News Arm Will Reportedly Continue Licensing Chip IP to China, Despite US Trade War

[Admin]

Amid a U.S.-China trade war, Arm reportedly said it'll license chip designs to Chinese partners, since they're based on UK technology.

Arm Will Reportedly Continue Licensing Chip IP to China, Despite US Trade War : Read more

 

[bit_user]

The Trump administration's efforts to weaponize US tech exports, in the trade war, could really hurt tech job opportunities, in the long term.

Banning Huawei from certain US infrastructure contracts makes sense, but banning cooperation with or sales to it just doesn't.

 

[setx]

Arm has decided to continue licensing chip IP to China-based customers. The vendor is said to have carefully analyzed the potential legal issues it could face from the U.S.-China trade war.

Too late. Damage for your reputation is already done. I guess that all self-respecting major corporations instantly increased the priority of developing alternatives to ARM IP. You won't hear anything like that just yet as such tasks require several years and no one wants to be stuck without products tomorrow, but with time interest in RISC-V (and maybe POWER) will skyrocket.

 

[bit_user]

Too late. Damage for your reputation is already done. I guess that all self-respecting major corporations instantly increased the priority of developing alternatives to ARM IP.

Yeah, from a Chinese perspective, ARM has two big strikes against it:

1. Japanese ownership (Softbank)
2. their apparent vulnerability to US trade policy.

And if there was any doubt that Japan would follow Trump's example, that little trade spat we recently saw between Japan and South Korea put to bed any such notions. As for #2, even if they're now trying to dispel concerns about vulnerability to US trade policy, it will need to be tested in court, to truly affirm those claims.

Clearly, the Europeans are also quite wary. In the past couple years, it seems a number of initiatives in (mainly) HPC have got underway or received additional funding and attention, there. Of course, that didn't start with Trump. The US has long guarded HPC-oriented technology products, and even restricted Chinese access, under Obama. It's just that Trump has now called into question whether the US might ever do such a thing to the Europeans.

with time interest in RISC-V (and maybe POWER) will skyrocket.

It'll be interesting to see what boost POWER gets from all this. I get the sense that the ship has sailed on POWER, but I wouldn't mind being wrong about that.

 

[nofanneeded]

I find TRUMP stupid policies a blessing to the whole world. Other countries have been lazy depending on USA for the Technology , even EU and not only east china never bothered competing in making CPU and operation systems.

This is a wake up call to every one to stop being lazy and start making their own CPU and hardware and software and in no time , USA will be begging to use outside technology.

it just needs 20 years ...

 

[IJustWantToReadOldThreads]

Too late. Damage for your reputation is already done. I guess that all self-respecting major corporations instantly increased the priority of developing alternatives to ARM IP. You won't hear anything like that just yet as such tasks require several years and no one wants to be stuck without products tomorrow, but with time interest in RISC-V (and maybe POWER) will skyrocket.

Oh please, billions of devices run ARM, do you really think this little spat will ruin their reputation? POWER is dead outside of very specific, high compute power markets. The last home computer to run a POWER based processor was the PowerMac G5, from 14 years ago. Dead, deader, deadest. RISC-V is still long away from actually working, and who knows if it'll be as good as they claim. ARM is still here, and still ever powerful, muppets like you don't look at the big picture sadly!

 

[kinggremlin]

This is a wake up call to every one to stop being lazy and start making their own CPU and hardware and software and in no time , USA will be begging to use outside technology.

it just needs 20 years ...

TSMC Starts $19.5 Billion 3nm Fab Construction

Better get that kickstarter up quickly, it's going to take a while to get to $20 billion.

 

[mitch074]

Oh please, billions of devices run ARM, do you really think this little spat will ruin their reputation? POWER is dead outside of very specific, high compute power markets. The last home computer to run a POWER based processor was the PowerMac G5, from 14 years ago. Dead, deader, deadest. RISC-V is still long away from actually working, and who knows if it'll be as good as they claim. ARM is still here, and still ever powerful, muppets like you don't look at the big picture sadly!

POWER architecture : you forget the central unit of the Playstation 3, which was used in much more recent clusters.
RISC-V : you do know that it's an instruction set, not a CPU design, right? With the proper instruction decoder , any CPU design could be RISC-V compatible - take any current x86 CU and even some ARM design, you could change the decoder units to support RISC-V instead and get yourself a CPU without paying either Intel or ARM a cent...

