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A Chinese Challenge To Intel
motang writes "Chinese government funded Godson-3 a CPU that is developed to bring personal computing to majority of Chinese people by the year 2010. Will this pose any threat to Intel?"
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I'm not an expert but I would guess that a shift to Chinese made chips will be harder on the environment since Chinese pollution laws are generally more lax. Also, if it is pushed by the government, I'm sure they're willing to overlook things. I believe corruption is rife in the People's Republic of China. This is very bad for Intel (and probably AMD, why not?) since there will be a much more cheaply made multi-core CPU available on the market.
Great for the end consumer, however. Possibly even really really good for me as a United States citizen as Intel/AMD will be forced to drop prices to compete in the world market.
Also, there's the 'patriotic' view of this and the fact that the U.S. owes China dearly as a trade partner. Import import import import and export nothing. This would be further propagating that, thus hurting the dollar a tiny bit more.
Oh well, such are the intricacies of world economics.
My work here is dung.
At least nobody said it was a threat to AMD.
Wouldn't the term "Chinese Intel" be an oxymoron.
-- Would this CPU be 16 years old or 14?
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No.
I wonder why they are working on making this CPU x86-compatible. If they want to be really "free" from the western IT-world they don't have to care about running Windows, and when they don't have to care about that, they can just adopt gcc, the rest of GNU and Linux to run natively on their own instruction set.
c++;
"Godson"... The new Jesus chip?
Speaking from PowerPC 970 MP, Quad G5 Mac which has very good FSB specs and way modern compared to CISC stuff, I can easily say "No".
Once you don't support x86 instruction set, you aren't a threat to Intel at all.
It doesn't support, pass. Sorry to sound negative but it is the truth.
If Intel could be threatened by a non x86 chip, Motorola/IBM/Apple could have achieved it. You see what happened, SJobs and Apple became number 1 Intel fan.
About performance and watt usage? There is still a huge company named FreeScale you know ;)
According to the article, "Federal laws also prohibit the export of state-of-the-art microprocessors from the United States to China, meaning that microchips shipped to China are usually a few generations behind the newest ones in the West." Thus, a native Chinese microprocessor project does not need to be state-of-the-art. It just has to be good enough to compete with the older stuff from Intel and AMD. Once the Chinese build up their own knowledge base in microprocessor design, then nationalism and Communism will help foist it upon their populace as they demand computers. It'll be interesting to see how this dovetails with any effort to create Red Flag Linux to move away from the Wintel-opoly.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
This is very bad for Intel (and probably AMD, why not?) since there will be a much more cheaply made multi-core CPU available on the market.
I guess we'll see about that. I did find, however, the best quote ever from TFA
"The decision makers and [Chinese] IT community have come to realize that CPUs [central processing units] are important."
Um...yeah.
You'll have that sometimes...
It's gonna have to be x86-compatible to run all those counterfeit copies of Windows.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
Can it run Linux? ;)
I think this will be interesting to watch. It's not like this is the very first challenger to Intel's market. So far none have really succeeded (AMD being the exception, but they aren't exactly considered the czar of the processor world at the moment) aside from niche markets. My guess is that this will be another company that will find its niche and settle for it. Intel just always seems to avoid losing "King of the Hill" status time and time again.
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Kinda looks like a Cyrix. We won't be seeing any all-Chinese Alienware boxen anytime soon.
The funny thing is that they're made in China by a Swiss company, then rebranded Chinese. Ya'd think that they'd want to do it the other way around. Must be a national pride thing -- China's motto is "Ours is crappier than yours, but we have so much damn more of it!"
Well, here's their history according to Google
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There are already Chinese made knockoff ia86 processors. They're all slow and crappy, although cheap. They have not been a major threat to Intel or AMD yet, and until we see some hard numbers on this new one, I'm not writing any obits for the mainstream processor industry.
I read the internet for the articles.
...you can bet they will jump on this at their earliest opportunity:
"...Metzger adds that the inner workings of the chip, known as its instruction set, have not yet been disclosed, making it difficult to know if or how any x86 patents may have been breeched."
Intel may be able to put up a roadblock or two over this.
Part of China's reasoning behind this has to do with US export laws concerning microprocessors. From TFA:
"Federal laws also prohibit the export of state-of-the-art microprocessors from the United States to China, meaning that microchips shipped to China are usually a few generations behind the newest ones in the West."
So if (when?) Intel does lose business because of this it will be interesting to see if it becomes another canonical example of how federal regulation hurts US businesses and the US economy.
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Transmeta has tried, Godson has already tried, and both have yet to make a dent. It's just another knockoff that will not take off.
Like a lot of things from China, reliability will be suspect, not to mention any willful patent infringement.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Just like Chinese cars pose no threat to Honda or Toyota or GM (they have bigger fish to fry) or BMW.
The U.S. exports to China as well. Buick has a very strong presence with GM Reintroducing cars into China after they have halted production in the U.S.
Hardly balanced but China needs the U.S. as bad as the U.S. needs China. This alone will probably keep the peace.
Probably because they will want to sell it outside of China at some point. Especially if it supports a few extra "undocumented" instructions to make cyberwarfare and espionage a bit easier for them.
And of course, x-86 compatiblity allows leverage of existing code bases too.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
Except for servers, hard core gamers and maybe very HDTV, once you get off MS' latest core consuming software, who cares about the last 20% of performance? At 2.5 watts per processor core, of which 1-2 cores should run most individual PCs just fine (f--- Vista), who cares an extra $200-$400 about "Intel inside"? Chinese business, students and academia should do just fine.
It is all about the Stats. How many Flops using Lapack?
FTFA
"This latest chip will also be fundamentally different from those made before. Neither Godson-1 nor -2 is compatible with Intel's so-called x86 architecture, meaning that most commercial software will not run on them. But engineers have added 200 additional instructions to Godson-3 to simulate an x86 chip, which allows Godson-3 to run more software, including the Windows operating system. And because the chip architecture is only simulated, there is no need to obtain a license from Intel."
I was wondering how they managed to build something that would not infringe on anyone's patents. I however would guess that Intel and AMD Engineers are looking closely at this chip, any single patent violation and I see both companies jumping on this company and preventing its sale in as many countries as possible.
The emulation would seem to keep it out of the main competition between AMD and Intel, however it seems the next move is to a Chinese OS... Time to brush up on my Mandarin!
Roughly half my comments are never submitted. You may be reading the better half...
"to bring personal computing to majority of Chinese people"
Please send Godson-3 to U.S.S.A. so majority of U.S.S.A
proletariat can have personal computing".
Thank you.
P.S.: Don't sell U.S. Treasury bonds yet. Wait until John
McSame is elected, then SELL.
Thanks a lot.
Cordially,
Philboyd Studge
I am not sure my facts are straight, and would like someone to clarify.
The U.S. is part of several trade organizations. These organizations generally frown on the government helping a business out like this, right? We have wide open trade with China. The Chinese government tilts the field in their business' favor by manipulating the currency, and directly funding projects like this.
Why the hell do we put up with this?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Maybe now the Chinese will stop trying to hack my servers because they're already inside.
Most of the stuff on
Their current chip is basically a pentium 3, without the x86 instruction set. It comes in 500 mhz to 1.2 ghz flavors.
They're even less of a threat than Via and Cyrix were.
Will it pose a threat to Intel? In the short run absolutely not. It will require a truly massive investment, Intel isn't standing still, and the biggest problem is getting enough engineering talent. Furthermore just producing the chip isn't enough, there have to be boards to plug it into, software written to support the chip/boards, etc. True China is producing a lot of engineers but that by itself is entirely insufficient.
Long term - who knows? Talent can be developed/bought/hired, secrets learned/stolen, R&D can leapfrog, etc. It will be very difficult to displace Intel but it certainly isn't impossible. Andy Grove would probably be the first to admit that.
Wasn't everything or almost everything made in China? Open up any computer and you'll see "Made in China" or Taiwan or Hong Kong.
Well at least now, you have official "Made in China" CPU manufacturers.
But all said and done, official Chinese counterparts are no match to the American or Japanese versions. Look at the Chinese "iphone" or cars, no way I'm getting one of those.
slashdot rocks
Should it be told to return 16, it will return 16 even if the result is 14. Consider it the Olympic Calculation Extension.
