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AMD and Nvidia Silicon Manufacturing Secrets Allegedly Stolen, Sold To China (pcgamesn.com)
According to a report on DigiTimes, a former TSMC engineer has been accused of stealing the secrets of their 28nm
manufacturing process and taking them across the Taiwan Straits to Chinese rival, HLMC. "The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) produce the chips for the great and the good of the PC hardware market, specifically Nvidia and latterly AMD," reports PCGamesN. From the report: The report claims the former engineer, known only as Hsu, has been accused of taking details and materials relating to TSMC's 28nm manufacturing process and handing them over to Shanghai Huali Microelectronics (HLMC) after being offered a job there. The engineer was arrested before he even had a chance to start his new job on mainland China. This isn't the first reported instance of potentially shady dealings involving HLMC. DigiTimes previously reported that the Chinese foundry had headhunted a team of up to 50 research and development engineers from Taiwan's first semiconductor company, United Microelectronics (UMC), to help them get their 28nm production process up to speed. DigiTimes also alleges that some Chinese memory manufacturers have been doing the same thing, headhunting Taiwanese talent to get their own fabs off the ground, and that Micron are taking legal action against some of their Taiwan partners for allegedly nicking their tech and handing it over to China-based RAM companies.
This has nothing to do with AMD, NVidia, or any other American companies. This was, supposedly, a Taiwanese engineer selling information on manufacturing processes used by the Taiwanese TSMC, to a company on mainland China.
It's painful to watch all this oozing of western arrogance (and I say that as a Westerner, mind you).
Kids, you seem to have forgotten Uber has just pulled off that same thing on Waymo (ex-Google). It's standard operating procedure in industry, sadly. NSA/CIA are known to have spied on behalf of US industry, and if other states' intelligence agencies haven't done so, it's for lack of means, not will.
Just continue believing the Chinese are idiots until "they" own all intellectual property of relevance and turn the ever more draconian laws "we" have been sharpening all those years against us. Because by then, "they" will have better lawyers. You'll see who are the idiots, then.
Or alternatively, work hard to establish a "we" in which one's person well-being hasn't to be to the detriment of others, difficult as that may seem. It should be worth it.
TSMC is alleging that TSMC's 28nm process was stolen. What does AMD and Nvidia have to do with it? I thought AMD spun off it's Fabs to Global Foundries (not TSMC), and if Nvidia ever had a Fab I would be surprised. They are now 'just' TSMC customers. So are a lot of other people.
Oh. Those are the companies American people know, and some one wants to cause a ripple in their stock.
Got it.
>Chinese products break, because they are produced as cheaply as possible, western products break because they are engineered to break.
No, no, no man. I once worked in electronics OEMs. I assure you, all shit requests to "strip the product to the last cent" come from Western buyers: HP, Best Buy, Dell (those guy have massively improved once Michael Dell kicked out flowchart warriors,) Bang and Olufsen, Google (their bundled usb chargers were some of the crappiest on the market tech-wise around 2012)
Chinese domestic makers are faaaaar more concerned with issues of high return rate since they don't have marketing power to run on high margins. For a factory that survives with single digit margins, a 10% return rate means they are in loss, some times in a tripple digit loss. No, they will better up-rate all components, and materials than risk having returns and potential blacklisting by QC agents.
Do you want a cyberpunk dystopia?
If it means I can have a pink and lime mohawk and some color-changing pants without actually drawing attention, maybe.
China have cornered the market in "Made in..." stickers.
I used to be involved in building nuclear power plants in the U.S. One of my key suppliers kept sourcing steel (bar stock) from China - not from third party suppliers, but from their Chinese foundries.
Then came the day when coupon testing of the steel showed some irregularities, and when we sent inspectors to China to see what was going on, discovered that instead of delivering LCC (impact tested, low temperature performing) steel, they were taking WCC (different steel), removing the "W" from the imprint, forging on an "L" and faking the CMTR (material chemistry) data sheets.
This isn't unique, it wasn't a one-off, and there's a reason that giant companies have sourcing restrictions in their RFQs and POs like "No Chinese-sourced parts allowed."