?? The chip advantage
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What really matters in the intelligent age are chips and the compute.
Last week, Dylan Patel and his team have published an analysis of China’s endeavours to route around US technology controls to continue to push with AI. The US has slowed China down, but China could be more likely to catch up than expected. Chinese sources report that Xiaomi has managed to create a prototype of a 3nm system-on-a-chip. There are other indications, from ASML’s CEO, no less, that China is able to produce cutting-edge 3nm chips using older equipment. Setting the bar is xAI, which installed 100,000 Nvidia H100 in only 19 days. And now that Musk has proven that it can be done in such a short time, what’s stopping others from copying the approach?
China has many strengths, and one of them is its ability to quickly copy and adapt existing technology once it reaches the market. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the same here. I’m reminded of South Africa subverting sanctions to build its own nuclear capabilities in the 1970s and 1980s –?and in so doing, it invented a new approach to purifying isotopes.
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The article “The Chip Advantage” seems to delve into the critical role that chips and computing power play in today’s intelligent age. It’s intriguing to think about how these advancements are driving innovation and enabling complex technologies that we rely on daily. As we move forward, the strategic value of chip development and compute capability will likely be a defining factor in technological and economic competitiveness. This focus on chips as a foundational element could have broad implications across industries, potentially reshaping how companies invest in and prioritize tech infrastructure.