Is the US shooting itself in the foot by banning Huawei?

Typically FPGAs manufactured in an older process will be slower and depending on the application might not be fast enough at some tasks.
But, like I said, if the application is worth it you can design an ASIC. In some applications you can even use something like a GPU or DSP as an alternative to an FPGA.
For example you wouldn't want to use an FPGA on basic signal processing but you might use it in packet filtering or some other high level application.

FPGAs could be used for example in some sort of high-end router, smartphone base station, or telecoms switch. i.e. the equipment the smartphone telecoms operator will use, not something used by the smartphone user.

Guys I think you are missing the point....

The whole point of Huawei's letter is that the chips are "secret backups" and until now have not been made publicly known. The letter comes from HiSilicon (the same company that makes the Kirin chips that power almost all of Huawei's smartphones) and it says these chips have been in the works for many years and they were once even worried that they'll never see the light of day.

So I think it's quite pointless to make such comparisons. Also, since the whole ZTE saga Huawei has been stockpiling key American components and has an inventory of up to 24 months for some of these components. These inventory would Huawei the time to improve upon its current domestically made chips and smooth out the transition from American chips to Chinese chips.

s002wjh said:

cell phone use FPGA, not the big kind but smaller, read my post above.

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To my knowledge, Huawei doesn't have any phones that use FPGAs. The ML/AI part of its phones is done by the NPU embedded in the Kirin SoC. The NPU is designed by Cambricon a Chinese company.

Yes, the iPhone 7 had an FPGA. It was used to speed up AI tasks. But later iPhones have integrated AI acceleration hardware into the SoC. Huawei also has integrated the AI hardware processing engine into the SoC. Like I said, an FPGA simply uses too much power. No one in their right mind would put a chip which costs 10x as much per device and sucks way more power, on a mobile device sold in millions of units.

manqiangrexue said:

Man, don't answer my questions if you don't know what the hell you're talking about. You write this to me and then the next post I find out cellphones don't even use FPGA's? I asked very specific questions about how much of a problem this poses; I don't need you to tell me that rich people like top end.

And China can and will build all of these components; it's just a matter of quality and time. China has more potential than any other country in the world to dominate technologically. This whole episode has guaranteed that the future of Chinese technology will no longer be susceptible to foreign embargo.


OK, I didn't know FPGAs are not used in cellphones. So same question: what model does Huawei use now and how much of a decline in overall performance are we talking about if we were to use China's best alternative? Additional question: since it is not in a cellphone, space is not so much an issue anymore. Can multiple weaker ones be used to substitute for one high performance one?

I'm assuming that you know a lot about tech; if it's not true or you don't know the answers, I certainly don't mean to badger you or put you on the spot.

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I don't know what Huawei uses. I never work for any Chinese company. So far, Pango seems to be the best FPGA in China. It also seems to be 10 times worst than what Xilinx can offer.

Yes, you might use 2 or 3 smaller FPGAs to replace 1 bigger one since space is less of an issue for the base stations. But not 10 of them though. It is way too unwieldy to coordinate 10 smaller FPGA's. A few basic blocks, which can't be broken, are most likely requires chips bigger than those small FPGAs. In addition, once you bring the signal out between the FPGAs and on the circuit board, they create nasty interference signals.

You are asking for things normal communications engineers don't ever worry about.

xiabonan said:

Guys I think you are missing the point....

The whole point of Huawei's letter is that the chips are "secret backups" and until now have not been made publicly known. The letter comes from HiSilicon (the same company that makes the Kirin chips that power almost all of Huawei's smartphones) and it says these chips have been in the works for many years and they were once even worried that they'll never see the light of day.

So I think it's quite pointless to make such comparisons. Also, since the whole ZTE saga Huawei has been stockpiling key American components and has an inventory of up to 24 months for some of these components. These inventory would Huawei the time to improve upon its current domestically made chips and smooth out the transition from American chips to Chinese chips.

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I think this means 2 possibilities:
1) Huawei has reverse-engineered American designs that are only used in case of emergencies.
2) Huawei has in-house designs that are either too expensive normally or inferior in design, and are saved for emergencies.

Huawei is probably talking about now having their own server CPUs or SoCs available.
I also remember hearing that they were working on manufacturing their own optronics devices for fiber optics communications.
But what Huawei does not manufacture is things like memory chips (DRAM, Flash) or yes things like FPGAs.

Yet in several applications in Huawei's field you can simply replace FPGAs with a software solution. It will just use way more power but will still work. That is not critical on something like a server which is connected to a wall socket in the first place.