 

[bit_user]

Other countries have been lazy depending on USA for the Technology , even EU and not only east china never bothered competing in making CPU and operation systems.

Oh?

I won't try to go into the history of CPUs from the likes of Philips, Siemens, S/T Microelectronics, etc. but you're forgetting about a little UK company called ARM. Granted, aside from ARM, there haven't been recent, strong contenders for the mainstream CPU market not based in the US, but the other guys I mentioned have had some decent successes in embedded and niche markets.

It's also worth noting that even the big, US-based chip companies have design centers all over the world. And speaking of ARM, one of its main CPU design centers is in France.

And, maybe you've heard of a little OS called Linux? Well, that was created by a guy from Finland, named Linus Torvalds.

This is a wake up call to every one to stop being lazy and start making their own CPU and hardware and software and in no time ,

That message was certainly received.

I wouldn't call it laziness, in the strict sense, but I guess you could characterize a lack of long-term investment and commitment in such a way, but there were certainly other factors such as the dominance of x86 and Intel's patent barriers that held back competition aside from legal agreements negotiated with AMD and Via.

 

[bit_user]

Oh please, billions of devices run ARM, do you really think this little spat will ruin their reputation?

Yes. China now sees that it cannot depend on being able to use ARM cores or the ISA, so they will move away from it.

POWER is dead outside of very specific, high compute power markets. The last home computer to run a POWER based processor was the PowerMac G5, from 14 years ago. Dead, deader, deadest.

Not true. You can even buy a modern POWER computer, today.

https://www.raptorcs.com/content/base/products.html

And Apple computers were not POWER-based, but based on the derivative PowerPC ISA. Incidentally, I believe PowerPC CPUs are still used in some communication equipment and embedded markets.

RISC-V is still long away from actually working, and who knows if it'll be as good as they claim.

This is an overly-broad statement. It has been deployed in embedded scenarios, already. The big questions are mainly whether it can threaten ARM in mobile and server use cases.

muppets like you don't look at the big picture sadly!

This crosses a line. You could encourage someone to look at the big picture or suggest they might be missing it, but there's no need to turn it into a personal attack. That sort of thing will get you moderated.

 

[bit_user]

TSMC Starts $19.5 Billion 3nm Fab Construction

Better get that kickstarter up quickly, it's going to take a while to get to $20 billion.

I think @nofanneeded was talking about designing CPUs - not fabbing them.

It doesn't matter so much where they're actually fabbed, but I guess if you're really covering your bases, you'd also worry about that. Anyway, I'm pretty sure Global Foundries has a fab in Germany, or something.

 

[bit_user]

POWER architecture : you forget the central unit of the Playstation 3, which was used in much more recent clusters.

Also, XBox 360. But, all of that is old news. Cell never even had a proper successor, so you really can't count that as a success, outside of the PS3 (which, some would argue, succeeded in spite of the Cell).

RISC-V : you do know that it's an instruction set, not a CPU design, right? With the proper instruction decoder , any CPU design could be RISC-V compatible - take any current x86 CU and even some ARM design, you could change the decoder units to support RISC-V instead and get yourself a CPU without paying either Intel or ARM a cent...

Nah, that's not true, in any meaningful sense. If you wanted to make a good RISC-V core, it would be purpose-built. There's a lot about an ISA that pervades a CPU microarchitecture - the way it handles conditions, quirks of various instructions, register file size, memory consistency guarantees, etc. You can't just swap out decoders, to change a CPU's ISA.

Case in point: Jim Keller designed a fully-custom ARM CPU, at AMD, before he left. It's distinct from Zen and never saw the light of day, probably because AMD correctly judged ARM's cloud market share to lack momentum, and instead decided to focus on x86.

 

[kinggremlin]

I think @nofanneeded was talking about designing CPUs - not fabbing them.

It doesn't matter so much where they're actually fabbed, but I guess if you're really covering your bases, you'd also worry about that. Anyway, I'm pretty sure Global Foundries has a fab in Germany, or something.

Even removing the FAB costs, you're still looking at billions to design and manufacture a sell-able general use 5nm/3nm CPU that would be comparable to what AMD and Intel will be selling in a few years. And good luck landing an x86 licence from Intel. There may not be enough money in the world to pull that one off.

 

[mitch074]

Even removing the FAB costs, you're still looking at billions to design and manufacture a sell-able general use 5nm/3nm CPU that would be comparable to what AMD and Intel will be selling in a few years. And good luck landing an x86 licence from Intel. There may not be enough money in the world to pull that one off.