Attempting to write Tibet, Democracy, or anything the PRC deems harmful(via microcode updates) destroys the unit.
(Oxymoron (Score:-1, Troll))
Hrm. I guess the mods have a defective sense of humor here. ...3...2...1...
Supporters of China incoming in
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It isn't. It is a MIPS derivative design, running Linux (normally). Just like Godson and Godson-2. Not Windows. There may be "ip infringement", but I think the designers are being careful.
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Hardly balanced but China needs the U.S. as bad as the U.S. needs China. This alone will probably keep the peace.
Why does China need the US again? I must have forgotten.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
One has to wonder... will a chip brought to you by the makers of the Great Firewall be benign, or a serious threat to human freedom.
Godson is a MIPS-compatible. We've already seen one MIPS-based Linux netbook. And guess what, Linux is identical on MIPS and x86!
Any MIPS or ARM at a given price point will run cooler and faster than x86. All x86 processors are RISC with an instruction converter front end, but that's still enough of a liability to make the first sentence true.
End game: Netbooks with ARM or MIPS spread upward to desktops and servers with ARM or MIPS. x86 finally fades away of software that doesn't care. All hail.
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Sometimes before the new Intel chip has even made it to market. Just like new Hollywood movies. Read up on Chinese Silicon Valley business intelligence.
If its government funded they will probably push it using the controlled media. If they can get the Chinese to believe they freed the Tibetians from a unjust system they shouldn't have a problem with this.
I don't care who makes the processor - let's face it, most chips in US computers are made in Asian countries anyway - all I need is for it to work well. I doubt the Chinese are doing anything radical (that's not generally their style), which is a pity because current chip designs are going down a dead-end and it'll take a radical shift to solve many of the issues to do with parallelism, increasing abstraction in programming languages, and increasing demand for highly robust software. Serious efforts into such radicalizing of technology can be seen with the IBM Cell design (which isn't going anywhere, at the moment) and could be seen in the Transmeta Crusoe and the Inmos Transputer, and the Manchester AMULET was ingenious enough, but pretty much everything else in the CPU world is based on stale ideas and stagnant approaches. Good for backwards compatibility at the binary level, lousy for long-term potential.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
And 10 watts is damned good for a 4-core chip, especially for a 65 nm process.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah! Suck it!
Four or five years ago there was all this buzz about the Chinese Dragon CPU (based on the old Soviet Elbrus) that was going to combine with Red Flag Linux to destroy Wintel. Heard from them recently? The CPU fanboys don't understand that it's not about designing chips; it's about designing chips you can then make.
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The U.S. is China's largest buyer. They wouldn't be where they are without all that money flowing that way. If China were to collapse the U.S. economy which is something they could do right now then they would lose a lot of business devastating their own economy in the process. This nearly happened to the U.S. when Japan's market collapsed.
If almost 90% of Intel Mac gaming community dynamically (online) divides their boot partition to run Windows games at highest possible compatibility and speed, games and performance really matters.
Also remember they are running/booting to some bad copy of MacOS which has several issues on Apple Mac hardware.
Don't forget HDTV, even 1080p on PCs are really taking off and it is not trivial task to decode h264/AVC, years ago, it wasn't big deal but today people expect their computer to realtime compress and enhance their video while capturing it. (Video Cam).
hello.c:
./hello
--
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
char* msg = "Tibet Free!";
printf(msg);
}
--
$ gcc hello.c
$
Segmentation fault.
$
It seems the next logical step for them will be to develop a Chinese-grown OS and "strongly frown upon" use of Windows at home. (While at the same time having their OS support Windows apps) That way they can have the OS report any "dangerous behavior" by default, and roll out any patches or refresh a new "blocking list" daily....
Here's where I base this from TFA:
Loongson chips already power some personal computers and servers on the Chinese market, which come with the Linux operating system and other open-source software. "They use a lot of open-source software because it's free," says Halfhill. "The Chinese government wants to get as many PCs into schools and as many workplaces as they can."
Neither Godson-1 nor -2 is compatible with Intel's so-called x86 architecture, meaning that most commercial software will not run on them. But engineers have added 200 additional instructions to Godson-3 to simulate an x86 chip, which allows Godson-3 to run more software, including the Windows operating system
They are a bunch of dolts if they go to such great length to become independent from Intel, only to invite dependency on MicroSoft.
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All the American and EU companies that have brought their factories there have allowed their patents and trade secrets to be stolen. If China does this, well, it is understandable. They have been stealing for decades.
For this chip to enter the US market, it needs two things:
(1) Speed. Depending on how fast it is, considering how much US CPUs have ramped up, we may wind up emulating their CPU in software for the few things we'd need to run.
(2) Software. Without a killer app that people in the US *have* to have, there's no reason for machines based on that CPU to come here. I can see it, though; some game that gets popular in China and becomes a grass-roots hit here.
We'll see how much infrastructure the chip requires. US introduction may range from something like the Mac Mini to a PCI-Express card to run stuff on our current consoles. (Can you say, HUGE security risk? ;-)
Except they'll be saying "zai-jian" since presumably the Chinese would be statistically more likely to speak Mandarin rather than Japanese...
"Will this pose any threat to Intel?"
If the quality of the Chinese crap we buy at Wal~Mart is any indication,then Intel shouldn't lose any sleep.Chinese industry is based on the largest profit margin it can muster while beating competitors.Use LOWEST cost to manufacture so you can beat out the others and still make a profit.
Wouldn't surprise me to find the processors made of paper,plastic and recycled twist ties.
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This story reminded me of an unrelated chip fraud case a FreeScale DSP chip was simply sanded down to remove the logos and rebadged as a Chinese invention.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/technology/15fraud.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanxin
http://www.itworld.com/060515chipfraud
Wow, I imagine these chinese cpu's will have the feature to explode simultaneously at a signal coming from a satellite, hence the name.
Because you can't steal Windows software if your processor doesn't have the x86 instruction set.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Much like pharmacuticals companies, just because Intel has to charge less in other countries, doesn't mean they have to charge less here.
All they have to do is figure out some law that prevents the Chinese from importing the chips to the US ... say, lack of meeting enviromental standards.
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If the Chinese government dumped the goods that were made for export into the ocean, they wouldn't have any less for themselves. They don't get anything in exchange for the US currency. It means nothing. China knows they're not getting anything back from the US, not now, not in the future. They keep going they way they are because it's a way to keep the citizens busy so they won't make trouble.
American money is like Air Miles.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Actually, from the article, I think this is the dragon cpu (dragonchip in the article)
/not suck/.
And it is being produced.
It also makes the VIA processors look like incredible speed demons.
So the problem isn't being able to make them, but being able to make them
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Even in real (before Gorbachov) communist era, USSR was shipping 8086 compatible chips as far as I searched.
Guess what? They care about Windows, DirectX and millions of x86 centric developers. China has always been a realistic country and even Russia couldn't dare to ship a non x86 small chip. Their mainframes were also DEC/S360 etc. clones. There is even a DEC chip saying "Steal from the best" when looked under electron microscope ;)
Indeed there was: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html
Intel patents cover far more than the instruction set. The whole reason for so much cross-licensing in the industry is that a whole pile of patents are involved in a single modern CPU chip. If China uses Intel patents (say for floating point computation, or an effective front-side bus, or even chip packaging) to market a competing CPU, ever socket filled by that CPU is one more displaced Intel chip. The x86 instruction set is only one small piece of the puzzle.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
That as the chinos strive to imitate us more and more, it's the US who is becoming more like them.
Only because we keep insisting on having the fastest processors available to run Microsoft Office, check e-mail, and browse the web.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Hardly. The US exports $1.15 trillion of goods and services per year. It's true that the US imports $700bln more than it exports. Exports recently rose sharply when the dollar's value was relatively depressed versus European and Asian currencies.
If China would more aggressively re-circulate the $1.5 trillion in reserves it's holding rather than hoarding dollars, the dollar's value would fall relative to the Yuan (which is being artificially under-valued, which China can due to its massive currency reserves). This would make Chinese imports more expensive and US exports less expensive. But then, China's export-driven economy wouldn't be growing at an insane 11% per year.
