ARM cuts ties with Huawei, threatening future chip designs

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AndrewS

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I read these news on YouTube which hosted by Son Masayoshi and Terry Gou. Basically, the first one by Masoyoshi saying that ARM haven't cut tie with Huawei yet and the second one by Terry Gou saying G2 New Trend that there will be two 5G standards; one by China and the other by America. What do you see?

Yes, potentially 2 standards because of 3 issues:

1. mmWAve versus Low-band / Medium-band

The US is using high frequency mmWave because the US military is blocking US telecoms companies from using low-band and medium-band.
But it is low-band and medium-band that China, Europe, Japan and the rest of the world will be using

2. Market Size

The US is a much smaller 5G market than China.
Then you've got the rest of the world as well, which means the US will be a minor 5G market.
It just makes sense to design for the global market (which includes China, Europe, Japan) rather than pander to the USA.

3. Technology Patents

Huawei and the other Chinese companies have way more 5G SEP patent families than the US companies.
So if the global 5G standard (being agreed in Europe) has to choose, it should be much easier to remove Qualcomm and the US patents.
 

styx

Junior Member
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Headline from Bloomberg:

The Trade War Is Exposing What Little U.S. Tech China Still Needs

Except for semiconductors there is little else that China depends on the US. They can either source those things domestically or from other international partners.

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The answer for china is simple: pursuit made in china 2025 Xi plan. It seems that trump and Xi are friends and have similar nationalistic views.
 
now I read
Huawei’s overseas smartphone business ‘recovering rapidly’ despite US tech ban, says founder Ren Zhengfei
  • The Shenzhen company’s overseas smartphone business accounts for about half of its overall smartphone sales
['Published' and 'Updated' times apparently swapped]
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Huawei’s smartphone business outside China is “recovering rapidly”, according to its founder, despite the company being
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that could see its phones lose access to Google services.

In an interview with CNBC last week, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said that the Shenzhen-based telecommunications firm had previously seen a record 40 per cent decline in overseas markets.

“But [our overseas consumer business] is now bouncing back, and its decline outside China is less than 20 per cent,” said Ren. “It is recovering rapidly.”

Huawei’s China business has not been impacted negatively, and Ren said he does not expect Huawei’s overall consumer business to experience a “huge decline” this year.

Ren’s remarks come after a Bloomberg report last week said the company’s executives were
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. The Shenzhen company’s overseas smartphone business accounts for about half of its overall smartphone sales. Last year, it shipped 206 million handsets, according to analysts IDC.

The company was put on the US Entity List in May, banning it from doing business with the US and cutting off its access to US technology, including semiconductors and software.

Subsequently, Huawei’s consumer business came under close scrutiny because its smartphones run on Google’s Android, and being put on the trade blacklist meant that future smartphones would no longer have
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in overseas markets.

Since then, Huawei has trademarked its own mobile operating system (OS), named Hongmeng, in various countries as it prepares a proprietary OS for its devices should it lose access to Android.

“There have been impacts in global markets, but these are not as significant as many imagined,” said Ren, who said that Google offered an “excellent” ecosystem and that while some customers may not choose Huawei because of its own OS, others will stick with the brand.

“Many of our new phone functions, such as photography, are independent of Google’s operating system.”

Ren also said that Huawei’s estimated revenue for 2019 may decrease from US$135 billion to US$100 billion, but that “profits are higher than before … growing faster than we could have imagined”.

During the interview, Ren also said he would be willing to take a phone call from US President Donald Trump to “discuss potential collaboration for shared success”, and said that Huawei does not speak to Chinese officials about its business.

Ren’s interview with CNBC is one of many he has given to overseas media this year, as the Shenzhen company has come under siege by the US. Huawei, the world’s largest telecoms gear maker and No 2 smartphone vendor, has been accused by the US of supplying equipment that could be used to aid Chinese intelligence activities. Huawei has denied the accusations.

