The TPUv4 and TPUv6 docs were stolen by a Chinese national in 2022/2023: https://www.cyberhaven.com/blog/lessons-learned-from-the-goo... https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/superseding-indictment-charge...
And that's just 1 guy that got caught. Who knows how many other cases were there.
A Chinese startup is already making clusters of TPUs and has revenue https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/3334244/ai-start-...
There is a dark art to semiconductor manufacturing that pretty much only TSMC really has the wizards for. Maybe intel and samsung a bit too.
The knowledge of making 2008 era chips is not a gating factor for getting a handful of atoms to function as a transistor in current SOTA chips. There are probably 100 people on earth who know how to do this, and the majority of them are in Taiwan.
Again, China has literally stolen the plans for EUV lithography, years ago, and still cannot get it to work. Even Samsung and Intel, using the same machines as TSMC, cannot match what they are doing.
It's a dark art in the most literal sense.
Nevermind that new these cutting edge fabs cost ~$50 Billion each.
Simplita•3h ago