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

[Bouzoo]

8 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

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

British company owned by Japanese. 

[fultotop]

Not sure if Japan's SoftBank owns the major shares anymore.

 

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/06/softbank_offloads_51_per_cent_of_arm_china_for_a_bargain_7752m/

 

[AlTech]

11 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

ARM is owned by japanese. Makes no sense. 

Anyhow back on topic.

 

I think they might have felt pressure from other companies.

[seon123]

I wonder if they could get high end Samsung Exynos SoCs. I know that the Meizu Pro 5 used the (at the time) flagship Exynos 7420, but that's a few years ago now. 

[Taf the Ghost]

1 hour 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. 

 

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

Well, in International Commerce, pissing off a government that's important is normally a significant problem. In this case, it's a massive problem.

 

Though I do want to impress upon the forums that Huawei managed to piss off every Faction in Washington DC. Saddam had more friends in 2003. At this point, if someone told me a Huawei exec ran over the private Kennel Club the Senate uses I'd believe it.

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, seon123 said:

I wonder if they could get high end Samsung Exynos SoCs. I know that the Meizu Pro 5 used the (at the time) flagship Exynos 7420, but that's a few years ago now. 

Huawei could just use their HiSilicon division and continue making chips with ARM CPU designs. They would be infringing on ARM's IP and copyright but Huawei is a chinese company so good luck trying to litigate that in court. (China has unbelievably strong protectionism in copyright).

 

Not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

1 hour ago, thorhammerz said:

 

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.

 

That's just voodoonomics.

 

1 hour ago, thorhammerz said:

• •  
• 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.

I'm not sure if you skipped history, geography, or both. 

 

[porina]

1 minute ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Well, in International Commerce, pissing off a government that's important is normally a significant problem. In this case, it's a massive problem.

As far as I can tell, they're annoying the US gov simply by existing. It's not like they're going out of their way to do it.

[thorhammerz]

18 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

That's just voodoonomics.

Just like our modern economic system? . 

Quote

I'm not sure if you skipped history, geography, or both. 

 

If you have a rebuttal, kindly provide one beyond ad-hominems . The state of civilization in Africa is very much geographically influenced, not least by the impediments to modernizing by the climate (impedes scalable agricultural growth - tropical agriculture requires a LOT of labor for a population-sustaining output, to speak nothing of the rampant diseases since you have no natural bug-killer a.k.a. winter), and the lack of major navigable rivers making commerce a pain.

 

They are the world's backwater for good reasons just as much as the successful countries in the world throughout history are successful for good reasons - and most are not human-designed.

[Taf the Ghost]

1 minute ago, porina said:

As far as I can tell, they're annoying the US gov simply by existing. It's not like they're going out of their way to do it.

If a foreign company is the target of US action, it's normally because they've pissed off American-based companies in the same field and they've been able to lobby to get things done. (The US State Department acts as something of a protection racket too much of the time.) But it's never this loud and big companies don't normally go along smoothly with what the US Government wants them to do.

 

Huawei doesn't have much of any Consumer-facing market in the USA right now, yet it's making big headlines. It's one thing to make powerful enemies, it's another to convince all of the opposed factions of a major power to hate you. Something, in general, like this happening isn't uncommon, but the amount of PR about it being put out really is.

[Bouzoo]

29 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Anyhow back on topic.

 

I think they might have felt pressure from other companies.

To be fair, seem like Japan banned today sales on their phones and a while ago they banned Huawei for 5G. UK on the other hand might have felt pressured from US. I think that:

Quote

In a company memo, it said its designs contained “US origin technology”.

is bs. 

[Guest]

What’s to stop them buying ARM?

[laminutederire]

4 hours ago, Djole123 said:

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

Well they could still try to purchase Samsung in house SOCs... Exynos chips are perfectly fine for high end, even last gen ones.

[BuckGup]

The US already banned China from buying server grade CPUs and they ended up just making better ones. I don't think this is going to do anything 

[yian88]

4 hours ago, Djole123 said:

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.

They can buy MTK chips but they still cant resell into US and other banned areas, at least thats what i understand from the ban.

[mr moose]

6 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

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)

For once I think we agree, there is a lot more to this than simple one on one trade bans,  the last time thee US introduced import tariffs it cost their economy.  If china decide to start increasing the cost of goods sent to the US a lot of smaller firms that Import (and as a net importer there are a lot) will start to suffer losses.

[ThePointblank]

1 hour ago, yian88 said:

They can buy MTK chips but they still cant resell into US and other banned areas, at least thats what i understand from the ban.

MTK is a Taiwanese company, and they don't make their own chips; they are a fabless company, and TSMC manufacturers their chips for MTK.

 

Also, TSMC manufacturer's HiSilicon's chips as well; we will see how long that relationship will last, considering TSMC is a ARM partner. TSMC might follow ARM's decision to cut HiSilicon off from future production, meaning Huawei is going to be cut off from their main manufacturer of SoC's. And it's not like Huawei can switch to a domestic Chinese fab; the domestic Chinese fabs are easily 2-3 generations behind companies like Samsung and TSMC, meaning considerably less performance and higher power consumption.

[williamcll]

Kirin x86 Ahoy

[ThePointblank]

50 minutes ago, williamcll said:

Kirin x86 Ahoy 

Good luck; the x86 architecture requires a license... from Intel. And if they want it to be compatible with x86-64, that requires an additional license from AMD.

 

Both Intel and AMD are American companies affected by this ban, so that ain't happening.

[mrthuvi]

13 hours ago, Djole123 said:

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.

Hisilicon and Qualcomm are fabless, they don't make the chip, they design them then outsource the production elsewhere.

Samsung can do both design & production.

I'm not sure about mediatek.

[mr moose]

Having spent a bit of time thinking about this now,  I can't help but wonder how many trade and anti trust laws have been broken in doing this?  Without an effective order from the government, private companies can't just choose to stop supplying one company while still supplying others.

[ThePointblank]

19 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Having spent a bit of time thinking about this now,  I can't help but wonder how many trade and anti trust laws have been broken in doing this?  Without an effective order from the government, private companies can't just choose to stop supplying one company while still supplying others.

The analysis is that since the US law is so broad, it endangers any entity that has a presence or does work in the US, so the only safe option is to cut ties with Huawei or risk the wrath of the US Treasury Department.

[Djole123]

3 hours ago, mrthuvi said:

Hisilicon and Qualcomm are fabless, they don't make the chip, they design them then outsource the production elsewhere.

Samsung can do both design & production.

I'm not sure about mediatek.

I believe MediaTek is fabless aswell.

 

Thanks for the correction!

4 hours ago, Mr. horse said:

Well there via c3 haha

Pentium 3 performance and DynaTac-like battery life FTW!

[Djole123]

14 hours ago, Bouzoo said:

ARM is owned by japanese. Makes no sense. 

ARM stated that they contain US based technologies, so technically they still can't use ARM based chips.

[Bouzoo]

1 hour ago, Djole123 said:

ARM stated that they contain US based technologies, so technically they still can't use ARM based chips.

Yeah, seems so. Though the list is literally that companies can't work with Huawei so maybe there is middleground because US companies aren't directly in touch.