The Rise of China GPU Makers (tomshardware.com) 78
The number of GPU startups in China is extraordinary as the country tries to gain AI prowess as well as semiconductor sovereignty, according to a new report from Jon Peddie Research. From a report: In addition, the number of GPU makers grew worldwide in recent years as demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC), and graphics processing increased at a rather unprecedented rate. When it comes to discrete graphics for PCs, AMD and Nvidia maintain lead, whereas Intel is trying to catch up.
Tens of companies developed graphics cards and discrete graphics processors in the 1980s and the 1990s, but cut-throat competition for the highest performance in 3D games drove the vast majority of them out of business. By 2010, only AMD and Nvidia could offer competitive standalone GPUs for gaming and compute, whereas others focused either on integrated GPUs or GPU IP. The mid-2010s found the number of China-based PC GPU developers increasing rapidly, fueled by the country's push for tech self-sufficiency as well as the advent of AI and HPC as high-tech megatrends.
In total, there are 18 companies developing and producing GPUs, according to Jon Peddie Research. There are two companies that develop SoC-bound GPUs primarily with smartphones and notebooks in mind, there are six GPU IP providers, and there are 11 GPU developers focused on GPUs for PCs and datacenters, including AMD, Intel, and Nvidia, which design graphics cards that end up in our list of the best graphics cards. In fact, if we added other China-based companies like Biren Technology and Tianshu Zhixin to the list, there would be even more GPU designers. However, Biren and Tianshu Zhixin are solely focused on AI and HPC for now, so JPR does not consider them GPU developers.
Tens of companies developed graphics cards and discrete graphics processors in the 1980s and the 1990s, but cut-throat competition for the highest performance in 3D games drove the vast majority of them out of business. By 2010, only AMD and Nvidia could offer competitive standalone GPUs for gaming and compute, whereas others focused either on integrated GPUs or GPU IP. The mid-2010s found the number of China-based PC GPU developers increasing rapidly, fueled by the country's push for tech self-sufficiency as well as the advent of AI and HPC as high-tech megatrends.
In total, there are 18 companies developing and producing GPUs, according to Jon Peddie Research. There are two companies that develop SoC-bound GPUs primarily with smartphones and notebooks in mind, there are six GPU IP providers, and there are 11 GPU developers focused on GPUs for PCs and datacenters, including AMD, Intel, and Nvidia, which design graphics cards that end up in our list of the best graphics cards. In fact, if we added other China-based companies like Biren Technology and Tianshu Zhixin to the list, there would be even more GPU designers. However, Biren and Tianshu Zhixin are solely focused on AI and HPC for now, so JPR does not consider them GPU developers.
Re: China Joe's Gonna Give Them Taiwan! (Score:3)
As long as good and innovative products come out, I am just fine with China doing this.
I just worry about the production of products similar to what happened with the USSR in the 80s, with novel clones and little else.
That said, the factories in China are the factories the US has been using, and the workplace knowledgebase is there. Not here.
Perhaps the thing I should be concerned with, is China making novel and desirable offerings that the US market cannot buy.
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Perhaps the thing I should be concerned with, is China making novel and desirable offerings that the US market cannot buy.
This is the key. The thing is that China's massive domestic market gives it the economies of scale needed to profitably mass produce even the most rare and expensive goods without needing to factor in potential sales outside of China. Add to that the increasing number of western sanctions forcing market leading manufacturers (ie Huawei etc) out of western markets, and we could well be in a situation where the Chinese people take for granted products that people in the west don't even know exist.
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China won't make the same mistake. It's one of the reasons why they have a capitalist economy, instead of a centrally planned one.
Re: China Joe's Gonna Give Them Taiwan! (Score:1)
You think their economy is not centrally planned? Every Chinese company has a department for the Chinese Communist Party, both to ensure that employees do not have wrongthink, and to make sure that the company is producing what the government wants it to.
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That is not true.
What do you know. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What do you know. . . (Score:5, Informative)
> playing world cop, bullying other powers and creating wars in the long term will only make things worse.
While US has made dumb mistakes, for the most part we try to stop OTHER bullies from eating democracies.
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of course, of course! X'D
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Good intentions don't excuse the outcomes.
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Good intentions + bad outcomes are better than bad intentions + bad outcomes.
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They are not mutually exclusive. Democracy needs upkeep both at home and abroad.
Re: What do you know. . . (Score:2)
Re: What do you know. . . (Score:2)
Why is this a troll? Look at the facts - he's absolutely right.
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for the most part we try to stop OTHER bullies from eating democracies.
And how's that been working out for you so far?
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> And how's that been working out for you so far?
Well, many democracies are still alive despite attempts by outsiders to foil them. If we failed I wouldn't be here writing this, for it would get me a free ticket to a labor camp.
