Live data from Hacker News

ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

bbc.com

61–70 of 256 posts

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#61
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am wondering if the huge IP theft is mostly propaganda similar to the one US uses before it starts a war or changes some government in other country.

My view is that IP is fundamentally a terrible idea and should be abolished. All it does is help incumbent companies and prevents competition.

The initial idea had some merit but the implementation is terrible and most countries had no choice and had to implement the US copyright and related laws.

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#62
post #4

This could be a really great thing in the long run. I'm really hoping this will promote open hardware and software in the future. Huawei is most likely to start relying on open source tech, since they're under so much scrutiny that's the best way to show they're being above board. Using open software and hardware would also show that same thing couldn't happen with their stack in the future. If they're smart, they'll…

> They're also clearly doing the exact thing they're accusing China of themselves here.

Indeed, it's widely known that Cisco/Juniper is pretty much in bed with the US intelligence, and so is Microsoft.

It is also not very smart to antagonize a world power that you also need for a lot of critical components, including lots of modern fabs.

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#63
post #52
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one critical difference between America and China here. American companies have for the most part not been engaging in wholesale state sponsored theft of Chinese IP. Whatever you may think of the wisdom of a trade war, no one can really argue that China hasn't given the US all the ammunition it needed to give political cover to engaged in one.

Maybe, but then historically - did China start stealing western IP or did the west? Silkworms, tea, pottery, gunpowder.... many things that got invented in China and in effect stolen by the west. So you could argue that the west gave China ammunition in the past to go down this route. Either way - the whole aspect of one country stealing another's secrets in regard to trade and product has a very long history. What t…

The west's stealing of silkworm (ca. 552) is a very interesting story. You can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smuggling_of_silkworm_eggs_int...

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends. The most well-known and common form of "IP theft" is cheaply made Chinese knock-offs that are forgeries. That's trademark infringement. It's not that big of a problem. What is an actual problematic form of "IP theft" is China appropriating trade-secrets. The bulk of "IP theft" that is used to fuel the current war of words seems to be patent infringement. Patent infringement sounds problematic, but really…

That ignores the advancing production capabilities and the vast grey market that moves goods into the US. That and the complacency of Amazon produce a situation where high quality knock offs can be made in China and find their way into the US market quite easily. Note: I’m speaking not of trademark infringement but patent infringement. It’s really no different. Patent infringement is problematic.

And instead of blocking the import of those fake products or the ones that infringe some IP (hopefully after you prove that) the US is blocking Huawei because of security concerns and instead of trying to find if there are backdoors in Huawei products, discussing how can we detect this backdoors, compare this backdoors with the ones in US products we are trying to switch the narative to the cheap Chinese products that are imported by US companies into US.

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#65
Now I'm wondering what will happens to ESP8266/ESP32. ESP8266 is a Wi-Fi SoC which was extremely popular in hobbyist world, and its successor, ESP32, is widely accepted in industry too. Will it have any impact on companies that use ESP such as Particle [1] and Arduino?

[1]: https://www.particle.io/

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#66
post #6
post #4

This could be a really great thing in the long run. I'm really hoping this will promote open hardware and software in the future. Huawei is most likely to start relying on open source tech, since they're under so much scrutiny that's the best way to show they're being above board. Using open software and hardware would also show that same thing couldn't happen with their stack in the future. If they're smart, they'll…

There is one critical difference between America and China here. American companies have for the most part not been engaging in wholesale state sponsored theft of Chinese IP. Whatever you may think of the wisdom of a trade war, no one can really argue that China hasn't given the US all the ammunition it needed to give political cover to engaged in one.

Looking at it the other way: America has state sponsored restriction of free use of knowledge. IP law is considered important by America (and it has imposed this everywhere), but it is not straightforwardly a good thing (and I think most people would argue that copyright protection periods are currently too long)

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#67
post #46

I see a lot of people dreaming about Huawei needing to pivot to open source technology, but the overwhelmingly likely outcome here is that the trade dispute gets (partially) resolved to the extent that Huawei can operate as usual again. Dreaming of Huawei backed RISC V SoCs is a pipe dream anyway, at least for mobile processors. For a mobile SoC you need a GPU as well. There are no viable open source GPU architecture…

Vivante was a US company in name only (engineering in China) and after acquisition in China (by Verisilicon, whose founder and CEO is the brother of the founder and CEO of Vivante), it's not even a US company in name.

Also, other US companies with GPUs besides the first 3 in your list are are open to licensing if the fees are big enough. I can't give more details than that though.

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#68
post #46

I see a lot of people dreaming about Huawei needing to pivot to open source technology, but the overwhelmingly likely outcome here is that the trade dispute gets (partially) resolved to the extent that Huawei can operate as usual again. Dreaming of Huawei backed RISC V SoCs is a pipe dream anyway, at least for mobile processors. For a mobile SoC you need a GPU as well. There are no viable open source GPU architecture…

PowerVR is now owned by Canyon Bridge, which is backed by China.

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#69
post #65

Now I'm wondering what will happens to ESP8266/ESP32. ESP8266 is a Wi-Fi SoC which was extremely popular in hobbyist world, and its successor, ESP32, is widely accepted in industry too. Will it have any impact on companies that use ESP such as Particle [1] and Arduino? [1]: https://www.particle.io/

I don't think so. Espressif is not Huawei.

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#70
post #69
post #65

Now I'm wondering what will happens to ESP8266/ESP32. ESP8266 is a Wi-Fi SoC which was extremely popular in hobbyist world, and its successor, ESP32, is widely accepted in industry too. Will it have any impact on companies that use ESP such as Particle [1] and Arduino? [1]: https://www.particle.io/

I don't think so. Espressif is not Huawei.

But it's a Chinese SoC company. I'm wondering if the fight between US and China will widen to any SoC companies in the long term.
Post reply on HN