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Last week, a nonpartisan delegation of Japanese politicians made a trip to Taiwan, the most recent of the group’s numerous previous visits to the Japanese Diet. Although China is frequently irritable, these visits are just important up to a certain level.

Chinese officials, including Shigeru Ishiba, a possible future prime secretary, visiting Taiwan indirectly demonstrate Tokyo’s worry over China’s challenges to Taiwan and indicate a large degree of support for a complimentary Taiwan. &nbsp,

Despite the inevitable criticism that may adopt from China, this latest visit was made. True to form, the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo promised that if Taiwan triggered problems, Japan had “pay a large price.”

There’s always the chance, if no likelihood, of renewed Chinese state harassment of Chinese companies operating in China, or grabbing more “hostages” from among the Asian living and working in the PRC. &nbsp,

In addition to the Senkaku Islands and other areas of Chinese maritime territory, increased China Coast Guard and Maritime Militia infringements are a constant risk.

Therefore, continuing these visits despite the risks indicates a certain degree of Chinese commitment to Taiwan, even if some politicians occasionally add a little kabuki to their slim foreign policy prowess or refute rumors that they are too dependent on China.

However, one must ask what has the Japanese government actually done in concrete terms to provide overt ( or even covert ) support for Taiwan’s defense. &nbsp, The reply: quite little, if anything. &nbsp,

The Japan Self Defense Force ( JSDF) has effectively no relationship with Taiwan’s armed forces, Tokyo wo n’t even send an active-duty officer to serve as defense attaché or liaison. Rather, it relies on a few former JSDF symbol officers whose usefulness is unknown.

Japan’s Coast Guard recently conducted a simple exercise on a Taiwan Coast Guard ship, but that is irrelevant in terms of what is required and what is practical.

Given the Philippines ‘ strategic place a short distance south of Taiwan, one might assume that Japan’s significant contribution to strengthening Spanish threats by providing police boats, aircraft, sensor systems, and deepening security exchanges indirectly supports Taiwan’s protection.

Beyond these kinds of lawmaker visits and statements supporting the status quo and opposing the use of violence to resolve Taiwan Strait issues, there is n’t much to support Japanese direct support for Taiwan.

This is despite being frequently acknowledged as being important to Japan. For decades, some Japanese officials and many military officers have said that” Taiwan’s defense is Japan’s defense” .&nbsp,

That’s correct. It’s obvious that Taiwan is located astride water roads at the northern end of the South China Sea, through which a sizable portion of Japan’s industry and exports come. This crucial backbone for Japan could be squelched if Taiwan is under the PRC’s control.

Additionally, if the People’s Liberation Army were to run out of a seized Taiwan one day, it would set China’s military in a position to remove or even encompass Japan as well as launch military procedures into the Pacific with much more comfortable than it is now.

And Tokyo presumably is aware that if Taiwan is deposed to China, it will sever the foundation of the US military presence there and broader American influence, which Japan is utterly dependent on.

Japan is aware of these dangers and is aware that the Chinese communists want to impose itself on Taiwan and rule the Pacific region as a whole. &nbsp, And yet Tokyo still wo n’t do what’s necessary to bolster Taiwan. &nbsp,

And do n’t think the Taiwanese fail to notice. &nbsp, And do n’t think Beijing fails to notice.

Maybe Japan will do what’s necessary in the future, but getting there may require waiting for a disaster, and then it will be too late. Therefore, while visiting Japan by Japanese Diet members is beneficial, it’s not nearly as significant as one might assume.

What ought Japan to do? Look at what the Americans are up to for Taiwan and do some of that. Or even just look at what Japan is doing to help Taiwan in some way. But do something. &nbsp, And soon.

Former US diplomat and former US Marine officer Grant Newsham. He is a fellow at the Yorktown Institute and the Center for Security Policy, and he was the first Marine liaison officer to join the Japan Self Defense Force. &nbsp, He is the author of the book&nbsp,” When China Attacks: A Warning To America” .&nbsp,

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” All that remains of the West is the ever more artificial, even insane attempt to arrest the wheel of history … In this senile Europe, the nations, states, and ruling classes … keep their faith in empty formulae of freedom and progress”.

Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West

European head Olaf Scholtz tried to negotiate a surprise deal with the Trump presidency in order to avoid US sanctions on the Nord Stream-2 oil pipeline, according to the German daily Handelsblatt in June of this year.

Two years later, in early February 2022, a few weeks before the pandemic of the Ukraine conflict, Scholtz, as German Chancellor, visited the White House for discussions with US President Joe Biden on the growing crisis.

Biden was asked about his opinion of Nord Stream, the network system that transports Russian oil to Europe, during a live press conference following their discussion. There will no longer get Nord Stream 2 if Russia invades Ukraine, the US senator said in a response. We’ll put an end to it.

Scholtz, standing next to the US leader, was asked for a reply. The German head reaffirmed that the US and Germany shared a similar opinion of Ukraine. Without mentioning Nord Stream, he tacitly endorsed its loss.

But as he spoke, the German president seemed nervous. Did he take into account how history may interpret his decision to allow the judicial destruction of a significant component of German civil society? And how it would establish new global behaviour standards?

Surrounding Russia

The West appears to have a bipolar outlook on Russia from a distance. Russia and Europe forged stronger economic ties after the USSR’s decline, culminating in the first Nord Stream deal signed in 2005 between then-German president Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Nord Stream was opposed by the US authorities allegedly because it would make Germany overly dependent on Russian energy. Merkel certainly did not share America’s issues.

Donald Trump, the leader of the US, did not deny the restrictions against businesses involved in Nord Stream. For vague reasons, Nord Stream had become a part of Trump’s” Make America Great” plan.

The Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act ( CAATSA ), a highly pro-active piece of legislation signed by the then-president, made it possible for the US to impose sanctions on any business that collaborated with German and Russian companies on Nord Stream in order to “protect the energy security of US allies.”

With friends like this, who needs opponents or, as Henry Kissinger apparently said in a rare moment of honesty:” It may be dangerous to become America’s army, but to be America’s companion is fatal”.

Russia’s loss to remake itself in its own liberal image led to the Ukraine conflict. After the collapse of the USSR, the US had an alliance in Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev’s leader.

Yeltsin consulted American economists to convert Russia to a capitalist economy. They advised that simply shock therapy could help Russia transition to a political market economy.

The resulting “market changes” led to the plundering of Russian assets by wealthy businesspeople who created a group of oligarchs who made trillions.

While Russian elderly were selling their healthcare to buy food in Moscow, they quickly moved their wealth and purchased sports clubs in England and prize real estate on the French Riviera.

The West stepped up its support for NATO enlargement when patriotic Putin took over from the globalist Lenin.

Strategic gamble flopped

Whether under Gorbachev, Yeltsin or Putin, the US always stopped its Cold War scheme of undermining Russia. President Jimmy Carter provided aid to the Afghan Mujahedeen, the prelude to the Taliban, and every succeeding US senator, Democrat and Republican, continued subtle and overt meddling in places on Russia’s southern boundary.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security advisor, was the philosophical architect of the Russia-containing technique. Ukraine plays a key role in the so-called Brzezinski Doctrine, which identifies it as the key to preventing Russian-European financial connectivity. However today, the US international establishment is riddled with Brzezinski proteges.

With Ukraine, the West made a big strategic imagine that failed. The terrible sanctions against Russia may have caused a collapse in the Russian economy, leading to a popular revolt and replacing Putin with a pro-Western leader. It ought to have been the catalyst for all government adjustments.

Given that Russia is the richest nation in the world in terms of healthy money, having a crony at the Kremlin would have been a benefit for Wall Street. Russia offers a significant investment option for the next 100 times as natural solutions become more important.

Close activity

After the spying assault on Nord Stream in 2022, European governments floated several “leads” for identifying the offenders. Although they provided no evidence, the recommendations did a favor by muddying the waterways and offered an alternative to Biden’s bold statement regarding Nord Stream.

Germany, Denmark, and Sweden conducted false intelligence into the Nord Stream damage and remained silent about their findings while the West blocked a Russian demand for an independent UN analysis. &nbsp,

The Wall Street Journal ( WSJ) reported on fresh Nord Stream leads in early August, suggesting that Ukrainian workers carried out the attack with the help of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

According to the WSJ’s tale, the West is preparing the government to throw Zelensky under the vehicle, paving the way for his successor to negotiate serenity with Russia. In order to strengthen Ukraine’s army, Zelensky admitted that earlier Minsk agreements with Russia were meant to get time, which invalidated him as a good-faith dealing companion.

