Economist, Nov 2, 2019

choi

There is no need to read the rest of any.

(1) letter to editor: "Fighting hepatitis is a priority[:] The [Bill Gates's] Global Fund's progress in HIV, tuberculosis and Malaria is great ('Building Tomorrow,' Oct 12). However, World Health Organisation estimates that each year deaths from viral hepatitis (types B and C) are greater than HIV and more than double that from malaria. * * * Brigg Reilley, Portland, Oregon

(2) Advanced Micro Devices | The Zen masters; A chipmaking underdog is having its day -- and nipping at Intel's heels.
https://www.economist.com/busine ... g-is-having-its-day

Quotation from paragraph 3 on: "AMD's purple patch comes mostly from its battle with Intel. Until recently, Intel virtually monopolised the CPU [central processing unit] market. Analysts at Mercury Research reckon tat in 2015 its chips accounted for 92.4% of desktop and laptop  computers * ** Mercury's most recent numbers put AMD's share at 14.7% for desktops and laptops. For servers [server chips] it is a more modest 3.1% -- but still five times what it was two years ago.  Two things explains the firm's resurgence. One is a better product. In 2012 AMD rehire Jim Keller, a well-regarded chip designer who had been at Apple. AMD had long been competing on price -- its chips were slower than Intel's but much cheaper. Mr Keller's 'Zen' chops, unveiled in 2017, are still cheap. But they are now as zippy as Intel's, or even zippier: AMD's top-end server chip, for instance, is faster than its Intel counterpart in many tasks, and costs half as much. Zen chips have won a string of contracts * * * The second reason is that, while AMD has improved, Intel has stumbled. * * * Its [Intel]s] latest and greatest manufacturing process * * * is years late, leaving the firm to rehash existing designs. And AMD contracts most of its manufacturing to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company * * * It [Intel] is trying again [to stop competition]. In 2018 it hired Keller, this time from Tesla (he had left AMD in 2015 [though two paragraphs earlier, it is said Zen was unveiled in 2017]. It plans to launch an advanced new process in 2021 [no elaboration; could it be 7 nm?].* * * Like any good monopolist, Intel charges a steep price for its products-- unless AMD is doing well. Sure enough, Intel's newest set of desktop chips, due in November, are some of its thriftiest in years.

Note:
(a) Its share price has risen 15-fold since 2015 (see chart)."

Search images.google.com with (AMD "15 fold" economist.com) and the first return is the chart.
(b) purple patch: "a period of notable success"
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/purple-patch.html

(3) Chinese demography | Old, Not Yet Rich/ Forget bad debts, the trade war, cronyism and autocracy. Democracy may be the Chinese economy's biggest challenge
("The median age of Chinese citizens will overtake that of Americans in 2020, according to IN projections (see chart).Yet China is far poorer, its median income barely a quarter of America's [presumably by PPP]. * * * Seen in one light, the greying of China os successful development. A Chinese person born in 1960 could expect to live 44 years, a shorter span than Ghanaianborn the same year. Life expectancy for Chinese babies born today is 76 years, just short of that in America. But it is also a consequence of China's notorious population-control strategy. In 1973, when the government started limiting births, Chinese women averaged 4.6 children each. Today they have only 1.6, and some scholars say even that estimate is too high. * * * Retirement ages are very low in China (in many jobs, 60 for men and 50 for women), but the government has resisted raising them [to boost number of workers] for fear of a backlash")