A reappraisal of China's semiconductor strategy

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styx

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in simple terms what will happen to intel nvidia qualcomm etc down to wind central generators if china bans them to obtain rare earths? What will happen to wall street (many americans invest in stock market to buy their homes or pay bills or have a good retirement)? Remember that many analysts are saying that usa is in tech bubble 2.0.
 

ZeEa5KPul

Colonel
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Welp, ARM just bailed on Huawei:

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What isn't mentioned in the article is that there's a 51% JV between ARM and Huawei, so it's unclear exactly what this ban would mean. In any event, just more patents to add to the "Invalidated Patent Library". The idea looks better and better by the day.
 

SpicySichuan

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Welp, ARM just bailed on Huawei:

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What isn't mentioned in the article is that there's a 51% JV between ARM and Huawei, so it's unclear exactly what this ban would mean. In any event, just more patents to add to the "Invalidated Patent Library". The idea looks better and better by the day.
Well, most of the Kirin chips were designed from ARM. I wonder how much of a blow this would be to HiSilicon. Does HiSilison have experience designing its own chips from scratch free from foreign sources?
 

ZeEa5KPul

Colonel
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Well, most of the Kirin chips were designed from ARM. I wonder how much of a blow this would be to HiSilicon. Does HiSilison have experience designing its own chips from scratch free from foreign sources?
It better act like it. If Huawei wants to survive, it better act like it just got cut off from every single foreign supplier it has. Because it's about to be.
 

SpicySichuan

Senior Member
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It better act like it. If Huawei wants to survive, it better act like it just got cut off from every single foreign supplier it has. Because it's about to be.
Well, possessing a full supply chain in semiconductors and 5G (like Samsung) is difficult. I wonder how Samsung was able to achieve its current possession.
 

nugroho

Junior Member
other article involving ARM and Huawei:
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ARM cuts ties with Huawei, threatening future chip designs
A major blow to Huawei

By
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May 22, 2019, 6:28am EDT
Chip designer ARM has suspended business with Huawei, threatening the Chinese company’s ability to create its own chips.
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that ARM employees have been instructed to halt “all active contracts, support entitlements, and any pending engagements” with Huawei due to the US trade ban. The US has banned any US companies from doing business with the Chinese telecom giant without permission from the American government, but ARM is based in the UK and owned by the Japanese SoftBank group.

ARM is concerned it is affected by the US ban, with an internal memo reportedly revealing that its chip designs include “US origin technology.” ARM develops some processor designs in Austin, Texas and San Jose, California, which could place it under the US restrictions. Huawei relies on ARM for chip architecture designs for its own Kirin processors, and it pays to license these. Without the licenses, Huawei will not be able to continue manufacturing its own processors using ARM designs and its HiSilicon fabless semiconductor company.
“ARM is complying with all of the latest regulations set forth by the US government,” says an ARM spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. The company is not commenting any further about its decision.

“We value our close relationships with our partners, but recognize the pressure some of them are under, as a result of politically motivated decisions,” says a Huawei spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “We are confident this regrettable situation can be resolved and our priority remains to continue to deliver world-class technology and products to our customers around the world.”
It’s not clear whether ARM is simply reacting cautiously to the US Commerce Department order, or whether it has been advised to halt business with Huawei directly. If it’s the latter then ARM’s decision could be mirrored by other semiconductor companies that also supply Huawei.

Huawei has reportedly stockpiled enough US-made parts to last
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to
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, so it might have enough to keep operating. That stockpile will run out at some point in the future, especially on parts that are severely constrained in supply lines.
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on US-based manufacturers like Micron, Skyworks, and Qorvo that supply storage and networking components for some of Huawei’s phones.

Even without access to these key components Huawei faces a challenge, but without ARM’s architecture designs or instruction sets it faces a nearly impossible task of manufacturing a smartphone without US technology inside.

Update, May 22nd 8:10AM: Article updated with statements from ARM and Huawei.
 

