Huawei gets struck by the ban hammer again, now from ARM!

[Djole123]

Oh you thought this couldn't get any worse? Too bad...

 

 

ARM, the company that designs the microarchitecture of mobile and embedded SoCs (i.e the Cortex-A53 microarc) has now revoked its licence with Huawei as well.

 

The company memo, directed to ARM's staff, states the reason for ceasing the licence as: "Our products contain U.S. based technologies", with no further clarification.

 

This puts HiSilicon, the company that makes chipsets for their mid-range and high-end phones, completely helpless, since it is fully owned by Huawei?

 

So, what now?

I guess Huawei is completely out of luck now. The only chipsets they can use now are from MediaTek, which is a Chinese company they can and have bought SoCs from for their lower end Y series of phones. 

However, MediaTek's higher end chips, the Helio P series, while good, are still only about close to a Kirin 650/700 series performance wise, which means they don't really have an option for their high end P and Mate series since they cannot import the U.S. based Qualcomm Snapdragon chips.

So, I guess they really only have two options now:

1. Put pressure on MediaTek to make high end, Kirin level chipsets

2. Give up on the high end series of phones (very unlikely tho).

 

What do you think?

 

Source:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48363772

[LukeSavenije]

Chinese copyright laws to the rescue!

Spoiler

i wish that was a joke...

 

[Djole123]

3 minutes ago, Mr. horse said:

What is to stop them from buying the chips off the open market?

A middle man will likely come along and sell the them the arm chips they need.

ARM doesn't make the chips, they only design the microarc. It is up to the semiconductor company (HiSilicon, Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek) to make them.

 

Since Huawei's licence got revoked, they cannot make new ARM based chips now.

[Jurrunio]

Time for MTK's rise? Instead of being the poor man's option when Qualcomm is too expensive, let alone making your own design

[Jurrunio]

Just now, Djole123 said:

It is up to the semiconductor company (HiSilicon, Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek) to make them.

Technically these companies (Except Samsung) only package ARM designs into a chip, then made by TSMC or Samsung's fab

[thorhammerz]

2 minutes ago, Djole123 said:

Since Huawei's licence got revoked, they cannot make new ARM based chips now.

Not legally, at least.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if an ARM-derivative (under perhaps a different moniker) was "home-brewed" in the next few years.

[Levent]

3 minutes ago, LukeSavenije said:

Chinese copyright laws to the rescue!

  Reveal hidden contents

i wish that was a joke...

 

nowadays western companies can get their copyright claims accepted by the Chinese. Huawei is really fucked imo, time to buy xiaomi shares. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-25/fake-chinese-range-rovers-barred-in-rare-mainland-court-victory

[RedRound2]

This ban is extremely short sighted. If anything, it's going to force Huawei to be completely independent of all US companies, which would only harm the said US companies. This is only going to make China stronger and self sufficient.

 

And once China retaliates, whether in the form to heavy taxes or manufacturing restrictions, pretty much every US company will be screwed in long term, due to their heavy investments in mass manufacturing and dependance on the sales in China, like Apple and Tesla (although Gigafactory 3 is being built in an seemingly unprecedented pace)

[porina]

17 minutes ago, Mr. horse said:

But what is to stop them from getting ARM chips made from other company's? Or buying them from other company's that make them?

Other companies wont be able to sell them to Huawei either, not if they still want to operate within the US also.

 

17 minutes ago, Mr. horse said:

Do they relay need the license? They could just keep making the chips and pirate any new info/stuff and for the most part get away with it.

It's not just the licence, but the support. This isn't something you just download and run. Also, no other countries would touch it without the correct rights.

 

I have to wonder, now this is beyond just no software, but also no hardware, what options remain. Could they develop something based on Risc V for example?

 

Hypothetical question: say there is an open source project. US companies contribute to it. Huawei contribute to it and the US companies know that. Are there implications in that scenario?