Re:What do you know. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, check out what happened when the US decided not to do that - like say during the Trump era. You have the Taliban taking over Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea doing their nuclear programs, and China deciding that its form of government is better than "western democracy and freedom" and expanding its economic and governance reach across the world. And all of this leads to well, Russia invading Ukraine because "Ukraine has Nazis" (according to Russia)
If you cherish your democracy and freedom, even the flawed kind as practiced in the US, the whole world cop thing is looking pretty good.
Because a country like China, without having to bother about things like what people think, is able to mobilize and take over the world much faster. Democracy is inefficient - I mean,, Trump tried to take over the vote in 2020, but was prevented because well, people on the other side cared enough to resist, and that's because the other side exists.
A country like China has no opposition party letting the government in power steamroll through anything it wants. It's why Singapore is rated as "failed democracy" despite having votes, opposition parties, etc - the laws basically entrench the ruling party so the opposition never gets into power. And we've seen cases like Malaysia where when the opposition actually might win, a flurry of false charges is raised in order to imprison the opposition party members so you couldn't actually vote for them anymore.
The US' model might be flawed, but it is resilient enough to have lasted over 250 years pretty much unchanged.
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no, i do value american contribution to the world very much, even with its ugly underside. though i'm not at all sure its current strategic agenda is any good for the world nor for itself. and the rest of the world could use a functional us, instead of a screwing around.
e.g. what's up with china? assuming those projections you make were true ... what part of these trade wars, sanctions, diplomatic bullying and provocations do you think is actually helping, and how?
funny you mention trump. for me the very fa
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> Well, check out what happened when the US decided not to do that
Ukraine:
Obama - Russia take Ukrainian Crimea.
Trump - Russia does nothing.
Biden - Russia takes more of eastern Ukraine.
Not invading Ukraine while Trump was in power was Putin's biggest mistake. Putin had a hold on Trump (via brown-nosing, financial/etc. blackmail, or just personality kinship) that was scary. That would have been the time to walk over Ukraine with Trump doing his part to hold back US arms to help his buddy.
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Give him the citation he asked for.
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Isolationism is the ideal policy. Unfortunately, every time the US tries that, it gets inevitably dragged into world wars. Better to intervene and keep things calm earlier.
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What you cited has no bearing on Trump. You are just wanting to whine and be political.
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Those things were only accelerated by having Trump in office. For example, China was naturally trying to expand trade long before he came along.
You accuse China of wanting to spread its ideology, but one of the reasons they are successful is that trade with China doesn't come with the political strings that trade with the US and EU does.
And as for the CCP being able to do what it likes unopposed, see the recent end of Zero COVID policy in the face of protests as clear proof that's not true.
Why does China ma
Re: What do you know. . . (Score:1)
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That old Nazi quote is really true, and it's harder with democracy and freedom of speech because there is a counter-voice speaking the truth (of course still possible, as Bush proved):
"Of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood.....The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
Doing so is actually easier in a dictatorship.
https://www.mit.edu/people/ful... [mit.edu]
Re: What do you know. . . (Score:1)
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wtf is a "propaganda spy" in your deranged mindset?
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So far its domestic innovation in scams. 2021 saw record in stolen funds for semiconductor development.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Busine... [nikkei.com]
https://interconnected.blog/ch... [interconnected.blog]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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The goal wasn't so much to hinder development as to deprive them of the latest equipment right now. They were always developing their own GPUs, and they were always going to accelerate their own production as demand increased. No doubt recent events have sped things up slightly, but this is not a fundamental change. Chinese companies have been implementing other people's GPU cores for as long as they've been able, which has obviously involved a certain amount of technology transfer.
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definitely accelerating them stealing tech from Taiwan
Jokes on them (Score:3)
GPUs aren't ideal for AI anyway. Companies like piggy-backed it onto their graphics accelerator business.
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Dunno why it vanished but I meant to say "companies like NV". Weird.
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Dedicated AI chips are still too expensive to gain enough market share to have economies of scale. Anyone want to guess when that'll change?
OK dumb question (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do we persist in calling them GPUs?
I mean, sure, I get it, originally the highest-performance designs were indeed GPUs but it just seems funny that since now: ....are they still really "GPUs", syntactically?
- GPUs are used for bitcoining
- GPUs are used for AI research
Or is it just that the economies of scale based on the demand for task-specific GPUs are the only way we (the world) gets our hands on the bleeding-edge of processing horsepower at reasonable prices, even though they're not really designed for the other tasks specifically, economics outweighs any resulting inefficiencies?
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they are still gpu, and graphics rendering is still their main purpose.
to your second question ... these applications get probably more headlines than they deserve. as for mining there already custom asic chips for mining that are more efficient than gpu, but there is no clear indication that this industry has a solid future to invest in r&d anyway. regarding ai, it's too early and the state of the art is too diverse to research in specific chips when current hw can do fine. unlike crypto mining, that w
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First, what do you suggest calling them, and second, a lot of words are based on obsolete concepts, so why should chips be different? English is a big cluster-hack.
For examples most "eyeglasses" are not made out of glass anymore. But if you go around calling them "eyeplastics" or "mounted corrective lenses" you'll get that funny look we slashdotters often get.