The current trade imbalance is as much China's "fault" as it is the US'. Maybe things aren't so unilaterally bad. There's some truth in the old saying that "if you owe the bank $100, you have a problem. If you owe the bank $1 million, the bank has a problem."
Seriously, every single government in the world is pretty much making its own company and then trying to export the product abroad(where it devours private industry because private industry doesn't have the infinite pockets of governments). The WTO(of which China is a member), was supposed to stop such shenanigans, but it seems pretty much unable to do anything anymore. China has its various industries, the EU has Airbus, the US Boeing as well as others, the Japanese government has always had a heavy hand in industry, the list goes on. Why even bother to have a WTO anymore?
Monstar L
You jest, but I would be strongly suspect of buying hardware like this. Given such an opportunity to put in a hardware backdoor into every PC with such a chip, do you really think the PRC would pass?
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Great for the end consumer, however.
I think that all depends on the quality of the end product. There have been other consumer products where the Chinese have attempted to clone and mass-produce something made in the states, only to end up with dismal QC and a product that was simply trash. If this "godson" chip ends up junk (or mostly junk) then it might have no appreciable benefit for the consumer.
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Who do you think is spending all of the money that China is bringing in? For instance, who orders the products made in China, who sells the products OEMed in China? (Or, for that matter, who is designing all of the products that China is pirating?)
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This is an insightful post.
Off-topic xenophobia here but:
Is there anyone else who is a little worried about this scenario:
There's a major decline in the economies of the first world democratic capitalist societies. The global business and banking communities notice that they're making more profit in the authoritarian society, and they apply their influence to see appropriate changes here. The developing world then gets incouraged toward more democratic and humane forms of social organization?
Is anyone else worried that this is already happening?
I don't think the Chinese are worse than most people in the world. I just think they have a scary form of government that is becoming more and more influential and not really getting more humane or free as their economy matures. It's dangerous for the world to learn that you can make piles of money without freedom.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
I bet you're right...
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This is the third major redesign of the Dragon chip. If you had read the article (haha, slashdot joke etc) you would have seen that apparently with each update they've tripled the performance, or so they say. There's been about 8 updates for the second major design of the chip, they're on 2G or 2H now, with integrated GPUs, and even integrated chipsets (System on Chip).
Godson-3 / Dragon-3 chip will have 4 cores at 5W/core (allegedly) and interface using HyperTransport to a chipset (so they can probably use any compatible chipset from the PC world).
Splittists, hooliganism, and enemies of social harmony are dire threats to users of the Internet.
Will these new chips be designed to require software that detects and eliminates these menaces?
(Yeah, yeah, I just read Rainbows End.)
Godson *is* Dragon. So this is the 3rd gen Dragon chip.
AMD thought that about Intel before Intel tarted up the P3 and released it as the Core Duo. Godson-3 has 4 cores, they're jumping straight to the Core Quad level. At 2.5W per core at 1GHz though, I wouldn't expect much. Might be good competition for Atom and Nano though, and those Netbooks don't *need* x86 to run Linux.
And it has accelerated translation of x86 instructions AFAICT - presumably a native application will use these to run x86 VMs.
> I'm not an expert but I would guess that a shift to Chinese made chips will be harder on the environment since Chinese pollution laws are generally more lax. No offense, but where do you think chips are made now? The majority is made in southeast asia, or at least the last time I was in touch with things. Just because the contracting company is Chinese doesn't mean the chip fabrication won't come from roughly the same source.
The U.S. is China's largest buyer.
The EU recently stole that place (probably due to $/ fluctuations)
They'll use that trillion bucks to buy oil from the arabs. They seem to like that.
Uhm, because China would collapse immediately without the US buying nearly everything they make.
China will be selling the 4 CPU chip for a fraction of what a 1 CPU chip from intel costs. In addition, it has the ability to shutdown all but 1 core, which leads to really low power requirement. China has been taught how to do all this by companies like Intel.
These chips will show up in small laptops within 2 years and those systems will be sold the world over for under $200. Intel is in BIG trouble in both the short AND long term. In fact, I suspect that Intel AND AMD will be in worse shape than America's steel and car industry within 2 years.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And all China has to do is declare this chip is in their vital national interests (which they can justify by the export ban on advanced microprocessors) and that they won't obey any foreign patents regarding this processor. This will kill much of their export market for this chip, but their domestic market alone will be enough to sustain them.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I would be more worried by the Godfather 3.
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Don't forget the possibility of backdoors or other tracking/censorship mechanisms. China isn't exactly known for free information policies after all.
Taiwan is a big chip maker. I wonder how much of this is an attempt to undermine one of Taiwan's important sources of economic strength. Also, this has a double bonus for imperialism in that making the world less dependent on Taiwan's chip production will make other countries less concerned about Taiwan's fate. A free trade agreement with Taiwan would sure be a big help for democracy and against modern day imperialism.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
U.S. does not owe China anything. If anything, China owes us for letting them import so many Chinese made goods into the country.
Wo you mai zhongua dianshi. Not even close to what I wanted to say: "I, for one, welcome our Chinese CPU overlords"
From a technology standpoint, this probably serves as no threat to Intel. From an economic and political standpoint, *absolutely*.
The big question is, have we crossed the "good enough" threshold for consumers?
China can force the new CPU down its citizen's throats (just as it stopped manufacture of good near Beijing for the Olympics), giving them no choice (give Intel a taste of its own medicine, heh).
China doesn't have to be so heavy handed in doing so however. It could subsidize the CPU, in a similar way the government sets the gasoline price, making it more economically prudent for most of the Chinese population.
This would seem to push the issue out of Intel's hands and into foreign trade policy makers (Intel would just step up its lobbying efforts, the government of course would listen to Intel because of campaign contributions and Intel's status as a world hi tech leader). The CPU would turn into a point of national pride for both countries, creating a new world "us" vs. "them" and the Dick Cheney's of the world will crack a wry smile followed by the word "excellent" (Mr. Burns voice optional). Not that I'm cynical though...
Since right now, China gets tons of money from the US, and it is never smart to bite the hand that feed, this would seem to not be too big of an issue. If China can create a self sustaining domestic industry (for "national security"), then the dominos start to fall.
Great for the end consumer, however. Possibly even really really good for me as a United States citizen as Intel/AMD will be forced to drop prices to compete in the world market.
You missed a few basics in economics 101. Cost of production, Cost of development, Economy of scale.
The cost of R & D, FAB construction and operation is why these complex parts are dirt cheap now. Cutting production in half due to competition will not reduce prices. It runs up costs and slows R & D as each product must remain on the market longer.
AMD is screaming foul now because their yeild is about 1/2 that of Intel, so they are swearing that Intel is dumping on the market below manufacturing cost. For the same manufacturing cost, Intel is shipping about twice as many parts. They can sell below AMD's production cost and still sell at a profit because more of AMD chips can't ship.
Forcing lower prices the market simply stops production if you can't manufacture for that price. Ask AMD what this feels like.
Last time I checked their profit margin is -58.24%. They can't continue for long in the price war.
Link http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=AMD
AMD can't lower prices without fixing yield, They will fold first.
Intel is operating at a profit and NOT dumping on the market to kill AMD.
Their profit margin is 17.79%
Link http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=INTC
Don't expect competition to cause either company to suddenly cut prices in half. It ain't gonna happen because it can't.
If the prices are lower, it is because the parts are cheaper with less performance to meet the lower prices the market will bear. Example Intel's Atom. Smaller, lower power, lower performance, lower cost. You won't be buying Core Extreme quad chips for Atom prices. It can't happen.
China has lower labor costs as well as lower FAB costs (less EPA costs) so even with a lower yield, they may be able to under price Intel/AMD. AMD can't enter a price war, they are already in the red. Intel can come down a little until the volume drops off, then the unit price will stall as the divide between red and black ink rises due to lower volume. The margins can be cut some, but as volume is cut, the red ink price line will rise as the cost per unit increases. Cross that line and jobs and FABs are cut. R & D is reduced. You get less for the buck.
Take finance 101 again and try again.
Intel pushes faster, better, cheaper. Without all three, someone else will take the market.
Let's face it, you can buy an Atom chip for less than the price of a good steak dinner for a family of 2. Guess which has much more R & D and manufacturing costs. Only through volume at high manufacturing yield is the prices this low. Cut volume or yield, and the price takes a hit.
