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submitted 8 months ago by boem@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 152 points 8 months ago

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.

[-] SharkAttak@kbin.social 59 points 8 months ago

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. 😁

[-] RedWeasel@lemmy.world 14 points 8 months ago

TSMC is like the world’s biggest shield right now.

[-] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 13 points 8 months ago

It's probably the modern reason, but before semiconductors there was already a lot of nationalistic tension around Taiwan.

[-] QuantumBamboo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 8 months ago

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!

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 5 points 8 months ago

Yes, all of the most advanced chip making factories are in 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.

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[-] ricdeh@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

Yes, all of the most advanced chip making factories are in Taiwan.

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.

[-] Eezyville@sh.itjust.works 12 points 8 months ago

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.

[-] Shadywack@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago

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.

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[-] stembolts@programming.dev 9 points 8 months ago

"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.

[-] menemen@lemmy.world 17 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

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".

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[-] Socsa@sh.itjust.works 12 points 8 months ago

The entire reason they haven't tried yet is because they know they can't do it without TSMC being scuttled.

[-] lanolinoil@lemmy.world 16 points 8 months ago

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....

[-] Crack0n7uesday@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

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.

[-] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 26 points 8 months ago

You very obviously don’t understand the truly enormous power of technical inertia.

[-] Fedizen@lemmy.world 17 points 8 months ago

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.

[-] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 10 points 8 months ago

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.

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[-] Defaced@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

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.

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[-] rimu@piefed.social 77 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

This might just be for government computers, not the entire country - see https://www.ft.com/content/7bf0f79b-dea7-49fa-8253-f678d5acd64a

Still, the overall direction and intent is clear.

[-] turkishdelight@lemmy.ml 10 points 8 months ago

understandible given how the Americans are treating Huawei.

[-] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 46 points 8 months ago

China bans Intel and AMD from government machines, the US blocked Huawei from the entirety of the US.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 4 points 8 months ago

Unless I’m misreading the article Intel and AMD are banned for EVERYONE not just government.

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[-] robber@lemmy.ml 46 points 8 months ago

Only Chinese code is present, namely [lists three linux distros]

Linus Torvalds: *clears throat*

[-] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

China Huawei'ing Linux

[-] gbzm@lemmy.world 35 points 8 months ago

Well they probably know what they put in the CPUs they export to the US and Europe, so why would they?

[-] RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world 33 points 8 months ago

I mean, i get it. But i wish the world would just work together on everything and stop with the country bullshit. Imagine the stuff we could make if everyone worked together.

[-] AlpacaChariot@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago
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[-] the_rogue@sh.itjust.works 28 points 8 months ago

Whatever that gets a RISC-V open source chip made i am supporting don't care if its china or russia lets just hope this makes the giants follow along .

[-] SharkAttak@kbin.social 24 points 8 months ago

China, Russia, and open source? Hahaha

[-] olympicyes@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago

Execs from Huawei and Tencent are on the board of directors for the Linux Foundation.

[-] photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 8 months ago

That should set your alarm bells ringing.

[-] olympicyes@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

I don’t know if it should. Linux is obviously important to the Chinese. The foundation also has employees from Intel, VMWare, Meta, Qualcomm, Microsoft, and all the Japanese electronics manufacturers on the board. If we are so afraid of China maybe we should pull all of our manufacturing back.

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[-] the_rogue@sh.itjust.works 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yeah i also thought about it but decided to be optimistic for a sec . Atleast i hope they indirectly press others to do so.

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[-] yarr@feddit.nl 17 points 8 months ago

In a bizarre turn of events, it seems the reclusive nation of North Korea has finally succumbed to the intense chip envy brought on by China's recent announcement of its approved CPU list. In an effort to keep pace with neighboring rivals, Kim Jong-un ordered the immediate development of a state-of-the-art microchip. And thus, 'The Juche Chip' was born - named after North Korea's philosophy of self-reliance.

After months of hard work, North Korean engineers presented their masterpiece: a CPU so advanced, it can run MS-DOS smoothly on Windows ME. This revolutionary breakthrough in computing technology also boasts an impressive clock speed that's roughly equivalent to the rate at which time moves inside a Pyongyang prison cell. With the Juche Chip, users will never have to worry about lagging, overheating or any other technical issues because their system will freeze before such problems could even arise.

[-] Clbull@lemmy.world 16 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Databases also make the list, and again nothing from Western devs made the cut. But Alibaba Cloud's PolarDB is mentioned, as is Tencent’s TDSQL and a handful of other made-in-China efforts.

That's a big one.

Unless Chinese firms have been straight-up stealing trade secrets and code from the likes of Oracle and have produced such a blatant knock-off of their software that in any other country, they would have been sued out of existence, I can see a five week transition being messy-as-fuck.

Transitions to new database systems take months or even years to implement, not the 5 weeks mandated by the Chinese Communist Party. This is especially the case when you're dealing with important stakeholder data, huge data volumes and/or statutory requirements like financial reporting.

[-] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 15 points 8 months ago

What bothers me is the kernel version. Only one OS is on Linux 5 while the rest are on Linux 4‽

[-] Siegfried@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago

A debian based dystopia, I like it

[-] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

Seems like a continuation of the sad state of affairs for ARM chips. Most of the allowed chips are ARM based, and most companies making ARM chips never update their kernels

[-] smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

100% someday they will use the approved CPU list to have only those with secure boot/locked bootloader enforcing only their approved operating systems too.

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[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 14 points 8 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


AMD and Intel are not present on a list of processors approved by China's Information Security Evaluation Center.

The x86 architecture does make the list, but only in chips made by Shanghai Zhaoxin Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd – which is minority-owned by Taiwan's Via Technologies and holds a license to produce x86 processors.

The other approved chip shops make processors powered by Arm cores or, in the case of Loongson Technologies, the RISC-V architecture.

Second, the Financial Times found it over the weekend and reported that publication of the list accelerated efforts in China to replace Western tech and hardware with locally developed kit.

The FT chatted to some IT shops inside China and they confirmed that they're phasing out items like PCs running Windows, because shop-at-home mandates have taken force.

Last week, authorities again called on web platforms to police more vigilantly the use of provocative typos and puns that can be construed as criticism of the Chinese Communist Party.


The original article contains 463 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 65%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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[-] mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago

None of the CPUs on that list contain Intel Management Engine. What gives China, you don't want a CPU in your CPU?

[-] Grimy@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago

Is this really a surprise since we ban them from using our tech. I wouldn't want my tech to hinge on an other country that doesn't want me to have the stronger than average stuff either tbh.

[-] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 8 months ago

Why are Rockchip, Allwinner and other Chinese companies allowed to sell their garbage in western countries?

[-] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 12 points 8 months ago

Because open trade is a good thing?

[-] FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 5 points 8 months ago

Oh wait

Are PC prices about to surge without cheap Chinese knock offs available?

[-] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

Zilog: my time has come!

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this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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