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A comment on Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Comparable to H20. Parent comment

Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by bbatha on Wednesday September 17, 2025 @09:51AM (#45275862)
It’s several factors and all of your alternatives are true to some degree:

1. An h20 is about 1.5 generations behind Blackwell. This chip looks closer to about 2 generations behind top end Blackwell chips. So ~5ish years behind is not as impressive especially since EUV is likely going to be a major obstacle to catching up which China has no capacity for

2. Nvidia continues to dominate on the software side. Amd chips have been competitive on paper for a while and have had limited uptake. Now Chinese government mandates could obviously correct this after substantial investment in the software stack — but this is probably several years behind.

3. China has poured trillions of dollars into its academic system and graduates more than 3x the number of electrical engineers the US does. The US immigration system has also been training Chinese students but having a much more limited work visa program has transferred a lot of knowledge back without even touching IP issues

4. Of course ip theft covers some of it

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Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by bangaladore on Wednesday September 17, 2025 @02:18PM (#45279402)
> China has poured trillions of dollars into its academic system and graduates more than 3x the number of electrical engineers the US does.

This metric is not as important as it seems when they have ~5x the population.

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Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by jacomoRodriguez on Wednesday September 17, 2025 @02:25PM (#45279516)
It is. The outcome rate will not grow by the relative number of electrical engineers to population but by the absolute number of the engineers.
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Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by bangaladore on Wednesday September 17, 2025 @02:36PM (#45279657)
In theory, but I'm not sure that's true in practice. There are plenty of mundane, non-groundbreaking tasks that will likely be done by those electrical engineers and the more people, the more space, the more tasks are to be done. And not to mention more engineers does not equal better engineers. And the types to work on these sorts of projects are going to be the best engineers, not the "okay" ones.

It's certainly non-linear.

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Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by immibis on Wednesday September 17, 2025 @03:31PM (#45280378)
The more engineers you can sample from (in absolute number), the better (in absolute goodness, whatever that is) the top, say, 500 of them are going to be.
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Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by KerryJones on Wednesday September 17, 2025 @04:20PM (#45280905)
This is not necessarily true. Hypothetical, if most breakthroughs are coming from PHDs and they aren't making any PHDs, then that pool is not necessarily larger.
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Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by bangaladore on Wednesday September 17, 2025 @07:52PM (#45282961)
That's assuming top-tier engineers are a fixed percent of graduates. That's not true and has never been.

Does 5x the number of math graduates increase the number of people with ability like Terrance Tao? Or even meaningfully increase the number of top tier mathematicians? It really doesn't. Same with any other science or art. There is a human factor involved.

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Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by immibis on Thursday September 18, 2025 @05:18AM (#45287434)
Suppose there's only one Terrance Tao. Then sampling from 5x the number of people increases the probability he's in the sample (by about 5x).

Suppose there's more than one. Then sampling from 5x the number of people increases the average number of him that you get (by about 5x).

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Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by tonyhart7 on Wednesday September 17, 2025 @04:22PM (#45280928)
"not to mention more engineers does not equal better engineers."

funny that you mention this because many top AI talent from big tech companies are from chinnese Ivy league graduate

US literally importing AI talent war as highest as ever and yet you still have doubt

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Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by bangaladore on Wednesday September 17, 2025 @07:49PM (#45282928)
You just said what I said. I didn't say that 100% of the graduates are stupid, but certainly not all high tier either. We aren't in extreme need of the average electrical engineer or the average software engineer. That's a fact. Look at unemployment rates.
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Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by tonyhart7 on Thursday September 18, 2025 @02:07AM (#45286048)
I don't like this argument since you can apply this into any country on earth and the answer would be the same

You are trying too hard to be right meanwhile 40% top AI talent in big tech is chinnese

so higher number = more chance smart people is indeed true and your argument is just waste of time

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Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by stefan_ on Wednesday September 17, 2025 @02:42PM (#45279740)
Doesn’t seem to work for India. Wuhan university alone probably has more impact than the sum of. Of course a competent state and strategic investment matters.
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Re:Alibaba's New AI Chip Unveiled: Key Specifications Compar... by Melatonic on Thursday September 18, 2025 @06:32PM (#45295831)
They also have some insane power generation capability - doesn't seem that far fetched that they just build a shitload of slower chips and eat the costs of lower power efficiency.
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