ARM cuts ties with Huawei, threatening future chip designs

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solarz

Brigadier
But China’s record in this area is not promising. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Chinese government pursued a programme of “indigenous innovation” to design and fabricate its own chips, investing billions in companies like Grace Semiconductor, headed by no less than Jiang Mianheng, son of China’s then president Jiang Zemin.

However, not even a bottomless purse and political backing at the very highest level could make a success of Grace, which has long since been folded into an equally uninspiring competitor.

Attempts to build national chip champions based on foreign technologies have also struggled. DRAM memory chip hopeful Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit collapsed last year after being hit with US export controls following allegations it conspired to steal designs from US chip giant Micron.

And more than 12 years after it was set up to produce NAND memory chips, would-be Samsung competitor Yangtze Memory Technologies remains at least five years behind the Korean giant. Sceptics say the Chinese company’s bosses have made more progress in real estate development than in chip-making.

China has not had any more success in software development. After almost 20 years of state-backed effort, China has yet to come up with a home-grown operating system for personal computers to challenge Microsoft Windows. Its best attempt to date looks a lot like Windows XP, which Microsoft discontinued more than 10 years ago.

Those attempts were not successful because foreign alternatives were more competitive.

Guess what Trump's ban does? It removes the foreign competition.
 

dratsabknihcllik

Junior Member
Registered Member
Those attempts were not successful because foreign alternatives were more competitive.

Guess what Trump's ban does? It removes the foreign competition.
I beg to differ. I believe there was a lack of intent and urgency.
However, I must stress that a lot of American companies still look for a stable sino-us relationship. They(so do I)still hope that eventually this bad dream will be over.
 

dratsabknihcllik

Junior Member
Registered Member
We have already discussed all those topics here pretty much @dratsabknihcllik.

Panasonic stopping supply to Huawei was fake news.
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With regards to ARM, I think we have not heard half the story yet. From what I know of the company, they typically do not telegraph their moves in advance. They do have a chip design facility in the US, but they have two others in Europe (UK, France) and the GPUs are designed in Europe (Norway). Only certain CPU core designs designed in the US should be impacted. The company has headquarters in Europe and a Japanese owner. The ARM ISA license should not be impacted AFAIK.

With regards to either Grace or Fujian, a lot of semiconductor companies fail. It happens all the time. Because the company failed it does mean the effort was pointless. The people probably moved elsewhere and the knowledge gained was not lost. China now has SMIC and Yangtze. To be honest I do not understand why you are dissing Yangtze. Given US export limitations and lack of tool manufacturing in China, Chinese semiconductor companies with fabs could not easily compete on something which uses leading edge processes or has small margins like DRAM or Flash. So they went for discrete logic first. Which is what made the most sense. This is something which will happen gradually and might take a decade or two to achieve. In fact because of the ZTE and Huawei affairs I expect it to happen sooner.

In the modern semiconductor industry a lot of work is done cross borders. If you think US companies could produce a consumer product in the space solely based on US IP either you would quickly find out that in the modern era they cannot do it either. ASML is headquartered in Europe. The fact is the US does not even have a lithography tools company anymore. It also is telling that the dominant CPU architecture right now, ARM, was not designed in the US either, nor was the dominant OS in the server business, Linux. The world's top two memory manufacturers are not in the US either and both of them have fabs in China.

Huawei should continue on its own path I think. It was enough for ZTE to capitulate as it did.

Regarding Panasonic and infineon I think the necessity of using fake news(we all know how credible Reuters is) is to create a hype so that American citizens can be convinced that America's allies are with her and citizens of other countries can be persuaded to avoid Huawei cellphones, a move intended to cautas much damage as possible to one of the strongest division of Huawei (other being network equipment).

But the problem is that media alternatives such as RT and social networking sites show the other side of the story too. Thus as predicted by Russian strategists, the likes of Reuters by shamelessly (yes since they didn't even bother to rectify the article let alone apologize for the error) peddling fake news are shooting themselves.

The last point I would like to add is just because us tech companies have announced that they will stop collaborating with Huawei doesn't mean they want to. I believe this is the reason why Chinese government hasn't taken (and rightly so) any step detrimental to those companies. Those companies are under immense political pressure and none wants to be portrayed as a traitor by a(the?) twit happy (most ?) powerful person.
 

solarz

Brigadier
I beg to differ. I believe there was a lack of intent and urgency.
However, I must stress that a lot of American companies still look for a stable sino-us relationship. They(so do I)still hope that eventually this bad dream will be over.

There was lack of motivation and urgency because foreign alternatives were readily available. Remove those alternatives and we have a very different picture.
 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
Huawei moves forward with proprietary OS
By Wang Cong Source:Global Times Published: 2019/5/29 21:51:57
Challenges lie ahead but could be a game changer: analysts
1cb80dbb-4b12-4bc1-b676-d62fdfd72b60.jpeg

Huawei's 5G smartphone at an exhibition in Shanghai on Saturday Photo: IC


Huawei Technologies Co appears to be moving ahead with a proprietary operating system (OS) for mobile phones and computers, as the Chinese telecom giant filed trademarks in the EU for its OS, following what could be a crippling ban from the US government.

Although Huawei has been working on its own OS for years as an insurance policy in case of losing access to US technologies such as the Android system, the company is markedly picking up the pace to launch the software after US technology giant Google signaled that it would cut supplies of its services to Huawei.

