Yes. :)

How big a deal is it to be on the cutting edge with this? Given that models seem to be flattening out because they can't get any more data, the answer is "not as much as you would think".

Consequently, a generation or 2 behind is annoying, but not fatal. In addition, if you pump the memory up, you can paper over a lot of performance loss. Look at how many people bought amped up Macs because the unified memory was large even though the processing units were underpowered relative to NVIDIA or AMD.

The biggest problem is software. And China has a lot of people to throw at software. The entire RISC-V ecosystem basically only exists because Chinese grad students have been porting everything in the universe over to it.

So, the signal is to everybody around this that the Chinese government is going to pump money at this. And that's a big deal.

People always seem to forget that Moore's Law is a self-fulfilling prophecy, but doesn't just happen out of thin air. It happens because a lot of companies pump a lot of money at the engineering because falling off the semiconductor hamster wheel is death. The US started the domestic hamster wheel with things like VHSIC. TSMC was a direct result of the government pumping money at it. China can absolutely kickstart this for themselves if the money goes where it should.

I'm really torn about this. On the one hand, I hate what China does on many, many political fronts. On the other hand, tech monopolies are pillaging us all and, with no anti-trust action anywhere in the West, the only way to thwart them seems to be by China coming along and ripping them apart.

Arguably, the leading RISC-V IP is from US firms like SiFive; it has also caught major traction with NVDA in custom products, and US Govt for various industries, and even Redhat is now supporting RH on Risc-V

Microchip Inc partnered w US Govt on the aerospace angle and funded Canonical for linux ports. Their Polarfires and now Euro aerospace like Gaisler are heading in the same direction. US Govt/DARPA and others have been funding risc-v ports for years, to include mainly automated porting.

There are big differences between lowend profile-challenged SBCs and the work of NVDA, Microchip Inc, and the US Govt in the much more highend GPU related, and safety critical industries.

With Heavyweights like IBM/Redhat now on risc-v joining canonical and others, the SW side is definitely improving

TSMC btw, has always been about labor arbitrage