Potential backfire from Google Ban

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Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
Via Strangelove I have the same question Anyone volunteer to answer it?

A question for you technical folks in the semicon/chip industry - how fast can Huawei and others switch to alternative architectures like RISC-V?

Arm is clearly compromised, and the added benefit of using an open source architecture such as RISC-V is that its royalty free.


Can Arm Survive RISC-V Challenge?

By Nitin Dahad, 02.13.19

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Arm offers limited flexibility compared to RISC-V or MIPS. No one wants to spend months negotiating license terms under today's cost and time-to-market pressures.

Arm is under the gun. With the rise of open-source architectures such as RISC-V and now MIPS, winds of change are blowing through in the microprocessor industry.

We hear stories about new licensing practices at Arm since it was acquired by Japan’s SoftBank. Arm’s rivals tell us that they are engaged in many more talks with current Arm licensees who are looking for alternatives.

Product developers no longer have the luxury of two-year product development cycles. And many don’t have the big budgets for licensing fees, often quoted as the huge barrier to entry for system-on-chip (SoC) design.

Editor's Note: This is part of an Aspencore Special Project -- a collection of interrelated articles -- that explores hardware, software, and business issues surrounding RISC-V technology. RISC-V is an open instruction set architecture that supports customization on top of a standard core so that developers can have develop a support ecosystem easily extended to accommodate user-specific extensions.

Arm denies rumors of hikes in its licensing fees. Arm’s latest high-end core historically comes in at a higher price, and that was true with the A76, an Arm spokesman told EE Times.

Nevertheless, sources who are mostly Arm’s past and current rivals say that Arm’s contracts are becoming more complex, resulting in licensees paying more. Arm’s business model is what most in the IP licensing industry now use — an upfront license fee to design with the architecture and then royalties based on the number of chips shipped. Beyond its entry-level zero license fee DesignStart program for Cortex-M0 or Cortex-M3, Arm’s license fees are widely reported to range from $1 million to $10 million.

One of the promises of open architectures like RISC-V and now MIPS is the ability to ‘play’ on top of the instruction set architectures (ISAs) to innovate and develop your own application-specific SoC. Users can customize them without having to pay an upfront fee. Hence, the cost of entry is lower. It’s not completely free because you still have costs of tools, test, and verification, but there is no license fee for the ISA itself. This is what may hurt Arm in the long term.

This is a next-step evolution from the cores that Arc International and Tensilica offered in the late 1990s. Even then, cost of entry and configurability were the arguments that these companies used to pitch. (Full disclosure: I was part of the early team at Arc).

Arc started with a license fee of about $250K for the processor core, as opposed to Arm’s typical $3 million to $5 million at the time. The completely configurable 32-bit RISC core was a huge attraction to customers, as opposed to Arm’s fixed instruction set. Many licensees liked this because they could configure the core to only what they needed, significantly reducing silicon size and power consumption and improving performance. As a result, Arc was successful with large and small companies, including Intel, Fujitsu, Canon, and SanDisk.

When I spoke to Tim Whitfield, Arm’s VP of strategy for embedded and automotive, he argued that beyond processor cores, the company provides many other IP blocks and tools. Arm takes any competition and disruptive technology seriously, and open-source rivals certainly have been a key focus since being acquired by SoftBank. The company has been exploring new business models and markets and brought out new cores to address customer needs.

Overhead and revenue challenges
The corollary is that Arm has a lot of overheads in terms of people and supporting infrastructure. With an engineering team of up to 5,000 across high-salary locations like Cambridge in the U.K. and maintaining seven architectures, costs can mount. In addition, It says that it can take up to eight years from designing an architecture to seeing a product with its customer.

Meanwhile, Arm reported that license fees have remained flattish since 2014. In the quarter ending December 2018, it recorded a 34% drop in license revenue compared to the same quarter in 2017, falling from $190 million to $125 million. Clearly, this is partly impacted by its own DesignStart program, which removes the license fee for Cortex-M processors — it signed 38 DesignStart Pro licensees in the same quarter.

According to SoftBank’s financial reports, in the nine months to Dec. 31, 2018, Arm recorded a 27.7% decrease in year-on-year licensing revenue. It blamed the shortfall partly on delays signing new contracts in China in the first half of the year. The value of licenses signed in those nine months was down to $334 million, compared to $462 million in the same period in 2017.