Ren’s daughter and Huawei’s chief financial officer
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, pending extradition to the US for alleged violations of sanctions against Iran. The US has also slapped Huawei with lawsuits for trade secrets theft while Huawei is suing the US government over claims that banning Huawei from doing business with federal agencies and contractors in the US was unconstitutional.
 

manqiangrexue

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FedEx Sues U.S. Commerce Department Over Export Controls In Huawei Dispute
June 25, 201912:19 PM ET

FedEx has been caught in the crossfire in the conflict between the Trump administration and China's Huawei Technologies. Now, the giant shipper is suing the U.S. Commerce Department to block the agency from enforcing export regulations against FedEx.

"FedEx is a transportation company, not a law enforcement agency," the company said
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announcing
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on Monday.

The lawsuit, which also names Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, does not mention Huawei, the world's largest supplier of telecom equipment. But FedEx has become embroiled in the dispute between the U.S. and China over trade and Huawei, and China is
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over misdelivered Huawei packages.

In its lawsuit, FedEx says U.S. export regulations "essentially deputize FedEx to police the contents of the millions of packages it ships daily even though doing so is a virtually impossible task, logistically, economically, and in many cases, legally." FedEx says it receives about 15 million packages per day for shipment and its system spans more than 220 countries and territories.

"To comply with the Export Controls," the lawsuit says, "FedEx screens the names and addresses of its shippers and the designated recipients prior to delivering any package in order to identify whether the sender and/or recipient are an entity or person" on the Commerce Department's "entity list" of persons that could pose risks to U.S. national security or foreign policy interests.

FedEx says it faces substantial penalties — criminal penalties of up to $1 million and civil penalties of $300,000 per violation. That puts FedEx "between a rock and a hard place — absent the availability of review, FedEx must either forgo lawful activity because of its well-founded fear of prosecution, or willfully violate the Export Controls, thereby subjecting itself to criminal prosecution and punishment," the suit says. It also says that "requiring FedEx to indiscriminately inspect every package abroad could place" the company in violation of privacy laws.

On June 1,
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its relationships with Huawei and all of FedEx's customers in China "are important to us. FedEx holds itself to a very high standard of service. FedEx will fully cooperate with any regulatory investigation into how we serve our customers."
 

AndrewS

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U.S. Tech Companies Sidestep a Trump Ban, to Keep Selling to Huawei
New York Times
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SHANGHAI — A number of the United States’ biggest chip makers have sold millions of dollars of products to Huawei despite a Trump administration ban on the sale of American technology to the Chinese telecommunications giant, according to four people with knowledge of the sales.

Since the Commerce Department enacted the ban in May, American companies including Intel and Micron have found ways to sell technology to Huawei, said the people, who spoke on the condition they not be named because they were not authorized to disclose the sales.

The components began to flow to Huawei about three weeks ago, the people said. Goods produced by American companies overseas are not always considered American-made, and the suppliers are taking advantage of this. The sales will help Huawei continue to sell products such as smartphones and servers.

The deals underscore how difficult it is for the Trump administration to clamp down on companies that it considers a national security threat, like Huawei. They also hint at the possible unintended consequences from altering the web of trade relationships that ties together the world’s electronics industry and global commerce.

The Commerce Department’s move to block sales to Huawei, by putting it on a so-called entity list, set off confusion within the Chinese company and its many American suppliers, the people said. Many executives lacked deep experience with American trade controls, leading to initial suspensions in shipments to Huawei until lawyers could puzzle out which products could be sent. Decisions about what can and cannot be shipped were also often run by the Commerce Department.

American companies may sell technology supporting current Huawei products until mid-August. But a ban on components for future Huawei products is already in place. It’s not clear what percentage of the current sales were for future products. The sales have most likely already totaled hundreds of millions of dollars, the people estimated.

While the Trump administration has been aware of the sales, officials are split about how to respond, the people said. Some officials feel that the sales violate the spirit of the law and undermine government efforts to pressure Huawei, while others are more supportive because it lightens the blow of the ban for American corporations. Huawei has said it buys around $11 billion in technology from United States companies each year.

Intel and Micron declined to comment.

“As we have discussed with the U.S. government, it is now clear some items may be supplied to Huawei consistent with the entity list and applicable regulations,” John Neuffer, the president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, wrote in a statement on Friday.

