A company like NVIDIA makes money by being 1-2 years ahead of the competition. Even if patents and copyright didn't exist at all, NVIDIA would push an innovative new chip to the market and the competition would take years to replicate it. NVIDIA wouldn't lose anything of significance.
This is very common across all industries and indeed there's zero evidence that intellectual property has any effect on encouraging innovation. See "Against intellectual monopoly". http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm
- no company like nvidia could exist, and for chip design and fabrication we'd be stuck with companies like intel, digital, micron, samsung, and texas instruments; but many other kinds of companies could exist that can't exist currently
- fabs like tsmc would hire design firms like nvidia to produce designs to fabricate; the division of labor would be the same as at present, but banks and investors would send their money to tsmc to pay to nvidia, rather than to nvidia to pay to tsmc
- fabs like tsmc would provide open-source pdks like the skywater pdk to anyone who was interested in designing chips. different open-source gpu designs would proliferate, and jen-hsun huang would be the head of a nonprofit foundation in oregon, spending his days coordinating the contributions of a worldwide network of volunteer electrical engineers and raising his children
- microelectronics fabrication machinery research would be focused on small job-shop equipment using electron beams rather than multibillion-dollar euv fabs, so you could get the chips of your choice fabricated in any downtown with five-day turnaround, much like printed-circuit boards. as before, different open-source gpu designs would proliferate, and huang would be the head of a nonprofit foundation in oregon
- gpu development and fabrication would be internally funded by companies that wanted to use large numbers of gpus, such as amazon and the nsa
of course, companies like nvidia don't depend on the particular 'intellectual property' law being weaponized against anna's archive, and things like anna's archive benefit companies like nvidia rather than threatening them
There’s a bit of a snag with this. Chip designs are rarely ever done from scratch. Instead they’re iterated over many years, similar to how browsers, operating systems, other critical software is developed. It took NVIDIA decades to get where they are now. If anyone else can just take their designs as a starting point then NVIDIA’s whole investment (billions of dollars in R&D over decades) ceases to be a competitive advantage.
I think what would actually end up happening is that chip design as NVIDIA is doing would cease to exist as a business. Perhaps we’d end up with something more akin to an open source model like Linux. But then cost of manufacturing (paying for the masks and order startup costs) would still run into the millions, and TSMC would hold all the cards.
The reason I brought all this up though may have been missed by all the commenters to my original post: the U.S. government and their strategic interests. Having American companies like NVIDIA (and Apple as well, really) lose power and marketshare is not in the interest of the government. The last thing the US wants to see is for China to close the technology gap on this stuff.
chinese policymakers can loosen domestic restrictions on innovation such as copyright and patent laws; then the laws in the us will only restrict us companies like nvidia. in large part this has happened, which is a major reason chinese companies (in both prc and roc) have become the leading organizations in a wide variety of high-tech fields, including solar panels, cell phones, electric cars, nuclear power, and microelectronics
your nvidia analogy predicts that gcc engineers and linux kernel engineers would have terrible job security, since anyone who needs a gcc backend or device driver written can hire literally any programmer; there are no legal restrictions. but in fact this seems to make the barriers to entry higher rather than lower. they're just in the form of 'human capital', knowhow, rather than in the form of the assets of a company
also, you may not be aware of this, but tsmc is a chinese company, and it's already left the us behind. sentences like 'The last thing the US wants to see is for China to close the technology gap on this stuff.' reflect wishful thinking that the technology gap is the other way around from how it actually is
looking at your comment history, the most likely explanation for the disagreement is that you're out of your depth discussing geopolitics, the history of innovation, and international trade, so you're limited to repeating the ideas you're surrounded by, and even the best-founded counterarguments to them appear to you as 'bullshit' because you aren't familiar with the background knowledge they're based on
This part is wrong. TSMC is a Taiwanese company and as much as China's bullying behavior in the UN means most other contries do not officially recognize Taiwan, it still does not change the reality of the situation that Taiwan is independent in every way you can think of and the chines government has no more control over or benefit from TSMC than it does for an american company.
China doesn't have to care about US IP laws and largely already doesn't.
> using electron beams rather than multibillion-dollar euv fabs
If this were possible it would be happening now.
that's an odd thing to say. if it's possible now it should have been happening 10 years ago? when does the infinite regress stop?
Focused electron beams are far older than microchips.
Don't bother us with such complexities. We developed our ideas about IP after being outraged by attempts to stop our piracy of music and movies, and carefully reviewing lists of all the cons of IP (after completely ignoring and throwing out the list of the pros). The only righteous path is for the law to be reform to reflect our views.
Making the copyright system more reasonable would increase it's perceived social worth.