Has Nvidia’s A100 Chip Met Its Match With Biren’s BR100 Processor? | WSJ U.S. vs. China

- [Narrator] This is the A100 chip from the US giant NVIDIA. It's one of the world's most advanced computing processors, which helps develop artificial intelligence that's used in everything from self-driving cars to making drugs and even building weapons. And this is one of its newest competitors made by a Chinese startup. Industry analysts who track the speed of chips say this model is even faster than the A100 based on initial tests. - It produced performances that were significantly more competitive than previous AI chips coming from China. - [Narrator] Here's how the design and capabilities of these two chips compare as the race for dominance in tech is ramping up. (pensive music) The US has been a pioneer in the semiconductor industry for over 70 years. - The US essentially gave birth to the semiconductor industry and the semiconductor economy. - Wayne Lam is the director of research with tech consulting firm CCS Insight. For over a decade, he has been researching American chip technology. - [Wayne] The US was an ideal place because it started much at the research and core sciences. - [Narrator] In the late 1940s, American scientists invented the first transistor, the fundamental technology behind all chips. Early versions of chips fit inside computers that helped calculate projectiles and get NASA space programs off the ground. (lively music) But the industry really took off in the 1960s with the rising demand for consumer goods like televisions and corporate computers. That boom also drove chip companies to spring up across Asia with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company now leading the industry, making more than 90% of the world's most advanced chips. Still today, the US is home to some of the world's leading chip designers and they help power everything from our smartphones to laptops and data centers. China, on the other hand, has long been trailing the US and for several decades it has actually relied on American companies, as well as chip makers in Taiwan and Japan. In 2021, China imported more than $430 billion worth of chips, exceeding that of oil. So Chinese President Xi Jinping has made it a top priority to change that. - It's absolutely important on a strategic basis. - Gregory Allen is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. He's been following Beijing's AI and semiconductor policies for about seven years. - [Gregory] What they essentially wanted in the semiconductor industry was for more of the chips that were used in China to be made in China. - [Narrator] So to become more self-reliant, Beijing promised to provide about $180 billion in state funding to support its domestic chip industry. The goal is to design chips that can be as fast as the American ones like this AI chip from NVIDIA. And this model released in August by Biren is the latest demonstration of China's progress. Like its American rival, the Biren chip is also a graphics processing unit, or GPU, and both are designed to help computers perform complex tasks faster. So what makes a chip powerful? To improve their performance, both companies are using the same type of transistor. It's the fundamental unit that basically controls the flow of electronic signals and that allows the chips to store data or run calculations. But unlike the first transistor invented in the 1940s, the ones today are so small that they are measured in nanometers, which is a fraction of the width of a human hair. Seven nanometer transistors are now the base for both NVIDIA and Biren's high-end chips - So smaller to the transistor, the more transistors you can pack into the same surface area of a silicon. - [Narrator] The American chip is designed with more than 54 billion transistors over a plate of about 800 millimeters square whereas the BR100 is slightly bigger with about 77 billion transistors packed into about 1,000 square millimeters. While there are many factors that determine a chip's performance, industry experts say having a higher number of transistors can help increase the Chinese processor's speed. Biren says its chip can perform more than 1,000 trillion operations per second at its peak. Write it out, that's 15 zeros. That's about three times the stated speed of NVIDIA's A100. But whether Biren will be able to dominate the market will require more than designing chips. Producing them is also a huge challenge because it requires precise manufacturing to squeeze these billions of transistors onto a tiny surface. - Semiconductor manufacturing is perhaps the most technologically complicated thing that the human species does. - [Narrator] One of the most complex processes is called lithography, which blasts UV light through photo masks and prints patterns on silicon wafers, adding layers to form the transistors. - You need to be precise. Some of the layers in the semiconductor transistors are only one atom thick. - [Narrator] So NVIDIA and Biren both look to another company for manufacturing. You may have guessed, that's the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world's largest contract chip producer. But Biren's reliance on TSMC is becoming a hurdle on its way to rivaling NVIDIA. - Has been sort of a cautionary tale for the Chinese semiconductor industry. - [Narrator] A couple of months after the Chinese startup release its chip, the Biden administration imposed new export restrictions. The rules barred cutting-edge semiconductors made with American technologies from being sold to China. And because TSMC uses equipment from US companies, Biren is at risk of losing the Taiwanese chip maker as a supplier. - This dramatically reduces Biren's prospects for its future as a leading chip designer. - [Narrator] Biren didn't respond to a request for comment. TSMC says it complies with all laws and regulations but declined to comment on specific customers. China also depends on a handful of American companies that dominate the industry for advanced manufacturing equipment. With the American government blocking China from buying these machines, it becomes even harder for Beijing to build its own high-end chip making factories. - That development is a Herculean effort to say the least. So it would require considerable investment in capital and time to make that happen. - [Narrator] China isn't alone in facing challenges in trying to become more self-sufficient. While the US leads in design and research, it has also long relied on outside manufacturers like TSMC and Samsung in South Korea. And the vulnerability of that dependence became an issue during the pandemic when a chip shortage hit companies large and small, prompting President Biden to promise that more semiconductors would be produced in the US. - This is infrastructure. So look, we need to build the infrastructure of today, not repair the one of yesterday. - [Narrator] So in August, he signed the CHIPS Act, allocating more than $52 billion in federal aid for semiconductor research and manufacturing. TSMC later announced that it would invest $40 billion to build two factories in Arizona. - These investments are helping us build and strengthen the supply chain here in America. - [Narrator] And only months after the release of China's BR100, NVIDIA announced that it will release a super fast new chip, which would in turn beat Biren's. The long and expensive race to develop chips that'll drive the future of AI is entering a new phase. (pensive music)

Channel: The Wall Street Journal

Views: 485,861

Keywords: us vs china, china, nvidia, china chips, china semiconductor, semiconductor, nvidia a100, biren, china biren, biren br100, gpu, processor, china processor, chinese tech, nvidia vs biren, us vs china tech, br100 chip, a100 chip, computer, computer science, nvidia news, semiconductor industry, nvidia a100 gpu, nvidia a100 gaming, machine learning, a100 gpu, ai, amd, artificial intelligence, xi jinping, gaming, tsmc, transistor, silicon, taiwan us china, biden, chips act, news, techy

Id: gPpAL_pG_Wc

Length: 7min 41sec (461 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 11 2023