The truth shall set you free!
since the developers do not have semiconductor fabs of their own (a very expensive investment), they contract out the actual manufacturing.
Well, it's china we're speaking about. Now that they've had designed the chips, be sure that within one week they will announce brand new chinese fabs costing only 100'000$ to make (but entirely made of wood and catch fire or collapse after 2 months of intensive work). And one month later, a massively huge batch of home made CPU, costing only 1$ a piece (but may suffer from spontaneous combustion and/or more random bugs than all pentiums and phenoms combined)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Yes, that has been the way of things for many years, and is one of the major historical sources of US wealth... they trade their money for other countries goods, then the other country uses them as a world currency to trade for oil with a third party country.
Thing is, they're all bad cheques. It's like if I paid the butcher with a bad cheque and took his meat, then he paid the baker with my cheque, then he paid the candlestick maker with my cheque. The candlestick maker, he put it in his wall safe for a rainy day.
It's great for me, I get all my shit for free. And as long as no one tries to cash the cheques I write, no one notices that I'm ripping everyone off.
Iraq started breaking stride with the other oil producing nations and allowing Euros to be traded instead of US Dollars. Then they got invaded, and that put a stop to that.
I wonder if the US has the military capacity to stop a second nation from breaking stride? I don't think so, but we'll see.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Except when the monolithic truck that is Intel's legal department stomps on them in Europe, the US, Japan, Australia, and virtually every other market in which they have even the slightest of legal standing.
You know. Basically all of them.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Transmeta has tried, Godson has already tried, and both have yet to make a dent. It's just another knockoff that will not take off.
Like a lot of things from China, reliability will be suspect, not to mention any willful patent infringement.
Unlike either of those two, they don't have the backing of a government will over a billion people in it. If they only make a CPU that's an ARM clone to run their cell phones and something that is slightly more robust than a Barbie PC, then I'd call it success if they manage to rollout a few hundred million of them to the chinese public.
Intel will lose if they can't make hyper super cheap computers for China. I don't know if the chinese can do that, but they've got more incentive to do it than intel does. Intel can just play in their current market while these unknown cheap chinese folks come out of now where and it 10, 20, 30 years have e $1-5 chip that is just as fast as Intel's latest.
"If China were to collapse the U.S. economy which is something they could do right now "
How, exactly? I've heard this before, but never a proper explanation.
Sell all their US bonds? To whom?
Stop selling shit to us? That would suck, but I'm sure all the other Asian nations would be right on top of picking up the slack.
Another thing is that some of the scenarios would be so internally destructive that it reminds me of the Looney Tunes where Daffy, desperate to steal the show from Bugs, blows himself up. When Bugs compliments him, he says "Yeah, yeah - but I can only do it once" as he is floating up to heaven.
Sure, China *could* destroy the US economy, but at a cost of wiping themselves out. If the US collapses and stops buying Chinese goods, that would idle millions of factory workers, who are NOT going to want to go back to the farms from whence they came. hey weren't real happy when the Beijing factories were idled for 2 weeks for the Olympics - picture that anger, multiplied by it happening all over the country and for an indefinite time.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
The U.S. is China's largest buyer. They wouldn't be where they are without all that money flowing that way. If China were to collapse the U.S. economy which is something they could do right now then they would lose a lot of business devastating their own economy
This is exactly why it is bad to build economies around debt. You get artificial restrictions in the economy that leads to problems (recessions) when you can't find someone willing to get endebted.
And when you actually find people people willing to get endebted the economy will roll on for a while until it reaches its limit and it again isn't possible to find people willing to get endebted.
Of course, the ones making the big money over time on this is bankers, investors and others that deal in debt. For the rest of society it is just another thing that causes instability and inefficency. Of course, coming up with a better system that works in practice isn't an easy task, and implementing it is even harder.
I don't think the Chinese are worse than most people in the world. I just think they have a scary form of government that is becoming more and more influential and not really getting more humane or free as their economy matures. It's dangerous for the world to learn that you can make piles of money without freedom.
I find this very funny like it was a surprise that we've known that dictators can make massive piles of cash for their family. Oh I guess you mean that business has found that it's very profitable to run in near dictator level government as long as the government and people are neutral towards you. I'm not really that surprised. The US and EU have poor history vision and some how think that all of history was just like their current government and the rich/merchant classes didn't get that way from exploiting everyone else. Rolls eyes.
I thought that was Iran that allowed Euros to buy oil. Also that was after Iraq was invaded.
They don't get anything in exchange for the US currency. It means nothing.
I thought this is what they were using to buy up all the US companies?
If you plug x86 code into this chip and it works, then it's x86 compatible. The specifics of how all that happens once those instructions flow into the silicon is irrelevant for this particular discussion.
Well not exactly.
Windows XP, although much leaner than Vista, still isn't the world's less power-hungry OS either. (See past results of Linux vs. WinXP wars on sub notebooks).
If the chips counts on some inefficient software on-th-fly x86-to-MIPS64 translation layer, yes it would technically be able to receive x86 opcodes but that will be about it.
Probably wont be able to demonstrate the necessary power to run Windows XP except at "boring and ugly slideshow" speed.
As Linux is 1. leaner 2. could be recompiled to run directly using the native MIPS64 binary code, maybe it's the only OS that could be realistically used on it.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
And since when has government backing been a good idea for product development?
China's recent economic success has been based on the government being less involved in the running of businesses.
One problem with thinking this is good for the consumer...it isn't. Cisco is proof of this, where they had made routers that had some backdoors planted in them, and sold to the military.
Can you imagine a zombie botnet made up of all the compromised intel chips in place, that would be skynet for sure. Correct me if I am wrong, but I would believe that a chip made by the people for the people is no good. It has to be made by an industry that is (almost) unbiased. China making parts is one thing, they still have to comply to quality control, and I am sure Cisco punished them for their hand in developing trojaned hardware, but this would mean basicly we don't have to worry about the quality seeing as we made it based off our specs.
Well, one probable side effect of the rapid and dirty expansion of Chinese manufacturing is the poisoning of their people and their children which will accelerate the development of the country and ultimately improvement in environmental standards as those living at the bottom of the ladder die young from cancers, toxic levels of heavy metals in the blood, and other pollution related health consequences and leave behind a smaller core of healthier and wealthier citizens to clean up the mess once they are developed and start caring more about such things.
That's news to me, but even so, losing a large customer will still cause a collapse as they are gearing towards increased demand, not a perhaps 40% drop in demand. It makes no sense for them to do it until oil becomes too hard for them to buy.
Intel chips are I believe made in America, Ireland and Israel. AMD's I believe are mostly made in Germany.
For other sorts of chips, try Taiwan and South Korea. Both of those countries have economies that are very close to Western standards.
It's dangerous for the world to learn that you can make piles of money without freedom.
If you are worried about that then just look at the US. Considerable reductions in freedoms, particularly for us foreigners some of whom come to trade, at the same time as a major economic decline. That should persuade people otherwise.
This is the third major redesign of the Dragon chip.....with each update they've tripled the performance
Is this following some kind of Mooles Law?
AT&ROFLMAO
>Iraq started breaking stride with the other oil producing nations and allowing Euros to be traded instead of US Dollars. Then they got invaded, and that put a stop to that.
That sounds bad for Iran since they did that too some months ago.
http://www.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUSBLA02024820080430
Iran conducts all crude trade in euro, yen
Why didn't they just name it Jeebuz?
That is all.
Since the Arpanet/Internet was born?
There was a recent article about US military concerns regarding other Chinese made chips. Basically there's no way to tell if there's a back door built in. Assuming the Chinese are successful in establishing a competitive CPU business, there's a real chance that some form external control might be possible.
When the Israelis bombed that Syrian reactor site a few months back, they weren't picked up by a supposedly state of the art radar system - there was some speculation that the Israelis used a back door to disable the radar, but of course they aren't talking.
The obvious follow up is this - has the US gov't managed to slip a back door into Intel's chips?
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Yeah, I've been watching that closely. I hope they stick to their guns.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I think you are trying to say
" Is tis forrowing some kind of Mooles Raw?"
How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
Which of course is hard to do in a small time frame.
