Okay? There's a lot of chips you can make that aren't the cutting edge. You don't need a 4090 to do AI, as evidenced by all the AI we did before the 4090. You definitely don't need a (random Intel chip) 14900HX to do general-purpose computing, as evidenced by all the general-purpose computing we did before the 14900HX.
For that matter, the 14900hx was already based on a refined 7nm production process, which China already has started using, though maybe not as effectively yet. As you mention, prior to the 4090's 3090 was on an 8nm node, already behind current China capabilities.
If each node provides a 10-15% improvement in power, performance and area, how many of those need to compound until your already uncompetitive 7 nm is 10x less efficient, slower and more expensive?
Being behind doesn't mean they're permanently stuck where they are today - but aren't our processes running into the wall of soon trying to make transistors smaller than an atom?
> Being behind doesn't mean they're permanently stuck where they are today
Without EUV, they very much are.
> but aren't our processes running into the wall of soon trying to make transistors smaller than an atom?
No, the finest pitches are still in the low double digit nanometers in 2 nm processes. The "2 nm" nomenclature hasn't denoted a physical dimension for decades.
One should remember that EUV is necessary only for obtaining profit from the mass production of integrated circuits.
For making a limited quantity of chips, for research purposes or for some special applications where the price is irrelevant, there would be no problem for China to make today ICs with e.g. a 2-nm CMOS process, by using electron-beam lithography. (Obviously, for developing a 2-nm process many other problems must be solved first, but lithography is not a roadblock, so the process can be developed before having EUV lithography, because test wafers can be made with e-beam lithography.)
Moreover, they have enough money and people to ensure that an alternative EUV technology will be developed, eventually. I might take them 5 to 10 years, but not more than that.
The attempts to sabotage China should have been started more than a decade earlier in order to have chances of success. Now it is too late and the cleverer way would have been to try to accelerate progress in USA, instead of trying to hinder progress in China, by using means that have totally discredited USA as a product supplier all over the world (i.e. by using the dubious legal theory that USA can dictate what to do to the owners of products that include components "made or designed in USA").
