ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei • Hacker News Board

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#181

Post by walshemj » Wed, May 22, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #37

molteanu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're advanced enough, there is no need for you do to IP. Maybe the risk is not worth it or there is nothing to gain from it. It's the same argument with the open markets. When you're already a developed economy, open markets benefit you since you have the best products, your production facilities are in place and you can offer both quantity, quality and reasonable prices. But when you are a developing nation,…

Information Feudalism (Drahos & Braithwaite) has lots more on this subject. After both world wars there was a lot of .. forced technology transfer from Germany.

And the allies post WW2 effectively created VW and helped Germany rebuild

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#182

Post by walshemj » Wed, May 22, 2019, 4:28 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #144

sschueller wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also let's not forget about Operation Paperclip. You can toss the moral high ground out of the door. "Operation Paperclip was a secret program of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) largely carried out by Special Agents of Army CIC, in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, such as Wernher von Braun and his V-2 rocket team, were taken from Germany to America for U.S. governme…

The only unethical part of that was exempting them from war crimes trials; although I think that was only really relevant to those directly ordering the use of forced labour in the V2 programme. The rest were treated as some combination of prisoner of war, asylum seeker, and defector. They didn't exactly want to remain in Germany to be captured by the Soviets.

And von Brun was arrested for complaining about the treatment of the labourers I belive.

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#183

Post by sanxiyn » Wed, May 22, 2019, 4:31 PM UTC

Matthias247 wrote: post #180

dharma1 wrote: post #16

How long would it take Huawei (or a bunch of Chinese companies) to develop MIPS or RISC-V based phones? Too long to run out of cash (given that their sales for the foreseeable future just cratered) - or doable?

The CPU is however also only one part of the puzzle, and they need all the peripherals (and especially: Modems!) too.

Huawei has their own modem.

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#184

Post by mirimir » Wed, May 22, 2019, 4:31 PM UTC

> He said it would greatly affect the firm's ability to develop its own chips, many of which are currently built with ARM’s underlying technology, for which it pays a licence.

Maybe China could just change its laws to void ARM's patents. Then Huawei wouldn't need to worry about licensing.

Extreme, I know. But China will very likely, at some point, need to counter this somehow.

Edit: I wonder if China could afford a trade boycott against the US. Also, doesn't it own tons of US bonds? What if it had a fire sale on them? How would that affect the US?

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#185

Post by AsyncAwait » Wed, May 22, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

zaphar wrote: post #6

yogthos wrote: 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.

> American companies have for the most part not been engaging in wholesale state sponsored theft of Chinese IP.

But they were in theft of European IP when the U.S. was at a similar developmental level than China is now.

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#186

Post by s3bast0m » Wed, May 22, 2019, 4:34 PM UTC

captainbland wrote: post #74

It's a pretty bold move by ARM to stop working with Huawei even if it does believe that it's affected by the American ban. It seems like it's very likely to damage their image in the eyes of other non-western technology firms who could end up on America's radar. Won't a lot of execs be scratching their heads thinking, "what if we're next to be cut off in this trade war?"

Softbank is trying to merge T-Mobile with the Sprint in the US. Pretty easy to put "some" pressure on a said company by the US government.

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#187

Post by sanxiyn » Wed, May 22, 2019, 4:37 PM UTC

Iv wrote: post #174

To all the people thinking geopolitics, please just remember that ARM is owned by Softbank now. For this kind of decisions, this is a Japanese company.

For this case, the relevant information is that ARM has a design center at San Jose. The news is, in a sense, unsurprising.

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#188

Post by sgift » Wed, May 22, 2019, 4:37 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #184

> He said it would greatly affect the firm's ability to develop its own chips, many of which are currently built with ARM’s underlying technology, for which it pays a licence. Maybe China could just change its laws to void ARM's patents. Then Huawei wouldn't need to worry about licensing. Extreme, I know. But China will very likely, at some point, need to counter this somehow. Edit: I wonder if China could afford a t…

If I read it correctly the patents aren't the main problem, more that no one from ARM is allowed to work with Huawei anymore. No support with problems, no influence on the design of future ARM products, no custom modifications. These things are probably as valuable - or even more - than the licensed tech itself.

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#189

Post by cbsks » Wed, May 22, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #148

saiya-jin wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only technology per se, but without critical Nazi Germany people like Von Braun, US wouldn't send anybody to the moon in 60s. Or all the knowledge happily taken and used from Mendelesque cruel inhuman 'research' done in concentration camps. AFAIK no researcher was morally above and simply refused to work with those data.

> Or all the knowledge happily taken and used from Mendelesque cruel inhuman 'research' done in concentration camps. AFAIK no researcher was morally above and simply refused to work with those data. So I've had cause to research this one in the past. "All the knowledge"--most of the Nazi concentration camp research was absolute garbage . Turns out junk-science sadists create junk-science results and it is generally a…

>today, the use of any of this data must be explicitly detailed

Do you have any examples of papers which source such data? I'm curious to read the justification of it.

Re: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei

#190

Post by jdietrich » Wed, May 22, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

shuckles wrote: post #140

rchaud wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no incentive for being a pioneer in a culture where IP is not protected. And yet mobile payments are integrated into Chinese e-commerce with the frictionlessness that Apple Pay and the others can only dream of. Who defines what "pioneer" is? Is SV not "pioneering" because the vast majority of its companies are trying to be Salesforce and not Uber?

Given the sorry technological state of mobile payments, such as their reliance on QR to authenticate, it’s more likely that quick adoption resulted from having no legacy POS solution and not superior innovation. Unclear how QR has meaningfully less friction than NFC solutions.

QR is fast, reliable and incredibly cheap to implement. It scans at a distance, with no significant chance of unintended transactions or MITM attacks. If I'm a roadside snack vendor and want to accept mobile payments, I don't need to buy some sort of NFC widget, I just need to print out a QR code and stick it on my cart. I can send 100rmb to a friend in a couple of seconds, without worrying whether their phone is NFC-enabled.

QR payment exemplifies the sort of innovation that is powering China's growth and that American companies profoundly fail to understand. It isn't sexy, but it works well enough to become ubiquitous. America is just barely catching up with a two generation old payment technology (chip & pin), while China have leapfrogged them with a worse-is-better solution.