But since they are probably less likely to want to accept the crap others sell them they will eventually get there.
2.5 watts per core: 10 watts total for a 4-core chip. However, I don't know if that 10 watts is the idle power dissipation, or what the chip eats at full load.
Given the chance to put a hardware backdoor into every PC, do you really think the USA would pass? Would ANY government in the world?
More interestingly - SHOULD any government in the world? From a security standpoint, they'd be able to get a massive intelligence advantage and as such it'd be rather stupid not to take advantage of it.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
There's rarely such thing as an expert in these things". Most environment activists are not any kind of expertis, they are what they are- activists. Living in San Francisco I am all too familiar with this scene. I think with the decline of religion in the West people who cannot embrace science are looking for other ways to fill their spiritual void- this wave of environmental activism is a part of this.
China has almost 1.5 Trillion US Dollars in reserve. That is a whole lot of dollars and much more than they need. They could use those dollars, by trading them in on the Foreign Exchange Market for Euro's (or an other currency) on a large scale, to manipulate the value of the Dollar.
It only takes one man to change the Wisdom of the Crowd to Tyranny of the Masses.
All together now:
"Fa Ra RA Ra Ra, Ra ra ra ra"
Yep, we're going to PC hell.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Actually, I believe Intel just built, or is in the process of building, a major fab in China.
Intel is also building (may be complete or maybe not) a huge research center in China. China has some of the best fabs now and they are educating people in the newest technologies. That's why Intel is going there - a ready supply of capable workers.
China is definitely moving up the technology ladder and doing it at the expense of all of the companies that saw money in their short-sighted plans to outsource there. This new processor is a testament to that.
Maybe it's slow now, but I would bet it beats the hell out of an old 386 or so. And even if not, it does show they are moving into this arena. With the funding the country can provide, I think it's reasonable to expect big hops in technology.
This has bad for the USA written all over it. AMD, Intel, and the environment.
No thats not true.
Although the design is Chinese, the Godson processors will be manufactured by STMicroelectronics, which is a French-Italian company.
The processors will probably be manufactured in Crolles, France on the ST 65nm process. The backend packaging is done in Singapore and Malaysia using RoHS compliant package design.
They have to steal technology from somewhere.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
"by trading them in on the Foreign Exchange Market for Euro's (or an other currency) on a large scale, to manipulate the value of the Dollar."
Again, someone has to be willing to trade them Euros for the Dollars. Who would buy such huge sums of dollars to help tank the US economy and thereby hurt themselves? Remember, the US mortgage crisis caused FOREIGN banks to collapse.
And even if they did find buyers, one assumes they would be trying to depress the value of the dollar. Why would they? The dollar has been tanking already and the Chinese are feeling the pain in the form of less trade and higher prices for oil - do you think they would want MORE of that?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Their current chip sounds a lot like the 0.6ghz neutered Pentium 3 currently running my eee701. Which is equally as current.
Possibly because American corporations manufacture and export far more from China than the Chinese corporations do.
Close, that is a bad idea, but the Chinese government is doing worse than that. They're building their economy over an artificially devalued currency. Many of the Asian nations do that, Japan is another notable offender.
The problem is that when you rely upon currency controls to make ones own products cheaper it tends to cause other problems. Such as minor moves in the value of the Yuan making huge impacts in employment and for the producers in nations to which the items are being sold getting angry at being cheated.
China has the advantage that it doesn't give a fuck about intellectual property rights. All they need is a spy to copy all of the Intel design documents. I for one won't be surprised when Godson-3 is a clone.
From what I've seen it is MIPS-compatible, and with the latest round of mods also x86 compatible. Both these architectures run Linux.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You could /always/ make piles of money without freedom. But, without freedom, what the heck do you do with the money once you have it? And who says you get to keep it if you're not free? Isn't there a certain oil tycoon in prison over in Russia simply because he got too rich compared to the political power brokers.
Sure, you can be rich in a totalitarian country, but you probably won't be able to step off the mark much and do anything special with it. I'm not foreseeing any privately designed Rutan Space planes flying out of China any time soon.
In most totalitarian countries 'The nail that stands proud gets hammered down' (ie: the creative/free thinkers). Unfortunately for the totalitarians those nails will have the cures for cancer, ebola, and global warming.
"Frown on government helping out businesses"??? Look at all the agricultural subsidies, bailing out financial organizations, lobbying,...
Why the hell does the rest of the world put up with USA? Reason: It is one of the biggest markets in the world and you don't bite the hand that feeds.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You know, I heard that precise same argument around 1970 ... only that time it was about Japan. "All they can do is copy.", "They can make anything out of used beer cans...but all they make is cheap shit".
How do you feel about Japan these days?
Which country is doing the most in robotics?
(P.S.: I'm not certain that the answer to the second question is Japan, but they're definitely one of the top three.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Not to mention EU - US dependency. That's gotta be even more than US - China interdependency.
I mean didn't Russia just demonstrate in Georgia what they'd do if America were to leave the EU ?
No - that would be silly.
AT&ROFLMAO
nice try, dali lama fanboy!
"AMD would lose every single Govt. and Big American company contract the day they do such deal with Chinese govt. Don't forget "AMD gets support from human rights abusers!" trolls too, millions of them, amateur or professional."
Let's then remember that China significantly floats FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC (or, let's make them Frannie Mae/Feddie Mac or Manny Fae, and Meddie Frack...). Now, it seems the South Korea Government will be buying (or is trying to buy/floating the idea that they will buy) Lehman Brothers:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/02/business/lehman.php
If a European bank were floating this idea, there'd be not much of any uproar. If China were trying to buy Lehman, there'd be an uproar. With Korea, it's something in-between. That, well, is paraphrasing what I heard last night on BBC/NPR/PRI about the situation. So, SK is taking things slowly.
Now, if China bought AMD, would China really HAVE to care/worry that the US government would nix projects? Even if the SEC allowed it (after ordering the purging and dual-use/DOD-related files and dies/machinery from the company's assets/possession) China would STILL have a significant windfall. Actually, they may already have that windfall without having to buy the company...
Anyway, given AMD's financial position (depending on what you read into things), it might make an easier buy for China. Even if AMD ends up in China's sights, India may well step into the fray.
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/AboutAMD/0,,51_52_484,00.html
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
and yet, the west has lost it growth, it is bric and 3rd world that has high growth that is fueling china's growth. Even if Intel ties up China in the west on this one chip(and I doubt that they will), they have the entire rest of the world. Intel and AMD are in serious trouble.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Whether that is a bad idea depends on the opportunity cost (and not in U.S. dollars). China gets a hell of a lot more out of trade than mere dollars.
The arabs trade oil for dollars, they're not interested in anything else, and therefore, if oil gets replaced (which will obviously happen), they're up on niagara falls without a paddle and with some ayatollahs and other muslim clergy having spent years mining the bottom of the falls.
China is building an internal economy, with tons upon tons of different stuff, that will provide them with options in the future.
The problem is that when you rely upon currency controls to make ones own products cheaper it tends to cause other problems. Such as minor moves in the value of the Yuan making huge impacts in employment and for the producers in nations to which the items are being sold getting angry at being cheated.
These "impacts" are only huge in absolute numbers, otherwise they're tiny. But yes 1000 people laid off is a lot. Compared to 900 million jobless (what would happen if the US divests from China), it's a spec of dust in the wind.
Actually the Israeli guessed the frequency of their radars (well, they measured it), then used a station based in Lebanon to send out a very powerfull pulse on that frequency.
"Hacking" certainly. Backdoor ? No. Just limits of the technology.
And so is my comment.
Curious about Storage and Virtualization? Check out
Oh wait, that's not a product either.
To quote LongNoi "QZTR was right and won't leave me alone because I called him a moron when I was wrong" FYS
Let me know if there are any other questions you'd like answers for.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
"The L/R thing is Japanese, not Chinese, and it doesn't work like that, either."
What, is it "miss the movie/TV reference" day? Somebody just told me my sig was technically incorrect and that turkeys really CAN fly, just not well.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Ok, government holds leash == Arpanet
government releases leash == Internet
There's a difference.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
"We still lag behind the international partners a lot," says Xu. "But we are doing our best to join the international community.