[RejZoR]

28 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Time for MTK's rise? Instead of being the poor man's option when Qualcomm is too expensive, let alone making your own design

They had rather amazing Helio X series, but they eventually axed them and focused on budget and mid end since hardly anyone was using them (which is actually a shame because they weren't bad at all).

[suicidalfranco]

Just do what zte did and move on:

Pay a hefty fine, fire some execs, replace members of the board of director, get caught not doing as told, pay an even heftier fine, fire more execs, replace entire board of directors

[porina]

6 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

Just do what zte did and move on:

Pay a hefty fine, fire some execs, replace members of the board of director, get caught not doing as told, pay an even heftier fine, fire more execs, replace entire board of directors

Not the same situation. ZTE were caught selling to countries the US didn't want them to. Huawei hasn't been accused of anything other than being a potential security risk due to possible ties with the Chinese government. How are they going to prove they're not doing that?

[jagdtigger]

37 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

which would only harm the said US companies

Not only that, imagine if the Chinese government will ban any trade with USA based companies, now that's going to hurt a lot....

 

9 minutes ago, porina said:

How are they going to prove they're not doing that?

Correct me if im wrong but the burden of proving anything is on the one who makes the accusation...

 

Edited May 22, 2019 by jagdtigger

[porina]

4 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Correct me if im wrong but the burden of proving anything is on the one who makes the accusation...

There lies the problem. The US government are only proving to themselves. There isn't an easy way to question or challenge this. I'm not even sure there is a difficult way either. The whole world else gets caught in the crossfire.

[suicidalfranco]

17 minutes ago, porina said:

Not the same situation. ZTE were caught selling to countries the US didn't want them to. Huawei hasn't been accused of anything other than being a potential security risk due to possible ties with the Chinese government. How are they going to prove they're not doing that?

Give to US authorities access to all of their source material?

Or just pay a really really reeeeaaally huge fine.

 

[yian88]

Mediatek chips are ARM based wtf OP? They cant use anything anymore. Maybe RISC-V which is open and royalty free if im not wrong, they cant use Snapdragons or MediaTek or Apple Bionic, all are ARM chips.

[hobobobo]

Welp, the idiocy with huawei is reaching the threshhold. Its not like its gonna stop huawei from getting chips, not that you need a license to buy some1 elses design, but china is gonna double its foundry efforts, as of now they have only 22nm and worse nodes, mainly making old dram and stuff, but hey, what a great occasion to invest in some more foundries, if those pasty boys dont want to do business

[thorhammerz]

58 minutes ago, PacketMan said:

So China has the power of shut down all the production of US products (those produced in China) and US doesn't give a shit?

Supply chains relocating to the SEA countries, or reshoring back to North America. Higher prices for processed consumer goods? Probably. Does it matter in the long run? Not really - North America will still be able to keep its peoples fed and the lights on. Not everywhere in the world will be able to do that (China included) once the global free trade order collapses.

Quote

Mixed feelings here, while China is one countries that pollute the most and I'd like more eco-friendly production even if that means paying more,

To be fair to the Chinese, it's not like they have any commercially viable alternatives - wind and solar potential in that part of the world is intermittent (at best), any efforts to use hydro on a large scale has devastated their local ecosystems (to say nothing to displacing millions of people), and their nuclear tech is still playing catch-up. 

Quote

I can't stand the orange man fucking US citizens just because his pride and little understanding of economics and how hard China can hit directly and indirectly the US (and the rest of the world).

