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

phynex92 said:

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.

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xiabonan said:

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

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xiabonan said:

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

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signgraph said:

Thanks for the translation. ngl. I teared up.

The American regime is a small minded sore loser guided by xenophobic & white supremacist ideologies. Whatever respect I had for the nation is gone. A nation that would doom a civilization of 1.4 billion people to poverty, exploitation, and suffering in pursuit of global domination is an enemy of freedom, democracy, human rights, and equality.

I hope all non-white people can see America for what it is and stop contributing especially to its STEM sectors. America is no shining city on the hill. It is an evil empire.

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gelgoog said:

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.

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localizer said:

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

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gelgoog said:

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.

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Tam said:

Software is not part of it, as Google and Microsoft probably pulled some leverage on that. Camera optics aren't from the US, but from Japan, Sony for sensors, and Leica for optics, with the computation software and hardware from other Chinese sources.

As for memory chips, Micron is currently banned from China on a separate case related to IP and SMIC.

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Tam said:

Software is not part of it, as Google and Microsoft probably pulled some leverage on that. Camera optics aren't from the US, but from Japan, Sony for sensors, and Leica for optics, with the computation software and hardware from other Chinese sources.

As for memory chips, Micron is currently banned from China on a separate case related to IP and SMIC.

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