x86 boxes are about to get a lot cheaper since China has cheap RTL engineers, fabs, and assembly workers. Hopefully it gets as interesting as ARM SOC's and boards have in Shenizen.
China has caught up big time in the fab game over the past few years, though SMIC doesn't have very much capacity for cutting-edge production and it is basically only manufacturing Qualcomm products for 28nm afaik. You'll also notice they didn't mention yields at all there, which are probably not very good for 28nm, but then again no one has good yields at first, they'll catch up in time.
Haha good catch on the yields. Yeah, they probably suck and are strongly encouraging Design for Manufacturing flows to keep losses lower. That's always true for new fabs.
Contrary to popular beliefs, though, most design starts are still in 110-350nm range with a good chunk on 45/65nm and now interest in 28nm. China has all that covered. So, they're only missing a small chunk of market. That said, the cost of 28nm fab investments means they really need more projects on 28nm.
Personally, I thought they were doing all the semiconductor stuff as anti-subversion and economic imperialism. So, they'll probably keep it and work on lower nodes going even at a loss. Just a hunch. ;)
