News ARM Cuts Off Huawei in Devastating Move

[PaulAlcorn]

ARM has reportedly cut off Huawei's access to its chip technology.

ARM Cuts Off Huawei in Devastating Move : Read more

 

[Math Geek]

china is really good at cloning design of products from all over the world. let's see if they can clone the internal parts as well. that's really what will determine how this effects them.

they don't need to design a new chip, all they have to do is steal the design from what they already have and start pumping them out. sure they'll probably be junk and only last 6 months. but then again isn't that how long most of the stuff they make lasts anyway?? a few billion people in the asian market are used to having to chose from low quality, stolen design tech products from china, why is this any different?

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

Actually searching Huawei online, they are much larger than I had previously thought. They overtook Apple in 2018 as the second-largest smartphone maker behind Samsung. They also rank 72nd in the Fortune Global 500 and are the current largest telecommunications equipment supplier in the world.

 

[thegriff]

Stealing and using Intellectual property of other countries is what the Chinese do so they will just use it anyway.

 

[aldaia]

I see a golden opportunity for Open Source Hardware like RISC-V.
Right now no major smartphone producer has considered switching from ARM to RISC-V.
Will Huawei be forced to open the Pandora Box?

 

[digitalgriffin]

The fallout from this could have an interesting backlash for Governments and businesses around the world.

If your products are in bed with a government spy agency, it could be devastating if that connection were ever exposed.

I wonder if Huwawei wonders if it was worth it now? (Not that they had a choice.)

 

[Spleens]

The fallout from this could have an interesting backlash for Governments and businesses around the world.

If your products are in bed with a government spy agency, it could be devastating if that connection were ever exposed.

I wonder if Huwawei wonders if it was worth it now? (Not that they had a choice.)

Facebook, Google, Apple, etc, even intel and amd have been caught spying on behalf of or enabling the US government to spy on their users in various ways over recent history. Where do you think the spectre meltdown came from? They really aren't any different from the above, at least for the average user, it's likely they're trying to shut them down because they don't control it.

It's also likely combined with the US is trying to protect it's global economic dominance - big foreign businesses appear to need undermining at all costs. Just look at the selling of Monsanto to Germany's Bayer, and then suing the now German Monsanto tens of billions of dollars in various US domestic courts.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Facebook, Google, Apple, etc, even intel and amd have been caught spying on behalf of or enabling the US government to spy on their users in various ways over recent history. Where do you think the spectre meltdown came from? They really aren't any different from the above, at least for the average user, it's likely they're trying to shut them down because they don't control it.

It's also likely combined with the US is trying to protect it's global economic dominance - big foreign businesses appear to need undermining at all costs. Just look at the selling of Monsanto to Germany's Bayer, and then suing the now German Monsanto tens of billions of dollars in various US domestic courts.

Never heard of google being cut off? Or Microsoft? Or how China is developing their own Intel chip?

 

[jasonelmore]

Stealing and using Intellectual property of other countries is what the Chinese do so they will just use it anyway.

If China did that their products would simply be seized at customs and China would face ITC sanctions and be sued for monetary damages from the company that owns the technology. These large technology companies will find out. They buy their competitors products then either disassemble them at HQ, or pay companies like chipworks to dissect IC's so they can see how a device is built. China could perhaps sell internally, but that's not going to grow GDP. Processor architecture is not something you can simply copy or modify slightly and call it your own.

 

[littleleo]

A friend of mine was selling a process he developed and was invited to China to give a presentation on his process. He kept his brief case with him at all times. Eventually he was invited to a dinner and had to check his brief case. After the dinner and he retrieved his brief case he could tell some of his papers had been unfolded and moved. The next year the Chinese canceled negotiations on the project since they had miraculously developed a very similar process overnight. Yep they steal what ever they can and they don't have any qualms about it.

 

[bit_user]

china is really good at cloning design of products from all over the world. let's see if they can clone the internal parts as well. that's really what will determine how this effects them.

ARM has patents on its ISA, so even companies like Apple have to pay royaltees, in spite of having a completely homegrown implementation.

they don't need to design a new chip, all they have to do is steal the design from what they already have and start pumping them out

This forces Huawei either to go with an entirely different architecture (with MIPS and RISC V probably at the top of the list) or flout US and international patent laws to a degree that would be blatant even for China. This really is devastating. Probably not in a few more years, but AFAIK China has no alternative at a similar level of maturity and it forces a transition to any alternative that's far to abrupt for them to absorb.