American money is like Air Miles.
Air miles that you can use to buy oil. Oil is still traded in dollars.
And while I'm sure many Euros are used to build factories in China, I'd bet that most factories are still bought with dollars.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Oh, you bought a Chinese TV?
I thought that was Iran that allowed Euros to buy oil. Also that was after Iraq was invaded.
Now don't go screwing his conspiracy theories up with facts. At best you'll just piss him off and he'll label you as part of the Illuminati or something.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
No, they cannot "collapse our economy" because the second they started selling ouer debt it would cause a run, making the debt they own worthless.
This is basic economics...
To quote LongNoi "QZTR was right and won't leave me alone because I called him a moron when I was wrong" FYS
Actually there's a thing that both CPU and OS fanboys fail to understand: it's the apps that matter, silly. The hardware and even OS are just a necessary evil to run that software.
The problem is having _software_ for it which doesn't suck, covers enough of the problem space, etc.
The Dragon CPU doesn't have an Intel-compatible ISA, so it doesn't automatically inherit all the Intel-only apps. It's based on the (unlicensed) Mips III ISA. The lack of a license is also why they don't advertise it as such.
But the cavalier attitude to IP is also what will bite them in the arse. When both are free as in, you can get them burned on a blank for (next to nothing), there isn't all that much reason to go with Linux ports instead of buying Windows and Office. Both do the same thing, but one of them has all the years of FUD behind it, and apparent incentives like "but everyone else uses Word and Excel, what if they send me something that doesn't work well in OOo?" or "but maybe if I learn to use Word, I can find a better job where they use that" or "but will I be able to play the latest pirated games on that?" (Even the "run them in Wine" doesn't exactly work on a non-intel architecture, because, as the recursive acronym goes, "Wine Is Not an Emulator.")
I've been saying it for a long time: piracy isn't some grand revenge against the big foreign corporations. Piracy only serves to kill the cheaper, but good enough, alternatives. If the choice were "do I buy AutoCAD for the equivalent of 6 years of Chinese average wage, or get a local alternative for 1% of that" (or even a F/OSS one) the choice might be very different than when both are free (as in stolen beer;) The big foreign corporation, regardless of what BSA tells you, hasn't actually lost anything there. That Chinese kid making some graphics for a mod wouldn't have paid thousands of dollars on AutoCAD, because he doesn't have those thousands of dollars anyway. But he might have been more interested in some alternatives which may have less features, but are cheap and local, or outright free. Piracy only serves to kill those possible alternatives.
And I'm not saying that as a personal rant against piracy, but because I believe that it's one reason why the Dragon will be stillborn no matter how good the silicon is. When the question comes, "but does this local Dragon computer run all that new pirated software?", the Dragon loses anyway.
And China has already had a similar experiment with their own DVD-alternative. Regardess of what other merits or disadvantages it may have, it just can't compete with something which plays all those thousands of pirated Hollywood DVDs. When you don't pay the DVD license "tax" anyway because you pirate those movies (or buy them from a counterfeiter which doesn't), the lack of those royalties on the local brewed codec becomes irrelevant.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
People in the world have always made piles of gold without freedom. The point is, these people have been kings, conquerors, popes, and what have you. Thing is, they didn't really make it, they took it from somebody else who did.
In China, the average Chinese's standard of living should be rising right along with the economy, but it hasn't because of their 'forced savings' policy, legal plunder, more accurately. And who knows how long the Chinese will put up with it?
It's the plain old Soviet scheme, but unlike the U.S.S.R. they've been smart enough to acknowledge that they aren't smart enough to run the economy, so they rent their slaves cheap and the West does it for them.
But even with their science budget behind only the US, I'm sure no innovation or breakthroughs will come from there. It's just not the kind of society that encourages you to think in novel ways, otherwise a government such as theirs just wouldn't exist.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
I can plug an HDMI cable into all the included hardware and it works
It's the "and it works" part about which I have doubts regarding this chip.
Actually such translation layers aren't all that slow, and have been done with other "x86" chips before such as Transmeta, and the IDT Winchip.
On the other hand, first generations of Itanium chips had some hardware to assist a mainly software-based translation layer and we all know where that went...
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The value of the dollar is decided on the free market. So if no one is willing to trade Euros for Dollars at any price, the value of the dollar is 0 Euros. If more people are trying to sell dollars than buy dollars, the value of the dollar will decrease until things balance out.
If the value of the dollar drops, that increases the number of dollars needed to pay for oil. But since it is cheaper to buy those dollars with Euros or Renminbi or Yen, the price of oil in other currencies might remain the same.
I'm not sure what benefit China would have from helping to drive down the dollar's value, but if the value of the dollar is decreasing over time it might make sense to sell or spend some of them sooner rather than later.
That they weren't really worried because it was a CPU from 2006...
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Well just to put things into perspective, the lack of an ability to compete with American Technology was one of the things that brought the Soviet Union down. I'm not saying that China's technology would be better than US technology only that if they have an ability to compete with an advantage it would lend them the same type of advantage that the US had over the Soviet Union.
Sorry I don't have a link to the article I read about this, it was a long time ago, and might have even been on, !shock!, paper.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
They have a government with over a billion people in it? There is room for cuts I'd say!
Yes. They're being included in low-end computers, set-top boxes, and supercomputers, all over China. Such as the Tianhua GX-1C.
The Dragon chips (and variations of) are also gaining some traction in Europe and the US, being used in a couple dirt-cheap $250 EEE PC clones. eg.: http://www.compsource.com/pn/3KRZ40074GB/3k_Computers_2340/
http://www.gdium.com/description/
They've made millions of them.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I'm not worried, and my country is a lot closer to China than the US or Europe. In fact, I think many Asians welcome a strong China which will allow us to play China against the US to curry favours, just like we did during the Cold War. See here, the way I see it, there is no difference in principle between so-called democratic capitalist governments and communist governments. The only difference is the method of choice that they use to screw you. Unlike China, the US has developed far enough to no longer needing to use a bullet to the back of the head (Guantanamo aside) to keep the populace in line but instead uses an arguably far more devastating method: litigation and obtuse laws. To a citizen of a capitalistic society, there is nothing more deadly than being sued to bankruptcy. Also, I wonder who was the first person to come up with this theory of capitalism = democracy? This is utter crock. Throughout history, capitalistic societies are sometimes the worst there is. The Roman Empire is probably the ultimate example of this, fueling its economy by invading, pillaging and enslaving everyone. It is no surprise then that China is turning out not as a clone of the US.
Pretty much, and it's not like Europe has enough willpower/money to buy as much cheap made-in-china shit that the americans do. And really who else is going to pick up the slack? Us? In Canada? lol we're ~30 million people dependant on the US economy like a bird is to air.
And then next year we have Fusion/Larabee/etc., or 8 cores on a CPU, or whatever, and we blow them out of the water again.
I don't think Intel has anything in the PRC. Wouldn't that weaken its stance in terms of x86 patents?
And that's another thing, no non-US company can make x86 processors. I think that's the reason AMD decided to tell nVidia to fuck off and bought ATI. That way they could keep their license. As for VIA, wasn't Centauri IDT an american company? And their Cyrix purchases must have gotten them something?
More interestingly - SHOULD any government in the world? From a security standpoint, they'd be able to get a massive intelligence advantage and as such it'd be rather stupid not to take advantage of it.
This is the classic security vs. civil rights argument. I can't speak for *any* government in the world, but traditionally, the answer for America would be a resounding "No!" (I realize this may not hold for George Bush's America)
Remember huge volumes of currencies are traded all the time both by speculators and by those with a direct need to buy another currency. If a new seller with a significant stash of dollars turns up and undercuts the existing sellers then the existing sellers will have to lower thier prices too or they won't find any customers. Likewise if a new buyer with large ammounts of other currencies comes along offering more than the existing buyers then other buyers will have to raise thier offers to compete.
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Who's the idiot who modded this as Flamebait? Any person with an IQ greater than 50 would figure out that that is the reason China keeps selling its goods in exchange for the green toilet paper.
As a brit I would much rather the US had the ability to spy on us through such backdoors than the chineese had that ability.
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Conversely, imports from China are about 2% of the U.S. GDP. So, macroeconomically at least, they need us about 5 times as much as we need them.
