Was the US sanctions on chip selling to China worth it? Yesssss. It was. It still is. (But I frown on this action.)
China is good on dumb stupid manufacturing. It does this with so much enthusiasm HNers are left scratching their heads why the excitement. The possibility of China manufacturing the next computing powerhouse was too high. Higher than it could ever be in the US.
The threat to US leadership was that the fastest supercomputer for AI in the world could be in China (the first sputnik moment per Barack Obama). So the chip embargo was to prevent that from happening.
So China did not spend/waste $$ & time building hardware. They spent it on software. Normally the Chinese version is cheap enough and good enough. But this time it was cheap enough and surprisingly terrific enough. Props to Liang the founder for having that game face on.
China is good on dumb stupid manufacturing. It does this with so much enthusiasm HNers are left scratching their heads why the excitement. The possibility of China manufacturing the next computing powerhouse was too high. Higher than it could ever be in the US.
The threat to US leadership was that the fastest supercomputer for AI in the world could be in China (the first sputnik moment per Barack Obama). So the chip embargo was to prevent that from happening.
So China did not spend/waste $$ & time building hardware. They spent it on software. Normally the Chinese version is cheap enough and good enough. But this time it was cheap enough and surprisingly terrific enough. Props to Liang the founder for having that game face on.