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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Melatonic 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

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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bangaladore 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> 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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jacomoRodriguez 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

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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bangaladore 4 days ago | parent [-]

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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immibis 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

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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bangaladore 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

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.

	▲	immibis 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		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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KerryJones 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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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tonyhart7 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

"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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bangaladore 4 days ago | parent [-]

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.

	▲	tonyhart7 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		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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stefan_ 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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.