[brindlejim]

Software determines whether good hardware succeeds or fails. China has yet to build successful software ecosystems on top of its hardware innovations.

[foofie]

> China has yet to build successful software ecosystems on top of its hardware innovations.

I'm not sure your belief is grounded in reality. I'd go as far as to assert that if China was able to research and develop these chips, both their design and production processes, they certainly are not leaving software as an afterthought.

Nevertheless, even entertaining your fantasy, once these chips are out and people like you and me are able to take these toys out to play with them, you'll soon get software that does something interesting and useful. Software is hardly the hard part, or even costlier.

[Wytwwww]

> Software is hardly the hard part, or even costlier

Tell that to Nvidia. HW is a commodity with relatively low margins unless you can lock in your users in some other way.

[brindlejim]

I'm surprised by the cluelessness of most replies here, given that this is HN.

Hardware is only as useful as the software that can run on it. Radically new hardware requires rewrites of certain layers of that software. Ain't nobody got time for that, unless they can be assured that there will be a large number of companies and customers who need software to run on the new hardware.

[Barrin92]

Wait what, China has by significant margin the second largest software ecosystem in the world, and in VC terms is comparable to the US.

[brindlejim]

China runs on Intel chips like everyone else. It's AI researchers beg for Nvidia chips like everyone else. And its mobile companies use Android.

Chips that break away from those standards have little chance of success.