Rising costs and declining revenues could be motivating Arm to be creative with license fees and royalty structures. But that risks confusing customers, pushing them to look at alternatives.

Arm clearly foresaw declining licensing revenues. To counter the trend, it also made some big acquisitions in the IoT space to bring in software-as-a-service–type revenues.

Ultimately, many IP vendors set their pricing based on total cost of ownership and recovery of development costs. Under such a model, one might argue that every customer pays the same — but this is not entirely true.

Those with the deepest pockets can afford an architecture license, giving them freedom to customize cores. Smaller players who use something like the DesignStart program may end up paying significantly less, but they won’t have the same design freedom.

A CPU core is not free — whether it’s from Arm, SiFive, or Andes, all need to make money, one Arm exec argued. At the lower end, risk appetites may be higher and open architectures may be more appropriate. At the higher end, he said that Arm doesn’t see economic models shifting much. To me, that seems to be like saying that those who can afford it won’t get fired if they choose Arm, much like the old adage, “You won’t get fired for choosing IBM.”

It’s a brand-new day
A CEO of a company selling RISC-V IP said that Arm’s days could be numbered. He gives the company no more than five years with its existing business model.

The bottom line is that Arm’s approach offers limited flexibility compared to a more open architecture. No one wants to spend months negotiating license terms under today’s cost and time-to-market pressures.

Arm could choose to compete by giving designers more for their license fee or even take open architectures head-on by eliminating license fees altogether and finding other revenue models, just as Wave Computing hopes to do with MIPS and RISC-V solution providers do as well. But that doesn’t appear to be in the cards right now.

I think that Arm needs to not just evolve but radically rethink how it might compete with the democratization of IP that open architectures are moving us toward. They might have seen off competitors like Arc, Tensilica, and MIPS in the past, but this time, it won’t be so easy.
 

gelgoog

Brigadier
Registered Member
RISC-V could be used in the server market or embedded systems like consumer appliances but it is a non-starter in the smartphone space.
There is a vast library of applications written for ARM on Android which would need to be ported over.

I think using ARM is a non-issue. China just needs to design and manufacture the chips with its own facilities. HiSilicon and others already have native designed CPU cores.

As for how to fight back in terms of sanctions I have thought a lot about what I have heard lately and I think there are two goods ways the Chinese government could pursue. One would be to ban all purchases and overflights of the 737 MAX in China, another would be to snipe at the US business of licenses, i.e. creating money out of thin air.
For example they could ban or severely curtail the sale of Windows and MacOS/iOS devices. Use the same excuse the US used with Huawei, that they can't be trusted for security reasons, and ban all sales to government institutions and severely curtail its sales in the private sector as well.

For example the Chinese government could simply ban all sales of iOS devices like iPhones by simply claiming the same thing the US claimed, that it can't verify the security of Apple hardware and software.
 
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now noticed the tweet
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registers "Hongmeng" trademark

[TV report follows (don't know how to link it here) with "Could be brand for reported Huawei operating system"]

now found it in youtube:

now googlefu:
Who Needs Google’s Android? Huawei Trademarks Its Own Smartphone OS
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Exclusive: Huawei registers “Hongmeng” trademark
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This is pretty funny. Even Americans know they're not the good guys and that China's 5G is heads and shoulders above anything the US has. Trevor Noah compares Trump to Tonya Harding and AT&T's fake 5G logos to putting a Lamborghini label on a Smart Car LOL. Watch if you've got a few spare minutes and want a chuckle:


Here's another popular youtube video exposing the Huawei 5G lies.
Watch U.S. national and ex-Base FX CTO Nathan Rich explain why this just isn’t true.

 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
Huawei Debuts P30 Phones in Japan
Unfazed by recent controversy the Japanese flock to the debut
Huawei's shop looks busy and in fact, its market share has been increasing in Japan in recent years.
YICAI GLOBAL
DATE : MAY 23 2019/SOURCE : YICAI
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top.jpg
Huawei Debuts P30 Phones in Japan

China's Huawei Technologies launched its P30 smartphone series in Tokyo yesterday. Wu Bo, president of Japanese and South Korean offices, attended the ceremony where the two new models were released.