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"we just call them glasses"
even when not made out of glass? why?
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Whether true or not, that didn't solve the "problem" regardless.
Reminds me of a lame joke:
"Waiter, I don't want this fly in the soup!"
So the waiter comes over, takes the fly out, puts it on a plate, then takes the soup back into the kitchen.
Waiter: "There, it's not in the soup anymore, just like you asked."
Re: OK dumb question (Score:2)
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Why do we persist in calling them GPUs?
You can buy them without video connectors, and optimized for compute rather than for graphics. In this case they are sometimes still called GPUS ("GPGPU" though) or sometimes "stream processors". If they have a video connector and are still generally optimized for realtime graphics, then they are best described as a GPU.
Because that's still at least 90% of the market (Score:2)
AI research is still very much a niche. That leaves graphics. Everybody thinks about 3D graphics but they forget about video encoding and workstation 3D. Nvidia and AMD both so expensive workstation cards that are in high demand. If you're not in the industry you kind of forget ab
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inb4 they get "rebranded" as "General Purpose Units". Oh wait, we already have the CPU term. /s
Seriously though, GPUs have (slowly) been expanding into CPU territory for the past decade+ but they are still vastly different from CPUs namely Random Access is still hideously slow (but masked with caches). Depending on the problem sometimes a homogenous solution is better, sometimes a heterogenous solution is better. It really depends on the problem space. i.e. GPUs support "half float" and float8 formats.
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Probably because vector processors with graphics, AI, and video encoding specific sub modules is a bit of a mouthful.
What would you call them?
Oh yes, it is that easy. (Score:4, Insightful)
In order to become a technological leader in a field that advances so quickly they created a proverb called "Moore's Law (IC density doubles every 2 years)" all it takes is for a central bureaucracy to decide to invest in it.
Communist China is very good at copying stuff. That just takes some well educated people willing to ignore patents and copyrights. It is not as good at innovation, which takes a bit more.
I look forward to China having great new chips for 2 years that they claim are the best, then having the 2nd best chips two years later, then the "are they still making chips?" 4 years later.
Re: Oh yes, it is that easy. (Score:1)
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If you want innovation somebody has to be the money bags and that's never going to be private business because private business wants money now and innovation takes years or even decades to pay off. If ever.
I mean how much of your life savings would you be willing to put into an investment that isn't likely to pay off for another 50 years?
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China has not put a man on the moon, they just landed machines. They have in no way matched the USA's greatest achievement.
Investing for 50 years does not create the newest tech. it creates the best 50 year old tech.
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Communist China is very good at copying stuff.
Chineses are producing a ton of research papers. Your statement was true 30 years ago but the world has changed...
I look forward to China having great new chips for 2 years that they claim are the best
Honestly I don't remember China saying they are the best at X or it didn't reach me, I think it's more an united statian thing.
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Research papers don't magically translate into manufacturing prowess.
Just ask Soviet / modern Russia. A lot of the best manufacturing in China is either done by Taiwanese companies or by Western "joint" ventures who've essentially had their tech stolen by the state.
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This is why you keep losing. Even after all the losing you already did, you are convinced that China can only copy.
When they out innovate you and own all the patents in 6G and are churning out high end ICs that you can't match, I expect you will be shocked yet again and demand a ban on time travelling to steal future US inventions.
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Re: Chine is #1,... (Score:1)
Lol....seriously ?
Wow..... you're Murican, right ?
It shows.
I Wish Innosilicon would sell in the west (Score:2)
More competition is always better, and with the most popular GPU in the steam survey being the GTX1050, there is room for brands like Intel and Innosilicon to bring offerings at reasonable prices that are NOT the latests and greatest. Anything that is above a 1060 will do. Intel is there with the Arcs being on par with variants of the 3080, and innosilicon is far above the 1060 too....
A brand new card (with warranty) with performance akin to a 2080 (or more, like intel) with more memory would be a boon to u
Re:I Wish Innosilicon would sell in the west (Score:4, Insightful)
But, alas, in this corner of the world, we only get AMD, Nvidia and Intel...
It shows in part how hard it really is, I think.
Intel clearly know how to make this sort of thing quite effectively: they've been shipping serviceable iGPUs for years, with rock solid drivers (on Linux at any rate) and have close to the best fab tech (though they lost the edge) but still can't crack the GPU market. Their drivers for ARC for example didn't do a good job on older games. AMD finally put in the leg work with drivers and opened them giving now decent quality. But they haven't put in the massive amounts of legwork required to support the compute community and have not cracked the deep learning market.
To crack this market you need a top notch design, a top notch fab and top notch software. Those are all really hard.
Sure They Did All Their Own Homewhork. LOL! (Score:2)
The Rise of China GPU Makers⦠(Score:1)
Using stolen tech, if not outright fake parts.
And you cannot say that isnâ(TM)t true, given their track record in all other industries.