Aside from Ukraine itself, the West is the battle’s large fool. They have encouraged and facilitated Ukraine’s fight against a nuclear and industrial-military power it had no chance of defeating because they are a generation of ideologues and Atlanticists who believe philosophy overshadows financial, defense, and historical common feeling.

For Atlanticists, philosophy yet trumps morality and ethics.

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Advanced IC packaging is a hot new hotbed of competition between AI processor manufacturers and other advanced integrated circuit ( IC ) manufacturers, and it’s emerging as the next frontier in the US government’s efforts to lessen America’s dependence on foreign suppliers and halt China’s technological advancement.

However, unlike “front-end” IC wafer fabrication, where US sanctions have seriously constrained China’s advance, “back-end” assembly, packaging and test ( APT ) is an area where China has a large market presence and sophisticated technology, making it relatively immune to US technology blocks.

Taiwan’s TSMC, by far the world’s largest and most technologically advanced IC foundry, is rapidly expanding its Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate ( CoWoS ) packaging capacity. This will end a offer barrier that has kept Nvidia, AMD, and Intel’s most recent AI processors manufactured at procedure nodes below 5 micrometers.

Huawei has used its own Circuit design and presentation technologies to move above the performance cap the US Commerce Department has set on Nvidia cards that can be sold it, which has so far been unable to drop below 5 nm due to the ban on selling ASML’s EUV printing chip-making systems to China.

Especially, Huawei’s new Ascend 910C computer, which was see commercial shipping within the next two decades, apparently outperforms Nvidia’s dumbed-down H20.

Tom’s Hardware writes,” According to Huawei, the device is on par with Nvidia’s H100, but it is unclear]on ] which benchmark terms the Ascend 910C is comparable to Nvidia’s previous-generation flagship product”. ExtremeTech calculates that, overall, the H20 has” 28 % less AI performance” than the H100.

Even if Huawei is overstating its capabilities, it appears to have made sufficient progress to throw Nvidia, AMD, and Intel in danger of losing their Artificial computer jobs in the Chinese business.

Without any outside competition, Huawei and other Chinese manufacturers could have what is likely to be the largest marketplace for these devices entirely on their own.

Use of equipment created and manufactured in China today makes it simpler and less risky for Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance, China Mobile, Tencent, and another Chinese clients who would have preferred to purchase the more sophisticated US-designed chips.

The US Commerce Department perhaps impose tighter sanctions and make it accessible to China, just like it would with any US-designed device. Even if Chinese ICs are less effective or ready, the shift is being accelerated by this uncertainty.

Meanwhile, data from business solutions reported by tech media websites in Taiwan and elsewhere indicate that regular production of ICs using TSMC’s CoWoS, technology does more than double to 40, 000 units by the end of this year, boost by 50 % to 60, 000 in 2025 and achieve 80, 000 by the end of 2026.

CoWoS is&nbsp, a 2.5-dimensional ( 2.5D ) packaging technology developed by TSMC for high-performance ICs used in computing, data centers and telecom equipment. As can be seen in the diagram below, it utilizes through-silicon via ( TSV ) vertical electrical connections and a silicon interposer.

According to Cadence Design Systems, a leading electronic design automation company, CoWoS “is particularly well-suited for artificial intelligence ( AI ) accelerators, where multiple types of chips need to work together efficiently” – including high-bandwidth memory ( HBM ).

AMD noted that” HBM is a new type of memory device with ultra-wide contact lanes and low energy consumption.” It uses horizontally stacked memory cards that are connected by microscopic wires known as through-silicon vias, or TSVs.

Cadence explains that” 2.5D packaging … is an intermediate step between traditional 2D packaging and full-fledged 3D packaging. In 2.5D package, many silicon dies, usually from various approach technologies, are placed side by side on a silicon interposer. The interposer acts as a bridge, connecting the individual dies and providing a high-speed communication interface”.

This “enables the integration of diverse components, such as processors, memory, and sensors, on a single package. This proximity results in shorter interconnects, which in turn improve signal integrity and latency.