With regards to the memory chips the leading vendors are not in the US but in South Korea.
So the issue will be typical US sanction overreach, i.e. them forcing other countries to do their bidding, rather any special US company's hardware.
Micron is probably the worst of the leading memory vendors. I typically avoid their chips like the plague.
Just recently there has been a debacle with a lot of graphics cards failing because they use, you guessed it, Micron DRAM. You never heard that with Samsung.

Also when someone finds an issue with Samsung products they actually try to find the cause of the fault and fix it, rather than pretending the problem does not exist. Which is what Micron typically does.

The FPGAs is like I said, given enough budget and an advanced fab for them they are not that hard to make. There is a reason why Intel absorbed Altera. They had lots of idle high-end fabs and saw it as an easy way to earn money.

s002wjh said:

cell phone use FPGA, not the big kind but smaller, read my post above.

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Wow, thanks.

I didn't realize Apple uses FPGA in iphone 7.

I would have never guess that.

manqiangrexue said:

Man, don't answer my questions if you don't know what the hell you're talking about. You write this to me and then the next post I find out cellphones don't even use FPGA's? I asked very specific questions about how much of a problem this poses; I don't need you to tell me that rich people like top end.

And China can and will build all of these components; it's just a matter of quality and time. China has more potential than any other country in the world to dominate technologically. This whole episode has guaranteed that the future of Chinese technology will no longer be susceptible to foreign embargo.


OK, I didn't know FPGAs are not used in cellphones. So same question: what model does Huawei use now and how much of a decline in overall performance are we talking about if we were to use China's best alternative? Additional question: since it is not in a cellphone, space is not so much an issue anymore. Can multiple weaker ones be used to substitute for one high performance one?

I'm assuming that you know a lot about tech; if it's not true or you don't know the answers, I certainly don't mean to badger you or put you on the spot.

Click to expand...

I think I can try to break what they will not have access to:

Smartphone sector:
Software, State of the art (SoA) camera/optics, and other SoA MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems)

Laptop:
Software, SoA CPUs

Telecommunications:
SoA FPGAs, optical connection components, software, and idk wat else since I don't know the infrastructure that well.



MEMS and FPGAs are made in defunct/old FABs

I'll provide a translation of the letter for you guys reference. You're welcome.

To all HiSilicon colleagues:

By now, you have probably become aware that Huawei has been included on the entity list by the BIS.

Many years ago, when all seemed well, our company made the hypothesis of surviving at the extreme: suppose one day all American advanced chips and technologies are no longer accessible, but Huawei would still need to service our customers. For this once thought to be impossible scenario, thousands of HiSilicon sons and daughters embarked on the most solemn long march in the history of technology: to create "backup tyres" for the survival of the company. We've worked day and night through hardships and hurdles for thousands of days to press forward with the goal in mind. Huawei has such a wide array of products and the technologies and components used are so various, that when faced with technological challenges in the number of thousands, we have for countless times failed, pondered, but never gave up.

In the following years, when we gradually stepped out of the dark and saw our hopes, there was bound to be a sense of lost and upset, for we become worried that these chips will never be employed and will remain forever in the secret locker as "backup tyres".

Today, as the wheel of destiny turned to this extreme and dark moment, the Superpower made the craziest decision to put Huawei on the entity list without any evidence, abruptly cutting global cooperation in technological and industrial hierarchy without any sparing any saving grace.

Today, it is the choice of history that the "backup tyres" that we have created will all become official overnight. Years of sweat and tears turned into fulfilment of our company's commitment to continue servicing our customers. Yes, all our efforts have now connected the dots into a web that saves the company from the edge of destruction, ensuring the strategic safety and the continued supply of most of our products! Today, at this darkest hour, is the day when each and every ordinary HiSilicon sons and daughters become the heroes of our time!

Huawei is committed to bring the digital world to every individual, every family, every organization, and to create a smart world where everything is connected. We will continue to do this. From now onwards, to achieve this dream, we would not only have to stay open and innovative, but also would need to become technologically independent! From here on, there won't be another ten year to create "backup tyres" and then to change tyres, the buffer zone has now disappeared, and every new product would have to have a technologically independent backup plan from its birth.

The road in front of us is harder, but we will forge ahead with courage, wisdom and perseverance, and stand up straight under extreme pressure. The true character of a hero will only truly shine under the highest waves, and the Ark of Noah will only be constructed under hardships and challenges.

He Tingbo
Morning of 17 May 2019