Both MIPS and RISC V are open ISAs, and I know there are some Russian MIPS clones in development. Probably lots of people are working on RISC V. The advantage of going with either of these would be support in existing tools and operating systems, so at least they don't have to shoulder the burden of all that software work, as well.

sure they'll probably be junk and only last 6 months. but then again isn't that how long most of the stuff they make lasts anyway?? a few billion people in the asian market are used to having to chose from low quality, stolen design tech products from china, why is this any different?

That's not the issue. First, they need services and support for existing devices. So, the immediate loss of support from ARM is huge.

Second, if they produce more existing chips without a license to do so (and I don't even know if they can convince TSMC to fab those chips for them), then ARM could refuse to work with them on future designs, if/when this whole moratorium blows over. Huawei has a whole line of ARM-based server chips, and being forced to switch ISAs for the next generation means not only losing market momentum, but also a disruptive change for their customers

Finally, I think you underestimate the modern Chinese consumer. Huawei phones are popular in Europe, and for a reason. They even built a couple Nexus phones for Google, in previous years. I don't know if they're quite on the same level as Apple, but you really can't say their stuff is junk.

 

[bit_user]

But losing ARM (no word on LEG) effectively scuttles ...

What is LEG?

I think a better turn of phrase would be something like "Losing ARM leaves them with barely a leg to stand on."

You can use that. I'm sure I'm not the first to think of it.

 

[bit_user]

Actually searching Huawei online, they are much larger than I had previously thought. They overtook Apple in 2018 as the second-largest smartphone maker behind Samsung. They also rank 72nd in the Fortune Global 500 and are the current largest telecommunications equipment supplier in the world.

Yeah, they make their own SoCs and even server chips, too.

The first time I heard of them was like 20 years ago, when I heard about how they were found to have stolen the software from Cisco routers and basically just used it on their own hardware, virtually unmodified.

 

[bit_user]

Facebook, Google, Apple, etc, even intel and amd have been caught spying on behalf of or enabling the US government to spy on their users in various ways over recent history. Where do you think the spectre meltdown came from?

Not that tech companies haven't been asked to add backdoors, but you're really veering off into the weeds, here. There's no way Spectre/Meltdown were intentional.

They really aren't any different from the above, at least for the average user, it's likely they're trying to shut them down because they don't control it.

There's absolutely a distinction. Remember how the US took Apple to court, in order to force it to help the FBI read data off a cell phone? The US dropped the court case, because it could find a security firm who knew of a hack (which relied on a hole Apple subsequently fixed), but they never managed to secure Apple's cooperation.

Chinese law is different. If the Chinese government goes to Huawei, then Huawei cooperates. End of story.

The main issue with US tech companies is that the NSA finds unintentional security holes in their products and then doesn't tell them, in hopes that they don't get plugged. Microsoft publicly rebuked the NSA for this practice of failing to disclose the security holes they discover.

Also, in all of the Snowden leaks, there was never any mention of the NSA performing industrial espionage. The US government does not spy on behalf of US companies, whereas this is standard practice, in China.

It's also likely combined with the US is trying to protect it's global economic dominance - big foreign businesses appear to need undermining at all costs.

Indeed, that does seem to be Trump's plan. I'm not yet sure whether it will do more harm than good, in the long term, but I support the idea of trying to do something about China.

Just look at the selling of Monsanto to Germany's Bayer, and then suing the now German Monsanto tens of billions of dollars in various US domestic courts.

sigh

You have quite a complicated relationship with facts, eh?

What happened with Monsanto is that Bayer bought them, and then a bunch of US citizens started suing Monstanto, alleging that their Roundup herbicide caused cancer. It's not the US government filing the lawsuits, nor do they appear to have a hand in it. Where I'm critical of that whole process is that I think these should be class action cases, since I think you can never prove the cause of an individual case of cancer. Furthermore, to bring these case before a jury of average folks and have them try to understand the complex science behind cancer and what the various experimental results actually show is simply not realistic.

Moreover, I can't imagine the lawsuits had anything to do with the acquisition. It's just bad timing for Bayer that they bought Monsanto just as the cancer cases were cropping up and the scientific research was coming to light. People sue US companies all the time. If you don't believe me, just look at the lawsuits of Johnson & Johnson over talcum powder.

BTW, welcome to the forums. What sort of PC do you have, or are you aiming to build?