In the latest sign that the company is speeding up the launch of its own OS, Huawei has filed several applications with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) for trademarks for the OS and other software.

A search on the EUIPO's website showed that Huawei filed at least three different trademarks - the Huawei Ark Compiler, Huawei Ark and the Huawei Ark OS - as recently as Friday. Descriptions of all three applications said that the trademarks were for compiler software and OS for electronic devices.

The trademarks were still under examination as of press time on Wednesday.

The latest move in the EU came after Huawei was granted a trademark "Hongmeng" for its OS by the Chinese National Intellectual Property Administration's trademark office on May 14. Richard Yu Chengdong, head of Huawei's consumer business, has also said that the company was aiming to launch its own OS as soon as this fall.

"This should come as no surprise to anyone after the US ban," said Wang Yanhui, head of the Mobile China Alliance, "Huawei basically has no choice but to launch its own OS as soon as possible to avoid disruption to its business if Google decides to stop Android licenses to Huawei."

Google announced on May 20 that it would cut suppliers with Huawei to comply with the export ban by the US government, but it later followed a decision by US officials to give the Chinese company a three-month grace period, which the Chinese company said doesn't mean much.

The ban has not affected all Huawei handsets and the company vowed to continue to provide services to users in China and other countries and regions, Vincent Pang, senior vice president and head of corporate communications at Huawei, said at a press conference in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, on Wednesday.

The company announced legal actions against the US government over the ban at that event.

Still, the company needs to prepare for a prolonged fight, and a proprietary smartphone OS is a necessary step, despite the intricacies and difficulties of launching a new OS to challenge Android, analysts said.

"It is a very tough task, but it's not impossible," said Zhang Yi, CEO of iiMedia Research Institute. "If Huawei succeeds in launching its own OS, that will be a turning point for not just the company, but for the whole smartphone industry. It will reshape the current software market dominated by US companies."

However, the company could see some impact on its sales in the initial stage as consumers are more used to Android and Apple's iOS, but the company is well-positioned to cope with those hits, given a massive fan base at home and abroad, analysts said.

In the first quarter of 2019, Huawei saw the highest year-on-year growth among the world's top five smartphone vendors, growing 44.5 percent to 58.4 million units, while Samsung recorded sales decline of 8.8 percent and Apple recorded sales drop of 17.6 percent, according to research and advisory company Gartner on Tuesday.

Huawei sales grew in all regions, with sales in Europe rising 69 percent and in China up 33 percent, helping the company to secure the world's second-largest smartphone vendor, behind Samsung and before Apple, Gartner said.

Chen Qingqing contributed to this report
 

LesAdieux

Junior Member
I am afraid you missed the memo.
The US says that it has evidence. That means we should accept that at face value. Let us not doubt the US's argument because many were duped by WMD, Nayirah testimony, baby killer Assad, gulf of Tonkin incident, and a few others.
I hope you have got the drift.


they are not even trying to dupe the public this time. while Trump said Huawei could be used as bargainchip for the trade dispute, Marc Short, Pence's chief of staff, claimed Huawei could be used to force China helping the Iran issue.

the kidnappers are trying to figure out what better ransom they can get in exchange for the release of the hostage.
 

manqiangrexue

Brigadier
they are not even trying to dupe the public this time. while Trump said Huawei could be used as bargainchip for the trade dispute, Marc Short, Pence's chief of staff, claimed Huawei could be used to force China helping the Iran issue.

the kidnappers are trying to figure out what better ransom they can get in exchange for the release of the hostage.
With all the steam this is helping to build in China's technology sectors, the US should be asking for a ransom for not releasing the hostage. I really don't wanna see these US tech companies be re-allowed back again when China just got on the right road to self-dependence.
 

Tam

Brigadier
Registered Member
With all the steam this is helping to build in China's technology sectors, the US should be asking for a ransom for not releasing the hostage. I really don't wanna see these US tech companies be re-allowed back again when China just got on the right road to self-dependence.

Its more than about China. The unilateral actions Trump made makes US tech companies unreliable partners to the eyes of the rest of the world. Because who knows when you might suddenly become a "National Security threat" without trial and argument --- just like Canada and Mexico was referred to when tariffs were imposed on their metal industries. Who is going to be next? Airbus? Toyota? Volkswagen?

Prof. Richard Wolff explains it so eloquently.

 

PikeCowboy

Junior Member
China should build up Iran, or more realistically just Tehran, to the highest level of modern consumer products using Chinese tech only... It'll be like the tech version of the Spanish civil war... (not that I'm equating China to the Nazis lol...)

Can you imagine:
  • Geely and BYD on the road, ARJ21 and C919 in the sky, Sifang trains and metro on the rail;
  • PC's running on Loongson CPU, Gloway memory and Arc OS, HW cell phones all running Tencent, Baidu, Netease services connected on HW 4G networks/routers on the ground and Chinese satellites and Beidou in the sky
  • Hospitals running Neusoft and United Imaging devices
  • Hisense and TLC TV's using BOE displays, Haier and Gree home appliances
  • All of this powered by the full complement of Chinese power generation from wind, hydro, solar, to steam turbine
  • All of this paid for by the petro-yuan through wechat pay and alipay
hahaha... scary I'm not sure Iran would actually be willing to become so dependent on China... but damn there's no other country with such a complete complement of human industry
 
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