Except if you buy an existing one. Too bad no one picked up Novafora's Transmeta assets, there could have been a x86 license in it...

 

[kinggremlin]

Except if you buy an existing one. Too bad no one picked up Novafora's Transmeta assets, there could have been a x86 license in it...

Those licenses don't transfer.

 

[nofanneeded]

Oh?

I won't try to go into the history of CPUs from the likes of Philips, Siemens, S/T Microelectronics, etc. but you're forgetting about a little UK company called ARM. Granted, aside from ARM, there haven't been recent, strong contenders for the mainstream CPU market not based in the US, but the other guys I mentioned have had some decent successes in embedded and niche markets.

It's also worth noting that even the big, US-based chip companies have design centers all over the world. And speaking of ARM, one of its main CPU design centers is in France.

And, maybe you've heard of a little OS called Linux? Well, that was created by a guy from Finland, named Linus Torvalds.


That message was certainly received.

I wouldn't call it laziness, in the strict sense, but I guess you could characterize a lack of long-term investment and commitment in such a way, but there were certainly other factors such as the dominance of x86 and Intel's patent barriers that held back competition aside from legal agreements negotiated with AMD and Via.

First of all , Linus Torvalds is an American , I dont care about his origin , I am not comparing races here , but Governemnets and Universities .

The EU has been sleeping since the end of WW2 and LAZY . yea LAZY , the dominance of x86 is not an excuse , They allowed it to be domenant . when you are Lazy and relying on others they win the race.

look at Samsung in SK , The became domenant in OLED Technology in just 10 years of research and hard work , where were the EU ? sleeping ..

SK was like india just 30 years ago look at it today ...

I was laughing when I read about USA spying on Merkel phone .. omg even your government phones are made outside your country and you are GERMANY...

spoiled and lazy , this is what EU has become in recent years.

 

[bit_user]

First of all , Linus Torvalds is an American , I dont care about his origin , I am not comparing races here , but Governemnets and Universities .

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. He created it while at the University of Helsinki. Do you know where Helsinki is? Hint: it's not in the USA.

The EU has been sleeping since the end of WW2 and LAZY . yea LAZY,

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Germany is running a trade surplus and their government carries no debt (compared with the US, which is sinking more than $1T deeper into debt each year). VW is constantly trading places with Toyota, for the world's biggest car company. Siemens is one of the world's biggest tech companies. Yeah, lazy. Right.

look at Samsung in SK , The became domenant in OLED Technology in just 10 years of research and hard work ,

Why change the subject? I thought we were talking about CPUs, where "the dominance of x86 is not an excuse , They allowed it to be domenant . when you are Lazy and relying on others they win the race. " Why has Samsung not surpassed x86? Are they lazy?

SK was like india just 30 years ago look at it today ...

No, it had an authoritarian government and a large US military presence. Meanwhile, India was a democracy and was more closely allied with the USSR. There are lots of other differences, besides. I don't think you can use such facile analogies to understand the difference in countries' outcomes.

omg even your government phones are made outside your country and you are GERMANY...

And you think any American phones are actually made in the US?

spoiled and lazy , this is what EU has become in recent years.

I think you're just looking for excuses to bash the EU. It's big, and there's a lot of diversity. I wouldn't say all of the EU is either lazy or hard working, but look at CERN - they've outdone anything built by the US. The US can blow trillions of dollars on futile wars in the middle east, but they can't stomach a few billion on a particle accelerator in Texas. Meanwhile, CERN came through and found the Higgs Boson.

 

[setx]

China now sees that it cannot depend on being able to use ARM cores or the ISA, so they will move away from it.

Nah, it's not just China. Who can guarantee that next year it won't be Korea or pretty much anyone?

 

[bit_user]

Nah, it's not just China. Who can guarantee that next year it won't be Korea or pretty much anyone?

Fair point. So far, China's been singled out & is making the most noise, but others are surely watching.

However, it will be interesting to see if Samsung (who is already making fully-custom ARM cores) will dump the ARM ISA for RISC V or something else. I guess a prerequisite would pretty much be Android support for RISC V. At least, I don't see Samsung dropping Android before Huawei does.

Interestingly, I think Samsung licensed AMD's RDNA graphics IP after Trump banned US companies from working with Huawei. So, I guess Samsung isn't that worried about ending up in a similar situation.