Databases also make the list, and again nothing from Western devs made the cut. But Alibaba Cloud's PolarDB is mentioned, as is Tencent’s TDSQL and a handful of other made-in-China efforts.
That's a big one.
Unless Chinese firms have been straight-up stealing trade secrets and code from the likes of Oracle and have produced such a blatant knock-off of their software that in any other country, they would have been sued out of existence, I can see a five week transition being messy-as-fuck.
Transitions to new database systems take months or even years to implement, not the 5 weeks mandated by the Chinese Communist Party. This is especially the case when you're dealing with important stakeholder data, huge data volumes and/or statutory requirements like financial reporting.
I mean, i get it. But i wish the world would just work together on everything and stop with the country bullshit. Imagine the stuff we could make if everyone worked together.
In a bizarre turn of events, it seems the reclusive nation of North Korea has finally succumbed to the intense chip envy brought on by China's recent announcement of its approved CPU list. In an effort to keep pace with neighboring rivals, Kim Jong-un ordered the immediate development of a state-of-the-art microchip. And thus, 'The Juche Chip' was born - named after North Korea's philosophy of self-reliance.
After months of hard work, North Korean engineers presented their masterpiece: a CPU so advanced, it can run MS-DOS smoothly on Windows ME. This revolutionary breakthrough in computing technology also boasts an impressive clock speed that's roughly equivalent to the rate at which time moves inside a Pyongyang prison cell. With the Juche Chip, users will never have to worry about lagging, overheating or any other technical issues because their system will freeze before such problems could even arise.
Ampere CPUs use normal DIMMs, and don't have integrated storage, like any other CPU. So you can have the best of both worlds (although idk about power conservation, they are efficient though).
This isn’t the case for everybody, but I’d wager the vast majority of people never upgrade their RAM independently of their CPU these days. There was probably a spike once 8GB became generally insufficient a few years ago, but I have a hard time imagining the same thing will happen with 16GB configs until it’s time to hop on the DDR5 train.
100% someday they will use the approved CPU list to have only those with secure boot/locked bootloader enforcing only their approved operating systems too.
I mean, we do the same thing, for the same reasons, with our government and defense procurement orders these days. This isn’t that weird. It’s only weird in that they’re clearly cutting themselves off from the best high-volume x86 CPU manufacturers that currently exist, but aside from that, the geopolitical and strategic calculus adds up.
Hey China I made you this sweet horse statue in the form of an x86 processor -- You should put it in the town square to show it off and then all go to sleep....
Yes, all of the most advanced chip making factories are in Taiwan. It's the biggest reason that the US passed the CHIPS act and also why there is so much geopolitical tension around Taiwan.
Why did you think there was so much focus on Taiwan? Boba is great and all, but surely it doesn't merit the protection of the US Navy. 😁
I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the person who came up with the name Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors revealed their idea. I've got an image of someone sitting on their hands, eyes wide and shaking slightly as their desire to share it tries to burst out of them!
Yes, all of the most advanced chip making factories are in Taiwan.
Intel is back in the game with PowerVia after the endless blunder that was 10nm.
In grander strategic terms Taiwan is, technologically, erm, dispensable. Both Europe and the US can, independently, make chips that are good enough, that are fast enough, to be used in any application the question is whether they're cheap enough for high-end commercial use. The military doesn't care if a chip costs twice as much and is twice as heavy the propellant and warhead of the rocket weigh magnitudes more anyway.
Where Taiwan is indispensable is being a thorn in China's side which has strategic value all of its own.
Yes, all of the most advanced chip making factories are in Taiwan.
Not really. The most advanced manufacturing sites are still in laboratories in the United States and Europe, it's just that they are not suited for mass production.
Well the thing is Taiwan's official name is the Republic of China and they, just like the People's Republic of China, consider themselves to be China. Officially it is a reunification (by force if necessary) of the two China's. Its not like North and South Korea where they are officially separate countries because they both consider themselves to be one country. It's a complicated situation from a civil war and colonization from Japan.
What they tried to say is, that Taiwan also considers mainland China to be their rightful territory. Taiwans official name is Republic of China, Mainland China's official name Peoples Republic of China.
Both consider themselves to be the rightful government of the whole China (including both mainland China and Taiwan). Both do not consider the other parties rule to be legitimate.
It really is comparable to Korea or pre-unification Germany. Both governments are united in following the "one China principle".
