Tag: China

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What China’s new stance in microchip battle means

Gallium and Germanium

Gallium and germanium

No, nor me – never heard of them, but they are extremely important elements needed in microchip manufacturing and China is the world’s largest producer.

Germanium and gallium are two elements that are used in the production of semiconductor chips, which are essential for various electronic devices and technologies. They have different properties and applications, and they are both considered critical materials.

Germanium

Germanium is a metalloid, which means it has properties of both metals and non-metals. It is a shiny, hard, gray-white element that is brittle and can be cut easily with a knife. It has a high melting point of 938°C and a low boiling point of 2830°C. It is mainly obtained as a by-product of zinc production, but it can also be extracted from coal.

Germanium is used in, solar cells, fibre optic cables, infrared lenses light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and transistors. It is also used in some alloys to improve their strength and hardness. Germanium is essential for the defence and renewable energy sectors, as well as for space technologies. It can resist cosmic radiation better than silicon, and it can enhance the performance and efficiency of some semiconductors.

Gallium

Gallium is a metal that has a very low melting point of 29.8°C, which means it can melt in your hand. It is a soft, silvery-white element that can be easily cut with a knife. It has a high boiling point of 2403°C.  It is mainly obtained as a by-product of processing bauxite and zinc ores.

Gallium and Germanium considered critical elements required in the production of microchips

Gallium is used in the electronics industry to produce heat-resistant semiconductor wafers that can operate at higher frequencies than silicon-based ones. It is also used in LEDs, solar panels, microwave devices, sensors, and lasers. Gallium is important for the development of new technologies such as electric vehicles, high-end radio communications, and Blu-Ray players. It can also improve the power consumption and reliability of some semiconductors.

China the largest producer

China is the largest producer and exporter of both germanium and gallium, accounting for about 60% and 80% of the global supply. However, China has recently announced new export restrictions on these two elements, requiring special licences for exporters. This move is seen as a response to the western sanctions on China’s access to advanced microchip technology. 

The export curbs could affect the global supply chain of semiconductor chips and have implications for various industries and markets

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AI race gathers momentum as China’s Baidu claims its Ernie Bot is Better than ChatGPT on key tests

AI Robots Chatting

Baidu said its AI system called Ernie 3.5 outperformed OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT4 in several key areas.

  • The Chat Bot was revealed in March 2023 and has since been publicly testing it in China. The chatbot is based on Baidu’s foundational AI model called ERNIE.
  • Baidu’s advancements underscore the intense competition taking place in the area of generative AI with technology giants in the US and China rapidly advancing their AI models.

 ERNIE – Enhanced Language RepresentatioN with Informative Entities

US and China AI Bots go head to head

Ernie was first introduced in 2019, and since then, Baidu has been improving and upgrading it with new versions. The latest version, Ernie 3.5, was announced in June 2023, and it claims to outperform OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT 4 in several key areas

Baidu’s Ernie is an artificial intelligence (AI) model that powers the company’s chatbot service, Ernie Bot. Ernie stands for Enhanced Language RepresentatioN with Informative Entities, and it is a natural language processing (NLP) deep-learning model that can understand and generate natural language.

Trained on large data sets

Ernie 3.5 is based on Baidu’s foundational AI model, which is trained on huge amounts of data from various domains, such as news, social media, encyclopedias, books, and more. Ernie 3.5 can handle various NLP tasks, such as question answering, dialogue generation, text summarization, sentiment analysis, and more.

According to a test by the China Science Daily journal, Ernie 3.5 surpassed ChatGPT and GPT 4 in general abilities and outperformed the more advanced GPT 4 on several Chinese-language capabilities. 

ERNIE version 3.5 boosted its training and efficiency, making it faster and cheaper to upgrade to future versions. Baidu hopes that ERNIE Bot will become the next must-have app in China’s internet market, attracting users because of its natural and engaging conversations.

Intergration

Baidu has been integrating ERNIE Bot across multiple business applications, ranging from cloud computing to smart speakers. 

Chat Bot
AI Chatbot

ERNIE Bot is one of the examples of how Baidu is investing in AI technology and competing with other tech giants in the US and China. Baidu’s founder Robin Li, reportedly said that ‘foundation models are an engine driving global economic growth and represent a major strategic opportunity that cannot be missed‘.

The major BIG players, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft & META all have their own versions of AI. Hopefully it will be used ‘intelligently’.