“Each company is impacted differently based on their specific products and supply chains, and each company must evaluate how best to conduct its business and remain in compliance.”

In an earnings call Tuesday afternoon, Micron’s chief executive, Sanjay Mehrotra, said the company stopped shipments to Huawei after the Commerce Department’s action last month. But it resumed sales about two weeks ago after Micron reviewed the entity list rules and “determined that we could lawfully resume” shipping a subset of products, Mr. Mehrotra said. “However, there is considerable ongoing uncertainty around the Huawei situation,” he added.

The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The fate of Huawei, a crown jewel of Chinese innovation and technological prowess, has become a symbol of the economic and security standoff between the United States and China. The Trump administration has warned that Chinese companies like Huawei, which makes telecom networking equipment, could intercept or secretly divert information to China. Huawei has denied those charges.

President Xi Jinping of China and President Trump are expected to have an “extended” talk this week during the Group of 20 meetings in Japan, a sign that the two countries are again seeking a compromise after trade discussions broke down in May. After the talks stalled, the Trump administration announced new restrictions on Chinese technology companies.

While the Trump administration has pointed to security and legal concerns to justify its actions, some analysts have worried that Huawei and other Chinese tech companies were becoming pawns in the trade negotiations. Along with Huawei, the administration blocked a Chinese supercomputer maker from buying American tech, and it is considering adding the surveillance technology company Hikvision to the list.

Kevin Wolf, a former Commerce Department official and partner at the law firm Akin Gump, has advised several American technology companies that supply Huawei. He said he told executives that Huawei’s addition to the list did not prevent American suppliers from continuing sales, as long as the goods and services weren’t made in the United States.

A chip, for example, can still be supplied to Huawei if it is manufactured outside the United States and doesn’t contain technology that can pose national security risks. But there are limits on sales from American companies. If the chip maker provides services from the United States for troubleshooting or instruction on how to use the product, for example, the company would not be able to sell to Huawei even if the physical chip were made overseas, Mr. Wolf said.

“This is not a loophole or an interpretation because there is no ambiguity,” he said. “It’s just esoteric.”

In some cases, American companies aren’t the only source of important technology, but they want to avoid losing Huawei’s valuable business to a foreign rival. For instance, the Idaho-based Micron competes with South Korean companies like Samsung and SK Hynix to supply memory chips that go into Huawei’s smartphones. If Micron is unable to sell to Huawei, orders could easily be shifted to those rivals.

Beijing has also pressured American companies. This month, the Chinese government said it would create an “
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” to punish companies and individuals it perceived as damaging Chinese interests. The following week, China’s chief economic planning agency
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, including representatives from Microsoft, Dell and Apple. It warned them that cutting off sales to Chinese companies could lead to punishment and hinted that the companies should lobby the United States government to stop the bans. The stakes are high for some of the American companies, like Apple, which relies on China for many sales and for much of its production.

Mr. Wolf said several companies had scrambled to figure out how to continue sales to Huawei, with some businesses considering a total shift of manufacturing and services of some products overseas. The escalating trade battle between the United States and China is “causing companies to fundamentally rethink their supply chains,” he added.

That could mean that American companies shift their know-how, on top of production, outside the United States, where it would be less easy for the government to control, said Martin Chorzempa, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“American companies can move some things out of China if that’s problematic for their supply chain, but they can also move the tech development out of the U.S. if that becomes problematic,” he said. “And China remains a large market.”

“Some of the big winners might be other countries,” Mr. Chorzempa said.

Some American companies have complained that complying with the tight restrictions is difficult or impossible, and will take a toll on their business.
On Monday, FedEx filed a lawsuit against the federal government, claiming that the Commerce Department’s rules placed an “impossible burden” on a company like FedEx to know the origin and technological makeup of all the shipments it handles.

FedEx’s complaint didn’t name Huawei specifically. But it said that the agency’s rules that have prohibited exporting American technology to Chinese companies placed “an unreasonable burden on FedEx to police the millions of shipments that transit our network every day.”

“FedEx is a transportation company, not a law enforcement agency,” the company said.