EDIT: Also I never said that Taiwan considers itself part of China. I said that the Republic of China considers themselves to be China, as in, the official Chinese government. The PRC also considers itself to be official China and it considers Taiwan to be a rogue state, like how Catalonia was going rouge in Spain except the Republic of China considers itself the govt of China.
No, the Republic of China considers itself to be the official Chinese government and that other government, the People's Republic of China, is a rouge state. The RC doesn't have the military might to bring them under control and the PRC feels the same about the RC. It's like if Texas and other southern states went rouge, declared themselves the United States of America, claimed all 50 states as part of America, and DC called BS and also claimed all 50 states. If no force is used to reconcile then only negotiations remain and that is where China is now.
Tell you what's really hilarious is listening to Chinese (mainland Chinese, any province) completely lose their shit and turn into a rabid psychopath driveling screaming moron as soon as anyone says "Taiwan number one!".
They act like it's the most offensive possible thing that can be said apart from Xi looking like Winnie the Pooh.....because he does of course.
x86 is dying, legacy processing. It's all GPU's and ARM processing now. Apple is leaning hard into it so they set themselves as a leader in AI in the future.
There's a lot of critical infrastructure running on Windows 3.1. A lot of very expensive machinery runs on proprietary software only released as x86 binaries, from autoclaves to MRI machines.
Oh, and here's the fun part: Basically the only appeal Windows has is its legacy software support. 'My games just work.' 'My software just runs.' That wasn't the case with the ARM editions of Windows, you couldn't just run a .exe. So they either have to do emulation, which in most cases WINE under Linux works better, or lock you into their app store which is Apple but 1,000 times shittier.
You're getting down voted but in all honesty, you're not wrong. All it takes is one x86/64 alternative to show the world that Intel and AMD aren't the only players in the game. Apple did it with ARM and the m1 chip, now we're hearing reports of Microsoft actually putting a real effort into ARM and making their own chips for AI instead of that half-assed Windows on ARM initiative. I for one love this competition, because that only benefits the consumers.
If x86 is going to die, Apple has to be defeated at all costs or else computers are going to become 10x expensive once they establish a monopoly. I hope someone starts making real progress in ARM system stuff. If they do away with expansion ports and make it so the gpu, ram, and cpu are all on one chip even on the competing non-x86 non-M1 systems then everything's fucked though.
Gaming though. The gaming situation on non-x86 cpus is passable at best. AFAIK you can't put a 4070ti in any non x86 system right now and have it work. Are there even any commercially available non-x86 systems that have pcie 16x slots?
The death of x86 is inevitable I just hope we can still play computer games on cheaper homebuilt systems afterwards because having to replace your entire system just to upgrade the integrated non upgradable gpu is no longer better or cheaper than consoles. I absolutely fucking doubt even indie developers, let alone others are going to downgrade graphics to let their games run on cheaper systems when this happens and everything becomes 10x more expensive.
AFAIK you can’t put a 4070ti in any non x86 system right now and have it work.
Try an AMD card, much better chances because open drivers. There definitely have been people who got dedicated GPUs to run on ARM boards via the not even a handful of pcie lanes meant for m.2 storage.
I wouldn't be too sure about ARM because Qualcomm definitely is eyeing alternatives and other licensors might not exactly mind not being reliant on litigious bastards. That alternative is RISC-V. Most ARM licensors are making chips for products where apps don't really care about the architecture, that is, Android.
To actually make a dent in the completely entrenched x86 market we'd need probably chips with dual insn decoders. I certainly wouldn't put that past AMD they don't like being fused to Intel at the hip.
They're not great, yet, but they're pretty cheap and really small. They'll probably get a lot better in the future though, remember the speed of x86 CPU's was once measured in MgHZ. I remember my first P4 with one whole GgHZ of speed, before even dual core CPU's.
Take any pc, install any random OS.
Take any arm based cell phone. Try installing ANY different OS.
ARM is an hardware prison and a e-waste manufacturer.
That article is poorly written. This one is more informative. Since there's a paywall, I'll quote a few relevant parts:
"China has introduced new guidelines that will mean US microprocessors from Intel and AMD are phased out of government PCs and servers, as Beijing ramps up a campaign to replace foreign technology with homegrown solutions.
The stricter government procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favour of domestic options."
...
"Officials have begun following the new PC, laptop and server guidelines this year, after they were unveiled with little fanfare by the finance ministry and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) on December 26. They order government agencies and party organs above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases. "
Is this really a surprise since we ban them from using our tech. I wouldn't want my tech to hinge on an other country that doesn't want me to have the stronger than average stuff either tbh.