SpicySichuan

Senior Member
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Even without access to these key components Huawei faces a challenge, but without ARM’s architecture designs or instruction sets it faces a nearly impossible task of manufacturing a smartphone without US technology inside.
That's my question here. It seems like Hisilicon has to start everything from scratch now. I wonder how much Beijing is willing to subsidize Huawei (especially HiSilicon) in order to achieve eventual self-sufficiency in 5G, which in turn would most likely be delayed even within China as a result of U.S./Australia-led worldwide ban.
 

nugroho

Junior Member
almost the same as above, but the author emphasized how important ARM is
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THIS JUST GOT REAL
Huawei faces another huge blow as ARM cuts ties with the Chinese brand [Updated]
ARM technology is at the foundation of Huawei's Kirin chipsets.
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22 May 2019
Updated 10:44 AM ET: Following this news, Huawei reached out to AC with the following statement:

We value our close relationships with our partners, but recognize the pressure some of them are under, as a result of politically motivated decisions. We are confident this regrettable situation can be resolved and our priority remains to continue to deliver world-class technology and products to our customers around the world.

The hits just keep on coming for Huawei. A litany of U.S. companies — including
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— have cut ties with the Chinese manufacturer following a trade ban, and ARM is now joining the list. According to the
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, the UK chip vendor has sent out a memo to its staff to suspend "all active contracts, support entitlements, and any pending engagements" with Huawei.

Calling it an "unfortunate situation," ARM sent a note to Huawei and its related entities that it would not be able to "provide support, delivery technology (whether software, code, or other updates), engage in technical discussions, or otherwise discuss technical matters with Huawei, HiSilicon or any of the other named entities".
Although ARM is owned by Japan's SoftBank and is based out of Cambridge, UK, its designs contain "US origin technology," and as such the vendor is severing ties with Huawei. The ban is also being upheld by ARM China, in which ARM has a 49% stake. The move has dire consequences for Huawei's smartphone ambitions, as ARM's technology forms the foundation of HiSilicon's Kirin chipsets.

Without ARM, Huawei just cannot make a phone.
Huawei's HiSilicon is a fabless semiconductor — much like Qualcomm — and it licenses processor designs from ARM and customizes it for its own platform. Take the
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for instance: the phone is powered by the Kirin 980 chipset, which has ARM's Cortex A76 and A55 cores. Without ARM's architecture license, Huawei just cannot make a phone.

Google pulling its Android license is undoubtedly going to hurt Huawei, but it doesn't prevent Huawei from making a phone altogether. In fact, all Huawei phones sold in China do not have any Google services installed, and the Chinese manufacturer is set to
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sometime later this year.

However, that will not be possible if Huawei loses ARM as a partner. The move will effectively kill Huawei's smartphone business altogether, as it just does not have the know-how to design its own processors. Even Samsung — which has its own foundry — relies heavily on ARM for processor designs. Huawei is said to be working on the successor to the Kirin 980 — dubbed the Kirin 985 — but it's unlikely if work will proceed without ARM's signoff.


Hope Huawei has a good solution to this punch
 
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ZeEa5KPul

Colonel
Registered Member
The move will effectively kill Huawei's smartphone business altogether, as it just does not have the know-how to design its own processors.
This is just stated without any evidence. How does he know what HiSilicon is capable of doing, especially if ARM's IP is no longer an issue? Licensing a design doesn't mean you don't know all the ins and outs of the design.
 

manqiangrexue

Brigadier
So reading from the article, I'm getting:

1. ARM licenses knowledge; it does not manufacture anything. So everything done with Huawei or HiSilicon so far is knowledge that is handed to HiSilicon rather than items handed to them that they do not know how to make. In other words, HiSilicon should at least know how to make the chips and understand how to replicate ARM's role for all existing chip designs; it just won't get further help from ARM developing future upgrades. This means that Huawei is at least able to keep making phones that are on its current level and if it wants to advance, it will have to do so without ARM help. Whether it's legal to continue manufacturing using ARM tech is something I do not know, given ARM pulled out but Huawei still owned 51% of the joint venture.

2. Kirin 985 is said to be unaffected because it's already too far along.

3. This took effect on May 16th, before Ren Zhengfei went out with his press conference assuring people that Huawei's high end, especially 5G products would definitely not be affected, so it should be included in his statement.

I'm not a techie so please feel free to correct anything that is wrong.
 
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