Potential backfire from Google Ban

manqiangrexue said:

So in order to switch from ARM to RISC-V, Huawei essentially has to abandon Android including all forks and redesign an OS around RISC-V, right?

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Nope. Android is open source. Huawei can make changes to the source code to allow its version of Android to run on top of whatever SOC it produces. Android is based on Linux and Linux has been ported to all kinds of CPU's, including Loongson (MIPS-based ISA).

manqiangrexue said:

Do you know the answer to this question?
"Is it impossible, illegal, or both for Huawei to take the ARMv8 that they have a permanent license to and improve it themselves for future upgrades?"

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Nope. Probably no. Pointless because Android apps wouldn't support it due to limited market (think Windows Phone)

manqiangrexue said:

Alright, let's discuss this:

ARM just cut off ties with Huawei. https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/a-...miconductor-strategy.t8511/page-9#post-555352
So:
1. How much of a problem is this?
2. How is it possible if Huawei owns 51% of the joint venture?

We should not that this began on May 16th, before Ren Zhengfei said it wouldn't be a problem.

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I just realized that the JV was established exactly a year ago, instead of initially thinking of it being May 2019.

Here I've found the Nikkei report .

A document obtained by the Nikkei Asian Review from an industry source familiar with the venture -- known as Arm mini China -- projects revenue of $1.89 billion by 2025, topping parent Arm's fiscal 2016 sales of $1.68 billion, thanks to the booming market for connected devices.

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Chinese market will probably be the number one market of ARM soon.

To license technology from Arm Holdings, companies had to go through Arm's American team, a person familiar with the plan said.
"That somehow worries a lot of Chinese chip designers," the person said. "They are wary whether they could always get good support. But with this joint venture, which is now a Chinese company, they are expected to secure sources of Arm's fundamental IPs that are foundations of their chip products."

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Currently, all Arm licensing go through Arm America. The reason of the JV. The reason of (British) Arm's "cutting to Huawei" now.

The venture currently involves overseas investors, the document said, but the terms request that backers who wish to transfer shares after the three-year locking period sell only to Chinese investors and not American entities or Arm's competitors. Arm and Hou An inked an investment agreement Sept. 29, the document said.

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The vital point and purpose of the JV is to exclude any American influence.

From Reuters:

Arm will be selling the 51 percent of Arm Technology China to a consortium led by Hou An Innovation Fund, which is jointly managed by ARM and Chinese private equity firm Hopu Investments, a source close to the deal told Reuters.

The chipmaker will then form a joint venture (JV) with the consortium, the source added.

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Arm is selling its own 51% to the Chinese consortium then forming the JV with its remaining 49%.

“Arm believes this joint venture, which will license Arm semiconductor technology to Chinese companies and locally develop Arm technology in China, will expand Arm’s opportunities in the Chinese market,” SoftBank said.

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The JV is fully able to develop and license Arm's technology to Chinese companies, except the "international version with American content". What comes from this JV is still truely Arm but with US content replaced by local development.

To sum up:

1. Future ARM is secured.
2. The "cutting" is only the part made in US, whatever percentage it might be.
3. It is not a fork or branch-out of ARM, it is true ARM.
4. China has planned and acted on it a year before Trump's ban on Huawei, just after ZTE ban.
5. It is a circumvention of Trump that satisfied China, UK and Softbank/Arm.
6. The act of Softbank/Arm clearly tells how much (lack of) weight Trump can exert on international companies and foreign government (UK).
7. The determining factor is not strong-arming others, but the raw market value which global heavyweight like Arm is certainly not going to miss.

I wonder who's next? I mean an important company which would stop collaborating with Huawei; I'm guessing I'll quote this post

It is like I said. If they want to switch from ARM to RISC-V they will need to port the operating system, compilers, tools, and applications to RISC-V. In the case of a user facing appliance like a smart phone that will take many years and probably never even be effective. In the case you want to port the servers to RISC-V, I would estimate that would take 4-5 years and a lot of effort.

