Two reasons why TSMC operations in Taiwan would cease: 1. Skilled workers to develop and operate the fabs. I doubt it that the Taiwanese would happily continue to innovate under a (possibly violent) Chinese regime. 2. Supply of fab equipment from ASML and other Western companies.
EUV (not High-NA) is much, much more complex than Immersion Lithography—and China doesn’t have have that either—the optics (mirrors), the light source, the masks, everything under vacuum… A blank check (which the government would be happy to sign) is not enough to catch up on everything in 10 years, integrate it and then make it work reliably at a decent throughput. Not impossible, of course, which is why they are going to try.
To top it all off, a lot of this stuff is patented. Not that China cares all that much about Western patents, but violations in this area would make the geopolitical situation even more tense.
hmm, china is perfectly happy to buy any semi fab tools from Western companies, 40% of ASML sales is to China. The fact that none semi tools company were any significance before the US sanctions is the proof of that. Not only are the patents, the market, talent, money isn't there to make it a sustainable business. But u block the sale, and go max pressure, u create a huge incentive. The engineers in these companies are super happy. Now, in 2024, Chinese semi fab tools companies are moving up to near top 10 global fab tool companies. I have no doubt we will see DUV and EUV fully running on commercial fab lines in the next few years.
"China doesn’t have have that either—the optics (mirrors), the light source, the masks, everything under vacuum" are you really sure about that?
Let me help you here, a lot of this stuff are in Chinese universities. But not commercialized, cuz there is no commercial fly wheel when there are perfectly fine products on the market. Now you just gave $1B dollars to these researchers to bring it to market. This will take time, but this is an engineering, iterate and trial problem, not inventing quantum mechanics. The demand is always there, people who get it get a life time of wealth, what do you think?
You underestimate the sheer complexity of it. You’re talking $1B, I am talking a blank check. That’s probably 100s of different research teams, each with a $?B, whose “research” would have to industrialized.
Then there’s integration and SW. Not to mention performance, metrology, diagnostics.
Now you have to actually integrate these new tools into a new leading node process. This by itself takes years, assuming you have the tools. China does have existing Immersion process nodes, but still.
Even with unlimited resources, I claim China can’t have EUV within 10 years. Maybe not even 20.
A ban and a trade war is more likely to make China just toss these patents on fire. Espionage is still a thing and for the right amount of $$, they might be able to find engineers who will switch sides.
+1. So many cool desktop app ideas showing up in HN every now and then, yet most of them Electron-based web stuff that just feels horrible. At least Qt would be a lot more appreciated. So much missed potential
It's clearly a matter of taste. I, on the other hand, can't stand Qt or apps that try to look "native" in general. At least on Windows, it feels like going back to the previous century. The modern look, known from websites, is the only one that works for me, hence I use Electron. This way I also have full control over the UI and it looks the same on every OS.
> I, on the other hand, can't stand Qt or apps that try to look "native" in general.
100%. That's why I said "at least" and it's the feeling I have with Electron too. Electron apps (nor Qt ones) do not really feel native, and in that case, better to either go full native (so it doesn't feel like an imperfect approximation) or just deliver a web app that you can use on a browser?
The in-between ends up in a gray area that never feels quite right. But I agree it is in part a matter of style and expectations.
Though I also agree the Win32 look is terrible and outdated. GTK and Cocoa on Linux and macOS are really great and good looking native technologies. I've seen more and more projects target GTK on Windows instead of Win32 for this reason.
I feel comfortable with web technologies, and a large part of this project was using Monaco Editor as a powerful diff viewer, so I'll stay with my current stack. I'd be happy to make a pure web app, but I don't think it's possible with something like a Git client, since it needs to call system commands. Maybe there are some hacks available for local apps, but why would that be better than just using Electron. Yeah, it takes some space, but what is this compared to, for example, any modern computer game.
Can you explain why? I feel like more people are familiar with web technology and from my own subjective experience it's much simpler than qt for example
It depends from which point of view you are talking about.
A lot of people are familiar with web technologies, therefore using something like Electron is way easier for them. That makes a lot of sense.
However, from an end user point of view, Electron (while potentially easier to developer with for a large pool of developers) doesn't feel native. You can tell you are running a web app inside that doesn't obey the OS conventions, the standardised OS shortcuts, looks different than the rest, etc. It's like it doesn't quite match and all the muscle memory you have for working with other native apps (mainly for keyword-heavy users like myself) just doesn't work, making it a frustrating experience. Plus many (not all!) Electron apps are super heavy weight and feel slow when you contrast them with other truly native apps.
Overall, I think you will see a lot of people that don't really mind Electron, but many do. I think it largely comes down to whether you want to develop a desktop app faster yourself, or deliver a desktop app that would satisfy almost every user out there (which might be harder to build).
And BTW, this is coming from somebody that worked a LOT with Electron, as the original author of Etcher (https://github.com/balena-io/etcher), plus I led the Desktop Team at Postman (https://www.postman.com, which is arguable one of the worst Electron apps out there, mostly due to really bad early architecture/business decisions) for a while. I tried everything but I gave up on it. It can never even be a good enough approximation to a native experience that many users expect.
In any case, great job with GitQuill. It does look pretty cool and I wish it was a native app!
Developing apps with Qt and QML is super easy these days. I wrote a post about my experience[1]. QML is such a joy to program the UI in, and then you can use a compiled language–C++/Rust/etc for amazing performance gains. Also, most Qt Quick components (those exposed via QML) are written in C++, so using these native components means that even working with these abstractions is very performant.