This does not get into the trade in the opposite direction...much of the high-technology capital goods that Chinese companies use are imported from the U.S., Japan, or the EU. Airplanes for instance.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
They are not holding it down using reserves, they have semi-pinned it to the US dollar. It does not float freely against our currency, it is a managed float.
If they did that it would shoot up drastically, devaluing the dollars they hold and making Chinese goods much more expensive here.
That would injury both parties.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
I think a botnet is unlikely, it would only take one peice of network analysis gear that didn't play along to see the networks probes and be noticed by it's owner and people would start to get suspicious. Especially if the packets were showing up on some network analysis kit and not others.
OTOH if they only use the vulnerability very selectively thier use of it is far less likely to be noticed.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
That only applies if the pollution kills off a signifiant number of people after thier parents can no longer reproduce but before they reproduce themselves.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
All this talk on /. and no one made a joke about it being made out of lead paint?
Ave Molech Setting
The problem is two-fold: American companies have American laws to follow. Labor laws, environmental laws, economic laws..Chinese companies have Chinese laws to follow. Which we all know are somewhat lax when it comes to labor, environmental protection, the economies they might interact with..
So you have an Intel plant that has to pay large amounts of money for waste handling, insurance, labor, etc, etc, and a Chinese plant that has to pay a tiny amount for their workers, and a guy in a 70s-era pickup truck to make loads of industrial waste disappear.
Did I mention that the Chinese are pretty good at spying? Whats to keep them from releasing a ghettoPentium 4 and calling it their own design? Even if it were banned in the US, they would still make it through the borders in embedded devices and personal imports. And then there's the rest of the world. Russia doesn't give a damn if its a Chinese-knockoff CPU as long as the numbers are similar.
Lots of people would use this as an example to say that US companies need to get with the world market. I hate to break it to you, but the world market is a dangerous place. If you want to compete with that factory selling the fire engine toy trucks to Mattel for a few pennies each, you're going to have to switch to something cheaper..like lead paint. Also, don't worry about paying your workers and you might have to ban watches/clocks and make them go by your clock..which is slow and sometimes runs backwards if output isn't high enough.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
"I'm not an expert but I would guess that a shift to Chinese made chips will be harder on the environment since Chinese pollution laws are generally more lax."
And the difference on pollution between this chip and the ones that intel fabs in china would be?
That's not even close to true. A case of make the facts fit your argument.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
How is this flamebait? I guess the majority view thought police are out in force today.
Its the same with labor and jobs: we can't compete directly with companies and governments that are allowed to take more shortcuts and skirt more laws. They call us lazy left-wingers when we complain. Welcome to dark-side of capitalism, Intel. Now you know what the little guy feels like.
Table-ized A.I.
Currency speculators. They don't care if the US economy, the Euro economy or any other economy goes tits up as long as they get rich. In fact, there's lots of money to be made from central banks trying to prop up the value of their currency, so currency speculators love to see a currency - any currency - collapse in value. George Soros made $1bn in a day from the UK government when they were trying to prop up the pound.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Do you really think the amerikkkan government would pass?
China will be selling the 4 CPU chip for a fraction of what a 1 CPU chip from intel costs. In addition, it has the ability to shutdown all but 1 core, which leads to really low power requirement. China has been taught how to do all this by companies like Intel.
Do you honestly think those are tricks Intel can't match? Including the low price? Microchips aren't labor intensive so the Chinese labor cost advantage doesn't apply here. Companies like AMD don't sell their products for less because they want to, they do it because they have no choice and usually they have higher costs besides. Don't take my word for it, look at their financial statements. Intel has nine fab sites and is widely regarded as unmatched in their manufacturing and process technology. As an engineer who specializes in operations analysis I can tell you that their operations prowess is a powerful competitive advantage. The ONLY advantage Intel might not be able to match is Chinese government subsidies.
These chips will show up in small laptops within 2 years and those systems will be sold the world over for under $200.
That's impressively optimistic of you. More likely I think the chips will sell in the domestic Chinese market and maybe a few other low cost markets. New competitors come along all the time but success is hardly assured.
In fact, I suspect that Intel AND AMD will be in worse shape than America's steel and car industry within 2 years.
There is of course a chance you are right but I would happily make a financial wager that Intel will still be in fine shape in two years. Intel is a lot more like Toyota than Ford if you are going to make car analogies.
AMD? They're harder to predict but their problems are far more likely to come from competition from Intel and nVidia than from any Chinese upstarts. AMD has a long history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
CPU success is all about yield and it doesn't matter how may billions of people they have or how cheap the labor is, Intel doesn't "out-innovate" their competitors, they out-manufacture them. (ask AMD)
Is it true only "a few generations behind" processors are available in China?
So as a quick answer to your question, no TSMC does not manufacture anything in North America. They do most everything in XinZhu Science Park in the center of Taiwan.
As to the Godson. This was an intriguing story about eight years ago but at this point it's quite literally academic. The project is maintained as a pet research project to encourage students to learn processor design, but it is in no way a threat to Intel or AMD or Nvidia or Via or even any of the dozens if not hundreds of ARM 11 microprocessor vendors. The reason this is so is simple --money.
Processor intellectual property has been almost completely worthless for years now. Look at the netbook phenomena with Intel's Atom platform and the rise of the ARM 11 systems with Ghz clock speeds and insanely frugal power consumption that go into smart phones and media players as well as netbooks. These are devices that are going to be mass-market retailed in the low hundreds of dollars and quickly heading for sub one hundred dollar territory. It's a race to the bottom. There's not much room for processor technology to pay off at those price points after you pay for the LCD, the Li+ battery, the wireless radios, the chip fabrication and assembly. It doesn't matter if it's China, Russia, Venezuela, India, Canada or France. Developing a new CPU design at this point is first and foremost an exercise in bragging rights that will threaten none of the existing players who basically give up the circuit designs for a few pennies per unit.
It doesn't matter because their chips will, at best, be equivalent to old designs of Intel/AMD chips. They may even be copies of them.
They already did copy that RISC chip a year or two ago, and then claim that it was some awesome new chip even though it was like 5 year-old tech stolen from some company.
The Chinese certainly don't like to try, so why would this be any different?
There's not much to see here.
A while back the Chinese government was making noises about standardizing on Linux, but then MS stepped in and cut a deal, and now EVERYTHING here is Windows.
Perhaps this is another ploy by the government to cut a deal with Intel?
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Hmm, Intel already manufactures chips here, and I'm sure they are complying with Chinese and not American environmental laws. This doesn't really change anything in regards to environment.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
lol you're just now realizing this? It's called fascism, look it up.
Actually, sorry, I shouldn't laugh. But if you're American, it's probably worth noting that the U.S. has never, ever, been particularly humane.
expandfairuse.org
I'm not an expert but I would guess that a shift to Chinese made chips will be harder on the environment since Chinese pollution laws are generally more lax.
You're right - you are no expert, certainly not on Chinese law. Nor am I, but at least I don't form conclusions based on common prejudice. What I do know is that the problem is not the Chinese legislation or the intentions of the central government - the biggest problem here is corruption on the local level. It matters little that the government in Beijing passes a law that limits pollution from factories, when the local administrators in many places are in the pockets of unscrupulous factory owners little better than gang lords.
Whether they will be able to mount any real competition to Intel and AMD - time will tell. I don't think this is the driving motivation, though.Why pay money for something that they can make themselves? I think it is quite likely that they will get very good at it in the end - the Chinese are clever people.
The traditional way is you ask Intel if you can use their patented fabrication processes. If they say no, then you stick with making enormous damn chips that run like comparative ass.
Or you can do an AMD and get the US govt to intervene (they wanted 2 suppliers after they realised Intel at one point supplied like 75% of all 32bit microprocessors).
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
We (Aussies) sell them loads of our rocks with some iron in them in exchange for those US dollars.
Hey, toilet paper is hard to get in the Outback, and we've got a shitload of rocks.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
Bad luck if you want to do fabrication at less than 200nm. Intel has that pretty much locked down with patents.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
that's exactly what Chinese government would think about using foreign chip, especially from US :)
with Dragon, at least they can use it for their military stuff without much similar concerns.
lazy to create account, from a Chinese, who is not from China, happen to be from Intel :)
Pedantry? Come on... The guy proudly comes out and shows off complete ignorance (coupled with an obvious inability to use even google's translator)... You educating him is nowhere near pedantic.