AFAIK Huawei can designs its own chips based on the ARMv8 architecture and even license chip designs made outside the US. Only certain US designed ARM cores should be an issue.

taxiya said:

I just realized that the JV was established exactly a year ago, instead of initially thinking of it being May 2019.
...
To sum up:

1. Future ARM is secured.
2. The "cutting" is only the part made in US, whatever percentage it might be.
3. It is not a fork or branch-out of ARM, it is true ARM.
4. China has planned and acted on it a year before Trump's ban on Huawei, just after ZTE ban.
5. It is a circumvention of Trump that satisfied China, UK and Softbank/Arm.
6. The act of Softbank/Arm clearly tells how much (lack of) weight Trump can exert on international companies and foreign government (UK).
7. The determining factor is not strong-arming others, but the raw market value which global heavyweight like Arm is certainly not going to miss.

Click to expand...

Exactly. Like I said, this move by Trump might have worked 2 years ago, but the Chinese semiconductor industry right now has loads of momentum behind it.
The fact that the article points out the ARM China subsidiary has more revenue than the ARM US subsidiary also speaks volumes.

gelgoog said:

Exactly. Like I said, this move by Trump might have worked 2 years ago, but the Chinese semiconductor industry right now has loads of momentum behind it.
The fact that the article points out the ARM China subsidiary has more revenue than the ARM US subsidiary also speaks volumes.

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hehe, the Chinese saying "没人和钱过不去" =>nobody has issue with (earning) money.

Reuters:

Now the question is what will replace the ARM Cortex cores in Kirin SoCs. We don't know quickly HiSilicon can leverage its experience in designing the Kunpeng ARM server cores based on the TaiShan microarchitecture, which is Huawei's first independent custom ARM core design based on ARMv8. Hopefully this has already been a project they've been working on in the background which they can now bring to the forefront for a future Kirin release. The problem is that mobile SoCs have a more extensive set of demands and require more complex instruction sets. Hence designing an efficient microarchitecture for a complete mobile SoC design that can handle diverse applications from the ground-up is quite challenging. Only Apple has been able to design competitive mobile CPUs not based on the ARM Cortex.

Not just Apple. Qualcomm also has their own core design.
But again, that's no help to Huawei.

But I think they are fine as long as they use non-US designed ARM cores like the Cortex A73.

What I think Huawei should do is move as much production to China proper as possible. For example any 16 nm chip production they have at Huawei should be moved to Chinese factories and chips they use which can be produced with older processes should be redesigned to be produced at SMIC.

gelgoog said:

Exactly. Like I said, this move by Trump might have worked 2 years ago, but the Chinese semiconductor industry right now has loads of momentum behind it.
The fact that the article points out the ARM China subsidiary has more revenue than the ARM US subsidiary also speaks volumes.

Click to expand...

taxiya said:

I just realized that the JV was established exactly a year ago, instead of initially thinking of it being May 2019.

Here I've found the Nikkei report

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

.

Chinese market will probably be the number one market of ARM soon.

Currently, all Arm licensing go through Arm America. The reason of the JV. The reason of (British) Arm's "cutting to Huawei" now.

The vital point and purpose of the JV is to exclude any American influence.

From Reuters:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Arm is selling its own 51% to the Chinese consortium then forming the JV with its remaining 49%.

The JV is fully able to develop and license Arm's technology to Chinese companies, except the "international version with American content". What comes from this JV is still truely Arm but with US content replaced by local development.

To sum up:

1. Future ARM is secured.
2. The "cutting" is only the part made in US, whatever percentage it might be.
3. It is not a fork or branch-out of ARM, it is true ARM.
4. China has planned and acted on it a year before Trump's ban on Huawei, just after ZTE ban.
5. It is a circumvention of Trump that satisfied China, UK and Softbank/Arm.
6. The act of Softbank/Arm clearly tells how much (lack of) weight Trump can exert on international companies and foreign government (UK).
7. The determining factor is not strong-arming others, but the raw market value which global heavyweight like Arm is certainly not going to miss.

Click to expand...

Thanks a lot, you fellas. I'm a tech doofus but I've been really growing my knowledge talking to you guys and researching because of America's last stand here. If this is all true then it would make perfect sense that this ARM issue was included in Ren Zhengfei's speech and DC has run out of arrows in its quiver and it's getting increasingly desperate to inflict even some small inconvenience to China at any cost to itself. It won't be long before it's got nothing left except, "White people have to stick together to contain the yellow peril." LOL