A Commerce Department spokesman said it had not yet reviewed FedEx’s complaint but would defend the agency’s role in protecting national security.
 

AndrewS

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Registered Member
Western chipmakers worry Huawei ban will only empower China tech
Nikkei

Qualcomm, AMD and Arm fear $200bn market swaying to homegrown rivals

TAIPEI/PALO ALTO, U.S. -- American and European semiconductor companies are shunning China's Huawei Technologies to abide by Washington's blacklist, but they worry that the resulting supply gap will only propel Chinese technologies to advance and eventually dominate their massive home market.

Such sentiment was on vivid display at a recent information technology show in the Taiwanese capital. "All business leaders would like [global trade issues] to be resolved as soon as possible," Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su told reporters at the Computex Taipei, one of Asia's largest tech events.

Su did not sound happy about having been forced to stop supplying the Chinese company. "Huawei is a customer of ours. They've done some very nice PCs," she said.

Executives from Qualcomm and Arm Holdings also stressed their desire to resume dealings with Huawei at the event.

"The hard-line approach by the U.S. has thrown their strategy for taming China off course," said an industry source in Taiwan.

Looking to take on China's $200 billion semiconductor market -- roughly half the global total -- the three companies each formed a joint venture there with local partners between 2016 and 2018. Tougher rules on dealing with Huawei and other key Chinese clients would deal a blow to their ambitions.

Chinese authorities shut out Google and other foreign internet platforms, allowing homegrown alternatives like Tencent Holdings to dominate the Chinese market. The country still relies on overseas players for semiconductors, but some think the same thing could happen in that sector as well.

For example, U.S.-based Synopsys, one of the market leaders in electronic design automation, has suspended transactions with Huawei. "A disruption in supply could encourage Chinese players to develop alternatives over the medium term," a Taiwanese chip researcher said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is calling for self-reliance in order to offset the impact of U.S. regulations. Mainland players are aggressively poaching talent, leaving outside companies scrambling to match their offers, Lee Pei-ing, president of Taiwanese chipmaker Nanya Technology, said in May.

Semiconductors lie at the heart of China's push to bolster its advanced manufacturing sector. It remains unclear whether the U.S. tariffs will push Beijing into a corner or simply encourage the rise of China's own chipmakers.

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CMP

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this is really good news. if companies are outsourcing services and tech development in order to maintain sales to huawei, thats huge
 

manqiangrexue

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this is really good news. if companies are outsourcing services and tech development in order to maintain sales to huawei, thats huge
I am conflicted on this. On the one hand, it's always good to see American companies like these and FedEx turn on their own government for money; it's what capitalism is all about. But on the other hand, I was more excited at the prospect of finally having the Chinese market, the largest market in the world, reserved for Chinese players so they finally have the incentive to exalt Chinese technology to the top of the world. It would be a disaster if Chinese corporations were to regain their confidence in foreign tech supply thinking that this rebellious demonstration meant that future governmental attempts to weaponize tech supply lines will be similarly routed. I don't know what to make of this but hopefully, this will be the best of both worlds; Huawei will have continued access to US technology to study from, but it will still wean its need from them with continuous reminders of hostility from Trump's belligerent flapping mouth.
 
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CMP

Senior Member
Registered Member
I am conflicted on this. On the one hand, it's always good to see American companies like these and FedEx turn on their own government for money; it's what capitalism is all about. But on the other hand, I was more excited at the prospect of finally having the Chinese market, the largest market in the world, reserved for Chinese players so they finally have the incentive to exalt Chinese technology to the top of the world. It would be a disaster if Chinese corporations were to regain their confidence in foreign tech supply thinking that this rebellious demonstration meant that future governmental attempts to weaponize tech supply lines will be similarly routed. I don't know what to make of this but hopefully, this will be the best of both worlds; Huawei will have continued access to US technology to study from, but it will still wean its need from them with continuous reminders of hostility from Trump's belligerent flapping mouth.

chinese chip makers already announced that there is no way for them to reach the china 2025 milestones without us tech. so the reality is that independence is a medium term project that will require a decade or more. in the short term, maintaining supplies is the way to maximize gdp growth
 
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