Uplift your standards people.
Thanks for the correction, 10 hours at work had frazzled my brain and I right shifted by one bit instead of 2 bits.
For a 65nm CPU at 1GHz, 2.5W a core seems pretty good. Sure, Atom can reach 1.6GHz on a 45nm process at the same power consumption, so taking all those factors into consideration I imagine that the IPC of Godson-3 is roughly the same as Atom. In which case I imagine their next step for Godson-4 would be to implement some form of SMT.
I remember back in 1980-ish, a few years after I got my first computer, I had been thinking about the problem described in "Reflections on Trusting Trust".
I thought that I should store the earliest hardware and DOS disk I can get to a safety box, before people begin to seriously consider planting an equivalent of rootkit in hardware. I wanted to be a person who own THE clean system I can rely on to assess future the cleanliness of new hardware and software.
Old age makes me a lot less paranoid. I don't if that change is a good idea..
Anyway, have you considered that maybe they have been putting backdoors waaaay back before.
If you delay pleasure infinitely, the pleasure will be infinite. (YM)
As well being able to notice this type of activity when you don't even know how to set the vcr time/clock, and got the geek squad to install it 2 years ago, probably means that you won't be doing ip traffic analysis anytime soon.
In order to peg a currency to another one, you strategically hoard and release reserves, using the money to buy back your own currency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_exchange_rate#Maintaining_a_fixed_exchange_rate
If the Yuan were always allowed to float, we wouldn't be in the same situation that we are today. You'd see a lot fewer Chinese imports and more US exports. And yes, if China unloaded its currency reserves in one fell swoop, we'd both be screwed, along with the rest of the world. Their (and everyone else's) dollar-backed investments would become ~worthless. Which is why they're working through investment funds like Berkshire to unload some of their US currency in favor of hard assets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund
NO! This is very BAD for you as an American if they can sell the chips here. Reason: Labor is cheaper there, and will remain so for the forseeable future. Would you like YOUR labor to be equal to Chinese labor? Would you like YOUR job shipped to China (or India)? Would you like the Gestapo, DHS, ad nauseum to arrest you for disagreeing? How about a little stint of "re-education through labor?"
Low prices due to increased productivity and better process/process refinement is good; low prices due to slave labor is BAD (by definition).
Only because the U.S. Congress gave the Chinese Permanent Most Favored Nation status did this become an issue at all. And we are funding their military buildup too!
Who's the idiot who modded this as Flamebait? Any person with an IQ greater than 50 would figure out that that is the reason China keeps selling its goods in exchange for the green toilet paper.
The Nile is a river in Egypt.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Chinese will be fooled by the crap chip?C'mon, it's 21st century.
Heh. Following their "massively" high performing trivially hacked MIPS copy(c. 300MHz when everyone else ws beyond 1GHz by then and at lower power), they now attempt, what? Another one? Or I wonder if this one will be an ARM copy, in which case they might actually be able to sell it to someone if they ever figure out what quality control means...
Just not to make it sound like the Chinese were outright pirates, but at the time that they attempted the Dragon, the MIPS architecture had been made fully publicly available (free) IIRC in an attempt to increase it's marketshare v. the likes of ARM and some of the Hitachi & NEC RISC CPUs. ARM is relatively cheap to license now as well, which is why Intel/TI/Motorola/etc. all make their own variants.
However, even with the Dragon, they at least made initial spurious claims that it was an original processor as well, and it, apparently, took them years to figure out what to do with the MIPs design.
All of this said, I wouldn't be very surprised if it ended up being a pirated x86 design using pirated fabrication methods courtest of Intel and other chipmakers locating fabs in China.
realistically the x86 processor line has nothing going for it besides install base.
It's not the fastest, lowest power, lowest heat, cheapest to manufacture, or really anything else.
Anyone entering the desktop cpu marketplace is a blessing.
if America were to leave the EU ?
Wait, what? I must be REALLY behind on current events.
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
I did a little research and I think that this Godson CPU is not based on the Elbrus. The elbrus is an EPIC/VLIW processor (like the beloved Itanium), and the Godson has a MIPS compatible instruction set (Like SGI workstations). In terms of computer architecture these are at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. I have to say that with MIPS they chose a very elegant instruction set.
"Is anyone else worried that this is already happening?"
The US is going authoritarian already. So yes I'm worried, but not because of the reason you are implying.
So, your point is that they would destroy their own economy in an attempt to hurt us?
No, that didn't occur to me because it's just dumb. The goods that our debt purchased don't disappear, while the debt would. In essence they would be committing suicide and accomplishing virtually nothing.
So no, a very dumb idea did not occur to me. Mea Culpa.
To quote LongNoi "QZTR was right and won't leave me alone because I called him a moron when I was wrong" FYS
Yeah about 60 years now behind the times. There was this little party in Europe and when there was this guy with an ugly moustache that started screwing things up. I'm sure you've never heard of it.
Then, after this guy beat up everyone at the party America was invited, and Russia was especially NOT invited, not out of anything resembling good intentions other than beating up mr. Moustache, for he had kicked the crap out of everyone, and America and Russia beat up the asshole.
Ever since then the French were world champion backward marathon runners. It's the same as a regular marathon, but you run in reverse.
America still has large deployments in Europe as a result. So yes you're a bit behind on current events. But make sure not to let facts interfere with your thinking, ok ?
Even with civil rights - if they won't (hypothetical question, remember) use those abilities on their own citizens, would you still object to your government spying on foreign nationals (who aren't on US soil)? If so, why not object against the CIA and NSA whose sole job is ty spy on those?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
I understand the Godson-3 is a 64-bit machine but I'm not sure about that. The Atom is of course only 32-bits.
I really can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but the U.S. isn't a member of the E.U. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_EU
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
And you appear to be as well, bit I digress.
First you assertion that China would be able to eat the loss is, as you so snidely and incorrectly asserted about typour point, "demonstrably wrong". Find an economist who says otherwise, specifically in regard to charging off our debt, please.
You'll fail. Your ignorant assumptions, apart from being factually wrong, display a gross ignorance of economic theory.
You see,?person who is vastly ignorant of economics, as they sell the debt of, economic ignoramus, the debt loses its value, while the hard goods that debt purchsed or financed only deprecite, monetary know-nothing.
Do you understand now why your last post made you look "demonstrably stupid" or do I have continue to point out your gross incompetence?
To quote LongNoi "QZTR was right and won't leave me alone because I called him a moron when I was wrong" FYS
The Atom does have a 64-bit mode, but it increases the power consumption to 4W and is only available on the desktop N270 variant (I think that's the model number, might be wrong there).
Indeed it could be that a single Godson-3 core outperforms Atom and thus the chip is actually going to end up in a thousand Chinese-designed nettops next year!
Why don't you just look up what EUCOM is, just to give one relevant example out of many.
The US has nuclear weapons INSIDE the capital of the EU. Does that qualify as a "military presence" ? (okay well I suppose not within the "municipal boundary of the EU capital, 10 miles out to be exact. It also has a basis inside the municipal lines)
But that was a nice try, perhaps you should discuss things that are relevant to the topic at hand?
Sorry, I forgot, you're grossly ignorant on the subject, never mind.
To quote LongNoi "QZTR was right and won't leave me alone because I called him a moron when I was wrong" FYS
Without any exceptions, anyone who ever says "anyone who has an IQ of X agrees with me" always has a maximum IQ of X/2.
You want to go to Belmarsh or Gitmo because some busy-body flag-worshiping Yankee got the wrong idea about those Carol Ann Duffy poems on your PeeCee or you are brown and have a non-Christian religion?
Stick Men
Read the next paragraph in your first quote:
Another, less used means of maintaining a fixed exchange rate is by simply making it illegal to trade currency at any other rate. This is difficult to enforce and often leads to a black market in foreign currency. Nonetheless, some countries are highly successful at using this method due to government monopolies over all money conversion. This is the method employed by the Chinese government to maintain a currency peg or tightly banded float against the US dollar.
They simply did it by saying it is so, not by hoarding and releasing.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra