The Chinese GPU Invasion

Red Falcon said:
Don't forget about TikTok, which I'm amazed every country outside of China has not banned yet.
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TikTok is not a thing in China, strangely enough. They use their own version called Douyin, which only works in China, and is also owned by ByteDance.

I have a buddy that works as a English translator in China, and he said you can't even download TikTok there with a VPN.
Douyin is damn near the same except, no "western" style videos, and it's only available in China.

Kind of makes you wonder.
 
XenIneX said:
China makes the GoPros with wings and toys for children. Everything the Pentagon uses to reach out and touch someone is thoroughly domestic.
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This is highly inaccurate. Basically DJI has lead the way in all consumer related drone manufacturer, up to and including Hollywood. The Inspire was the defacto drone/optical for over half a decade (using their Xenmuse X5 and then X7 cameras in ProRes RAW capture).

The only reason why it's not now is because drones have evolved to the point of becoming "platforms" so that end users can fly whatever camera they want to achieve the same look throughout their films (notably box cams like the Z Cam E2-F6 and RED Komodo). It’s still used of course, just not for everything like it was before. Anyway, pretty much all drone platforms are also all manufactured in China. But most platforms/FPVs are all literally sold in parts by a myriad of manufacturers. Still mostly Chinese. DJI basically makes the best FPV goggles, so regardless of platform you’re likely still using some amount of DJI product.

In terms of search and rescue, fire/police, land surveying, Enterprise etc they also have a number of drones for governmental use only. Namely this:

YouTube link here is just to demonstrate the capabilities of this search drone. Below you can look at all the tech specs.

https://www.dji.com/matrice-30

For surveying they have:
https://www.dji.com/matrice-300?site=brandsite&from=nav
 
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UnknownSouljer said:
This is highly inaccurate. Basically DJI has lead the way in all consumer related drone manufacturer, up to and including Hollywood. The Inspire was the defacto drone/optical for over half a decade (using their Xenmuse X5 and then X7 cameras in ProRes RAW capture).

The only reason why it's not now is because drones have evolved to the point of becoming "platforms" so that end users can fly whatever camera they want to achieve the same look throughout their films (notably box cams like the Z Cam E2-F6 and RED Komodo). It’s still used of course, just not for everything like it was before. Anyway, pretty much all drone platforms are also all manufactured in China. But most platforms/FPVs are all literally sold in parts by a myriad of manufacturers. Still mostly Chinese. DJI basically makes the best FPV goggles, so regardless of platform you’re likely still using some amount of DJI product.

In terms of search and rescue, fire/police, land surveying, Enterprise etc they also have a number of drones for governmental use only. Namely this:

YouTube link here is just to demonstrate the capabilities of this search drone. Below you can look at all the tech specs.

https://www.dji.com/matrice-30

For surveying they have:
https://www.dji.com/matrice-300?site=brandsite&from=nav
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Cool. You know what DJI isn't? Raytheon. Or Lockheed Martin. Or Northrop Grumman. Or one of the handful of other key players in the Military-Industrial Circlejerk. Not all government contracts are equal. National Park Service going lowest bidder so they can get promotional pictures of Yellowstone has exactly no bearing on what US Army Contracting Command is going to outfit the next generation of Army Rangers with.

When I hear "DJI", I know someone's gonna get a cool picture. When I hear those other entities, I know someone's gonna die.
 
XenIneX said:
Cool. You know what DJI isn't? Raytheon. Or Lockheed Martin. Or Northrop Grumman. Or one of the handful of other key players in the Military-Industrial Circlejerk. Not all government contracts are equal. National Park Service going lowest bidder so they can get promotional pictures of Yellowstone has exactly no bearing on what US Army Contracting Command is going to outfit the next generation of Army Rangers with.

When I hear "DJI", I know someone's gonna get a cool picture. When I hear those other entities, I know someone's gonna die.
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That's fair. But also the US military industrial complex would never buy something that kills autonomously from China. China has been more or less frozen out of all military tech both going in and out of the US. I imagine that DJI likely also has worked on military drone technology behind closed doors or at least lent tech to that sector. But it's all stuff that for sure the US will never see.

Even in stating all of those things though, it's not as if the systems in their "consumer level" and "rescue oriented" drones aren't sophisticated. They're basically 10 years ahead of any consumer technology available in the US. And by "consumer level", I mean drones usable for the most expensive sets in Hollywood. As far as military tech, that's way too hard to gauge as it's not as if any military gives away that kind of information about capabilities and such.
 
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UnknownSouljer said:
Even in stating all of those things though, it's not as if the systems in their "consumer level" and "rescue oriented" drones aren't sophisticated. They're basically 10 years ahead of any consumer technology available in the US.
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UnknownSouljer said:
And by "consumer level", I mean drones usable for the most expensive sets in Hollywood. As far as military tech, that's way too hard to gauge as it's not as if any military gives away that kind of information about capabilities and such.
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So it's about... 20 years behind US military hardware. Gotcha.

Nothing DJI does is magic. All of it, the military has been doing for ages; just mostly on fixed-wing hardware. (The Global Hawk has been around for nearly 25 years...) And it's not like there's some secret sauce that lets them cram it into a quadcopter; we've just happened to hit a nexus where lithium batteries, solid state accelerometers, and low-power compute all hit good enough at about the same time. And then R/C flight nerds and HAM radio nerds ran with the ball to produce enough of a minimum-viable-product that DJI could turn around and iterate it into reasonably solid consumer hardware with a pretty good interface. But at the end of the day, a DJI drone is still just a Raspberry Pi, a GoPro, and four R/C plane powertrains ducktaped to a radio.

And every bit of it, the military-industrial complex can do better.

...On a cost-plus contract. Freedom isn't "free", or whatever...
 
The US military takes US sourcing very seriously.

That said I wouldn’t discount China’s abilities, or how much technical knowledge / technical personnel it has built up since the US basically buys everything from it.

A good manufacturing base is required for strong wartime manufacturing… you can’t will engineers and experienced mfg employees.

More on point with the thread if they get their software up a bit they might be competitive just on price/qty especially since we’re heading into diminishing returns for both GPUs and CPUs.
 
ChadD said:
This is dangerous and stupid.
$441.3 billion
That is how much China spent on technology research last year alone.

They are no more guilty of IP theft on a grand scale as any other large corporation. As I already pointed out... 3/4 of a current Intel chip is using NON Intel patents. Same for AMD. Nvidia... why do you think Nvidia and AMD bought so many smaller GPU companies back in the hay day of GPU companies. AMD didn't buy ATI for nothing... ATI didn't buy ARTX just cause. Nvidia didn't buy 3DFX to sell voodoo cards.

China is rapidly catching up and they have been for a decade. Way back when Obamas administration decided it was time to start punishing the Chinese for using Intel chips to simulate Nukes... China started burning research money like mad. Chips like the Sunway SW26010 where not stolen tech. It had features that no western chip at the time had... such as a network on a chip interconnect system for its 260 core chips. Such interconnects are still only really used in GPUs 3D stacked CPU logic will use a network on a chip. There is a reason China topped the super computer list with the machine using those chips in 2018. (they currently have a 26010 based machine at #6 on the list) Those are not Intel knock offs.. those are Chinese chips that where R&Ded at the cost of billions.

Thinking that stealing is all that China is capable of is dangerous because they are in fact real competition that is determined to kick our ass. Sure sure their little contract manufacturers are likely to produce 3x as much as you order and sell a bunch of knock offs... but don't mistake that wide spread stupidity for what is happening in their real homegrown tech sector. Sure they have tried to get access to some patents with license deals (like the x86 license held by Via)... don't think they don't have 4 or 5 other irons in the fire though. They have at least 5 Chinese CPU companies that are all working on very home grown chips. Some of the ideas they are willing to pursue are wild and quite capable of revolutionizing the industry. Make no mistake though the Chinese will keep throwing Billions every year into research they have a lot of very smart chip designers being paid very well, and they are competing against each other for even more $. At some point the money they are spending on Chinese Fabrication will start making all their crazy research projects reality.
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Our people have been programmed to believe the Chinese can only steal technology.
It is part of the indoctrination to keep hate in place.
As you've stated, that is a dangerous and short-sighted approach to take.
It is not about a 'love-fest with China. It is about reality of the situation.
While we have been off fighting wars all over the World, other nations have been investing in their infrastructure and technology sectors.
Is intellectual property theft still an issue? Absolutely...but that happens with every country including ours.
We need to get back to educating our kids...and adults or we risk them catching and surpassing us.
The fact we so heavily rely on nations like China's disputed territory Taiwan for top-end chips we cannot seem to manufacture ourselves, is telling.
They're on the cutting edge of tech it would take us years to develop.
 
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