[markhahn]

Copying CPUs isn't really a thing: they are too complex.

If you could steal all the designs at TSMC, and you had exactly the process that TSMC uses, you could definitely make counterfeits. If you didn't have TSMC's specific process, you could adapt the designs (to Intel or Samsung) with serious but not epic effort. If you couldn't make the processes similar (ie, want to fab on SMIC), you are basically back to RTL, and can look forward to the most expensive and time-consuming part of chip design.

This is nothing like copying a trivial, non-complex item like a car. Copying a modern jet engine is starting to get close (for instance, single-crystal blades), but even they are much simpler. I mention the latter because the largest, most resourced countries in the world have tried and are still trying.

[monocasa]

They have done a bit of this. SMIC is basically operating off of a cloned TSMC N7 node that they have since iterated on to get to a 5nm class node.

[whaleofatw2022]

But its still such a complex sort of beast.

Even if you had 'ai tools' guessing at component blocks on evaluation you would have to have some evaluation of the result.

And, thats assuming NVDA hasn't pulled a Masatoshi Shima type play on their designs (i.e. complex traps that could require lots of analysis to determine if they are real or fake)

Im not sure how much of a speedup even modern tooling/workflow could do reliably.

Even then,

The elephant in the room is that China is working on their own AI accelerators/etc, so while there can be benefit from -studying- the existing designs, however I think they do not want to clone regardless.

[monocasa]

Oh, absolutely. Straight up soviet style cloning of masks makes no sense for multitude of reasons. In addition to what you've said, China isn't banned from N7 class Nvidia architectures so could just buy those on the open market.