Quite frankly the relationship is the inverse:

•  By the very nature of being a processed goods net importer the American economy has more to gain from cutting off trade - export-dependent jobs are comparatively few, and imports and be resourced elsewhere (or simply reshored). Protectionism is coming into vogue these days.
• The percentage of GDP that is trade dependent (e.g. export related) is somewhere just south of 10%. Almost half of that is in NAFTA. The American economy is a lot less globally integrated than one would think (as opposed to say, Germany or China who are dependent on trade for about 25-35% of their economy).
• Critical / leading edge technologies are still American held (hence the complaints on tech-theft and also why the bans on Huawei and probably Hikvision soon are even effective in the first place)

Quote

Time to set new alliances, EU-Asia-Latam-Africa-Australia-Canada FTW

• The EU as a coherent entity is dependent on American protection (formerly done via NATO) and largesse (access to the American market)
• Major EA/SEA players (Korea, Japan, etc) are in the process of re-aligning themselves on the American orbit
  • The South Koreans have already thrown themselves into American arms - they cannot deal with China, NK, and Japan all at once without Americans backing their neutrality
  • Japanese-US agreement in the works, probably finalized by the end of year, if not early next year. Keep the Americans neutral / mildly supportive, and the Japanese have essentially a free hand to craft whatever East-Asia-Co-Prosperity-Sphere-2.0 they want.
• When humanity finds a way to maintain an industrialized society in a tropical desert/jungle zone (in an economically viable fashion), Africa will finally be able to stand on its own. Until then, it remains as a backwater foreign powers will "leggo empire" on.
• Have you seen the terms of the USMCA? The Canadians caved on almost every section of relevance. And we're stuck with an idiot at the top for another 6 months. Oh, and no new trade agreements with any "non market countries" (cough cough China) or the Americans reserve the right to pull out. The bilateral relationship is heavily weighted in favour of the Americans.
  • And then we have inter-provincial internecine issues to deal with, along with a rapidly aging population that won't be able to pay off the Quebecois without taxing the Albertans even more than we already do.

[porina]

9 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

Give to US authorities access to all of their source material?

I think I saw somewhere they already had their handset code reviewed, but the target of the US attack is the in the 5G infrastructure equipment. Even if there is nothing in there now, that's not to say there isn't anything in future. 

 

9 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

Or just pay a really really reeeeaaally huge fine.

There is no fine to pay. There is no crime, unless you consider annoying the US government to be one.

[Djole123]

11 minutes ago, yian88 said:

Mediatek chips are ARM based wtf OP? They cant use anything anymore. Maybe RISC-V which is open and royalty free if im not wrong, they cant use Snapdragons or MediaTek or Apple Bionic, all are ARM chips.

You don't seem to understand this.

ARM revoking Huawei's licence doesn't mean they can't buy ready made ARM chips, it just means they can't design their own ones at HiSilicon. They can't use Qualcomm's silicon because they're designed in the US, but nothing prevents them from buying MTK silicon, since they aren't making them

 

Just because you can't make Coca-Cola doesn't mean you can't buy Coca-Cola.

[suicidalfranco]

8 minutes ago, porina said:

I think I saw somewhere they already had their handset code reviewed, but the target of the US attack is the in the 5G infrastructure equipment. Even if there is nothing in there now, that's not to say there isn't anything in future

So they still haven't gave it for the thing that matters

9 minutes ago, porina said:

There is no fine to pay. There is no crime, unless you consider annoying the US government to be one.

If it means being able to continue releasing products using US technologies without having to show source material, why not? Can't beat them, buy them

[GoldenLag]

inb4 LEG architecture comes along. definitively not a copy of ARM i swear

[porina]

33 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

So they still haven't gave it for the thing that matters

If they have or haven't is irrelevant, it would probably still not satisfy the US government if they did because that only provides a snapshot. The only way Huawei could get out of it is to get out of China. Not happening.

33 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

If it means being able to continue releasing products using US technologies without having to show source material, why not? Can't beat them, buy them

Did I miss something? I didn't realise the US government was up for sale. Hang on, did I just write that? Of course they are. Silly of me. Just needs to be put in the right pocket...

[AlTech]

18 minutes ago, Tedny said:

wait, arm is japanese now 

Not really. They're an American British company with a majority shareholder being Japanese.

 

Edit: Thanks @Bouzoo

[Bouzoo]

ARM is owned by japanese. Makes no sense.