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Huawei P30 Pro is expected to hit the Japanese market this summer. The Shenzhen-based firm collaborated with Germany's Leica Camera to develop a particularly strong camera for the model, capable of capturing a starry night sky.

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The release comes on the heels of news about Japan's major phone operators, Softbank Group and KDDI, excluding Huawei from their fifth-generation wireless network launch, which could dampen Huawei's phone sales.

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NTT Docomo, another major Japanese operator, is also considering whether it should cancel its booking of Huawei phones due to the Chinese company's new limitations to buy US chips, the Nikkei reported on May 22.

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Huawei's shop looks busy and in fact, its market share has been increasing in Japan in recent years.
 
Jura-style Now I read.

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China denounces US ‘rumors’ and ‘lies’ about Huawei ties to Beijing
Published Fri, May 24 2019 6:27 AM EDT
Key Points
  • China denounced U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for fabricating rumors after he said the CEO of China’s Huawei Technologies was lying about his company’s ties to the Beijing government.
  • Pompeo, speaking Thursday in an interview on CNBC, also dismissed Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei’s assertions that his company would never share user secrets, and said he believed more American companies would cut ties with the tech giant

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Video Will Begin In...
3

VIDEO15:25
Watch CNBC’s full interview with Secretary Mike Pompeo

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on Friday denounced
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Secretary of State
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for fabricating rumors after he said the chief executive of China’s Huawei Technologies
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to the Beijing government.

The U.S. placed Huawei on a trade blacklist last week, effectively banning U.S. firms from doing business with the world’s largest telecom network gear maker and escalating a trade battle between the world’s two biggest economies.


Huawei has repeatedly denied it is controlled by the Chinese government, military or intelligence services.

Pompeo, speaking Thursday
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, also dismissed Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei’s assertions that his company would never share user secrets, and said he believed more American companies would cut ties with the tech giant.

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Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State.
Anjali Sundaram | CNBC
“Recently, some U.S. politicians have continually fabricated rumors about Huawei but have never produced the clear evidence that countries have requested,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said, when asked about Pompeo’s remarks.

The United States has been rallying its allies to persuade them not to use Huawei for their 5G networks, citing security concerns.

Lu said the U.S. government was provoking suspicion in the U.S. public to confuse and instigate opposition.


“Domestically in the United States there are more and more doubts about the trade war the U.S. side has provoked with China, the market turmoil cause by the technology war and blocked industrial cooperation,” he added.

U.S. politicians continue to “fabricate lies to try to mislead the American people, and now they are trying to incite ideological opposition”.

U.S. President
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also said on Thursday that U.S. complaints against Huawei might be resolved within the framework of a U.S.-China trade deal, while at the same time calling the Chinese telecommunications giant “very dangerous”.

Lu said he didn’t know what Trump was talking about.

“Frankly, I’m actually not sure what the specific meaning of the U.S. leader, the U.S. side, saying this is,” he said, adding that if reporters were interested they should ask the United States to clarify.

Lu reiterated that the United States should stop using its national power to suppress and smear other countries’ companies, adding that China wanted to resolve differences between the two countries through friendly dialogue and consultation.

Taking another pot shot at Trump, Lu said there was “deep sympathy” in China for U.S. farmers who have been hit by the trade war, saying the two countries had for many years had “friendly, mutually beneficial cooperation” in agriculture.

“Chinese colleagues also deeply sympathize with the problems countered today by farmers in the U.S. agriculture and animal husbandry industry,” he said.

Trump said on Monday that his administration was planning to provide about $15 billion in aid to help U.S. farmers.

American farmers, a key Trump constituency, have been among the hardest hit in the trade war. Soybeans are the most valuable U.S. farm export, and shipments to China dropped to a 16-year low in 2018.
 

s002wjh

Junior Member
problem is the ecosystem. google map, youtube, facebook, tweeter etc are essential app outside of china, so even if hauwei have good OS, it still wont able to attract customer without those app. i guess right now hauwei need concentrate on its hardware and internal china market. maybe outsource software to other company or india. Modi also want made in india, so maybe a india version of apps could attract more customer.
 

SteelBird

Colonel
Trump said that Huawei can be included in the trade deal to end the trade war. Can I conclude that Huawei ban is just a bargain chip to force China concession?
 
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