In addition, it reduces both the size of the package and power consumption and facilitates heat dissipation.

As it ramps up CoWoS production capacity, TSMC should be able to catch up with the backlog of orders for Nividia’s H100 processors and be ready to roll out its new Blackwell B200 processors, expected to start early next year.

According to NextBigFuture’s Brian Wang, the B200 is 25 times more efficient and four times faster than the H100. It wo n’t be known until the middle of the year what users and analysts will think of Huawei’s overall AI performance, but it significantly raises the bar. However, it will almost certainly not be sold in China.

The first CoWoS version was released by TSMC in 2012. As recently reported in a Chinese news site Guancha ( Observer Net ) article, Huawei’s IC design division HiSilicon” conducted a comprehensive assessment of CoWoS in 2014, including cost and yield, and decided to take the lead” in adopting the technology.

Starting with the integration of 16nm logic chips and 28nm Input-Output ( I/O ) chips, Huawei HiSilicon worked with TSMC all the way to 7nm in 2019. That advancement came to an end in 2020 when the US fined Huawei and ordered TSMC to stop.

However, Huawei already had years of experience putting the idea into practice, which refers to the components that come together in a system-on-chip as” chiplets” in general. AMD, Apple, Intel and Nvidia all use chiplet design. IBM explains it as follows:

The goal of chiplets is to break up the system on a chip into its composite functional blocks, or parts. Sub-elements of a complex-function chip could be made as chiplets, where these sub-elements might include separate computational processor or graphics unit, an AI accelerator, an I/O function, or a host of other chip functions. A system comprised of chiplets is kind of like an SoC on a module, and, in the future, could be made using interoperable mix-and-match chiplet components sourced from multiple providers. This approach could lead to chiplets powering entirely new computing paradigms, creating more energy-efficient systems, shortening system development cycle time, or building purpose-built computers for less than it would cost today.

Huawei/HiSilicon has reportedly amassed hundreds of patents covering chiplet technology. In 2021, Shenzhen-based Chipuller acquired 28 from failed Silicon Valley venture company Glue.

Chipuller CEO Yang Meng told Reuters that, with chiplets,” US-China competition is on the same starting line. In other ( chip technologies ) there is a sizeable gap between China and the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan”.

However, chiplets allow the Chinese to bypass the US’s trade restrictions on advanced semiconductor production equipment, which have so far prevented them from getting beyond 5 nm.

China has a very advanced and significant IC packaging sector. Two of the world’s top five outsourced semiconductor assembly and test ( OSAT ) companies – JCET, which ranks third, and Tongfu Microelectronics, which ranks fourth – are Chinese, while Beijing ESWIN and other smaller companies are also developing chiplet technology.

Tongfu is unique because it has worked with AMD for many years and jointly runs joint-venture factories in Suzhou and Penang.

The Chinese government believes that advanced IC packaging in general and chiplets in particular are essential for overcoming US sanctions and establishing a competitive and independent Chinese semiconductor sector.

The US government, which also regards advanced IC packaging as crucial, plans to subsidize the construction of Amkor’s first OSAT facility in the US. Amkor, the world’s second-largest OSAT company, is based in Arizona.

US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo stated in late July that “one of the fundamental goals of the CHIPS and Science Act is creating an advanced packaging ecosystem in the US to ensure full start to finish chip production occurs domestically.” These technologies will be the foundation of global economic and national security for decades to come.

According to reports, the Biden administration has been considering enforcing a ban on exporting chip assembly and packaging equipment to China in response to China hawks in Congress. However, it does n’t seem to have made much progress so far, perhaps because the majority of the equipment is produced in Japan.

Japan has reportedly objected to the most recent US request to enforcing sanctions against China, but the Chinese are reportedly taking no chances. In addition to advanced packaging processes, they are developing their own dicing, wire bonding, test and other assembly, packaging and test equipment.

With more than 20 leading Japanese materials and equipment companies, TSMC is developing advanced 3D packaging technology at its Japan 3DIC R&amp, D Center, which is located in the science city of Tsukuba northeast of Tokyo.

While the US frets about Chinese chiplets, they are switching from 2.5D CoWoS to 3D technology to prepare for smaller process nodes that are already being developed.

Follow this writer on&nbsp, X: @ScottFo83517667

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