       | For the china play given the geopolitics I am not sure Google and
       | intel think they involvement can spell no USA attack.
        
         | hangonhn wrote:
         | I read that as those who are going to switch away from x86 to
         | ARM is already a loss for Intel. So RISC-V gives them a way to
         | claw back some of those losses. At the end of the day Intel has
         | always been a foundry and x86 is one way to drive up business
         | for those expensive foundries. RISC-V can be another way to
         | drive business towards Intel if Intel can establish a
         | relationship with RISC-V designers early on.
        
       | jevoten wrote:
       | > Of course, that was a war over power, territory, and dynastic
       | legitimacy. There is no antitrust regulators in war. I don't see
       | a "winner take all" ending happening among the three ISAs,
       | whether it's 35 years or 350 years. Romance of the Three
       | Kingdoms: Semiconductor Edition is here to stay.
       | 
       | Antitrust regulators aren't all-powerful or immune from
       | influence. There is no guarantee on how long they can resist
       | powerful interests, especially if there is a shift in the
       | geopolitics.
        
       | djtango wrote:
       | Tangential comment:
       | 
       | I'm a fan of Kevin's blog - think he has quite a unique
       | perspective having worked in US politics and Tech but having a
       | good understanding of Chinese tech too.
       | 
       | I also appreciate Lillian Li's Chinese Characteristics.
       | 
       | Does anyone have any other good recommendations for coverage of
       | Chinese tech?
       | 
       | I worry that a lot of tech innovation is one-directional. There
       | are far more Chinese tech workers who understand English (and
       | have worked in the west) than the inverse (tech workers from the
       | West who are Chinese speaking tech workers)
        
         | throwaway4good wrote:
         | The technical stuff seems to be all Chinese on sites like
         | bilibili, gitee etc.
         | 
         | For a more business perspective there are some twitter-accounts
         | - maybe: ruima, danwwang ...
        
         | TrainedMonkey wrote:
         | > There are far more Chinese tech workers who understand
         | English than the inverse.
         | 
         | This is a really interesting observation. I will make one as
         | well - there are far more people speaking English on aircraft
         | carriers than all other languages combined by a significant
         | margin. No idea what that means in the grand scheme of things,
         | but hey we are making geopolitical observations.
         | 
         | See https://www.businessinsider.com/magnitude-of-us-naval-
         | domina...
        
           | djtango wrote:
           | That's a great share thanks - interesting to consider all the
           | ways the English speaking world has exerted an edge
           | indirectly.
           | 
           | The observations don't necessarily _have_ to be geopolitical
           | (although it seems talk about China always is these days).
           | 
           | For example, PinDuoDuo hit 800M users in 6 years[1]
           | 
           | And from Kevin's InterConnected blog, the Chinese CBDC's
           | initial "small-scale" testing did 70M transactions[2]
           | 
           | Seems like Chinese dev needs to be prepared for scale in ways
           | most of us never have to dream of - would be interesting to
           | know if they're adopting best practices we could learn from.
           | 
           | [1] https://stories.pinduoduo-global.com/articles/pinduoduo-
           | inte...
           | 
           | [2] https://interconnected.blog/e-cny-players-dcep-e-rmb/
        
           | agency wrote:
           | This is kind of a tangent but I recently watched Wolf
           | Warrior, an over-the-top Chinese military action movie that
           | is also basically wall-to-wall propaganda for the PLA (not
           | that this military-entertainment complex stuff is unique to
           | China of course. You don't get to put all the latest shiny
           | military tech in the new _Transformers_ movie unless you play
           | ball with the DoD). In a climactic scene[1] after our heroes
           | are attacked by the bad guys (a bunch of American ex-special
           | forces mercenaries), while a voiceover speech is laying it on
           | pretty thick ( "To a soldier the most beautiful place in the
           | world is the border of the People's Republic of China,
           | because it is what they fight and die to protect"), they rip
           | off the patches they were wearing for the wargames they were
           | participating in before the attack and slap on patches with
           | the flag of China which say "I fight for China" _in English_.
           | Thought that was kind of interesting.
           | 
           | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCc0DWSZHCs
        
             | detaro wrote:
             | wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple language
             | versions of that scene, to make sure everybody gets it.
        
             | throwaway4good wrote:
             | The Wolf Warrior movies are very entertaining to watch if
             | you are a fan of classic American non-apologetic action
             | movies. Basically the same thing but in Chinese ...
        
         | Taniwha wrote:
         | China is roughly 1/5 of the world's population, that means that
         | it has roughly 1/5 of the world's smart people ... for a bunch
         | of political/historical reasons up until this generation they
         | haven't had the same chance to shine that others have, this
         | generation have been catching up and taking their place in the
         | world - the language barrier has made a lot of tech transfer
         | one way, the recent western protectionism is only making this
         | worse, it wont stop smart people doing smart things.
         | 
         | I think that the US has been biting itself in the ass for a
         | while now. Used to be it was the magnet for tech, but
         | regressive immigration policy over the past generation has made
         | it far harder for smart people to move there, meanwhile the
         | internet has made actual geographical location less important
         | (I moved to the US 40 years ago, and left 20 years later).
         | 
         | I do think that China is a big part of the future, the world is
         | a safer place if we trade rather than play at childish
         | brinkmanship. The best thing we can do in the world is to grow
         | large middle classes everywhere who have too much to lose b y
         | going to war
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | And Apple built their castle in someone else's kingdom.
        
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