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Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

tomshardware.com

21–30 of 162 posts

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#21

Whenever I hear the horrors of the tradewar in a positive light, I wonder if this is the Russian propagandists in action. How can war be good? Delighting in the suffering of everyone?

Every ‘war’ that is not actually involving bloodshed can be good, because competition has been the spur of amazing human endeavors throughout history. Sometimes people need motivation to try something hard...

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#22

The problem is that while RISC-V may deliver an excellent open ISA, there is no equivalent open solution for the GPU/display controller side. As I understand it, the GPU world is full of patents and dominated by just a few parties. I don't think there's something that Huawei or other Chinese manufacturers could easily start with and extend. So I can see RISC-V being ideal for applications that are not user facing or…

[deleted]

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#23
post #17
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? a diverse ecosystem of silicon with some actual competition is going to help get us out of this US-centric intel/amd world where all laptops are essentially the same

It appears likely that Apple will be transitioning to ARM for its laptops in the future so regardless we should start seeing architecture diversity in laptops.

Microsoft and Google have already mass marketed multiple iterations of ARM laptops (the latter to great success in certain spaces) but "2" is not much diversity. Power has remained an active player but not in the laptop/phone/mobile space (even still very niche in workstation).

RISC-V will bring much needed diversity to spaces currently dominated by two titans.

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#24

The problem is that while RISC-V may deliver an excellent open ISA, there is no equivalent open solution for the GPU/display controller side. As I understand it, the GPU world is full of patents and dominated by just a few parties. I don't think there's something that Huawei or other Chinese manufacturers could easily start with and extend. So I can see RISC-V being ideal for applications that are not user facing or…

GPUs have sort of plateaued except for the raytracing component. There are quite a few vendors, Mali from ARM, Adreno from Qualcomm, PowerVR from Imagination, NVIDIA's GeForce, AMD's Radeon, Intel's integrated stuff, and then there is a few more smaller players (what Matrox, Broadcom, etc.)

I think there is room for an open source straightforward GPU based on the standard principles. Although maybe there is patent licensing between all the parties that I am not aware of.

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#25

The problem is that while RISC-V may deliver an excellent open ISA, there is no equivalent open solution for the GPU/display controller side. As I understand it, the GPU world is full of patents and dominated by just a few parties. I don't think there's something that Huawei or other Chinese manufacturers could easily start with and extend. So I can see RISC-V being ideal for applications that are not user facing or…

Let's be real, the Chinese have been stealing technology right and left for years. Losses number between $225 and $600 billion per year [0]. One in five companies has had its technology stolen [1]. They will just steal the tech. Or maybe they'll decide it's easier to work with AMD (they're already doing it on the CPU side [2]).

This is not popular to say, but it is accurate and my statements are sourced. Feel free to provide rebutting evidence if you disagree.

[0]: https://money.cnn.com/2018/03/23/technology/china-us-trump-t...

[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-china-s...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD%E2%80%93Chinese_joint_vent...

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#26

The problem is that while RISC-V may deliver an excellent open ISA, there is no equivalent open solution for the GPU/display controller side. As I understand it, the GPU world is full of patents and dominated by just a few parties. I don't think there's something that Huawei or other Chinese manufacturers could easily start with and extend. So I can see RISC-V being ideal for applications that are not user facing or…

There is plenty of work being done on RISC-V vector computing and GPU equivalents. E.g.:

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Libre-RI...

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#27

The problem is that while RISC-V may deliver an excellent open ISA, there is no equivalent open solution for the GPU/display controller side. As I understand it, the GPU world is full of patents and dominated by just a few parties. I don't think there's something that Huawei or other Chinese manufacturers could easily start with and extend. So I can see RISC-V being ideal for applications that are not user facing or…

GPUs have sort of plateaued except for the raytracing component. There are quite a few vendors, Mali from ARM, Adreno from Qualcomm, PowerVR from Imagination, NVIDIA's GeForce, AMD's Radeon, Intel's integrated stuff, and then there is a few more smaller players (what Matrox, Broadcom, etc.) I think there is room for an open source straightforward GPU based on the standard principles. Although maybe there is patent li…

> GPUs have sort of plateaued except for the raytracing component

What? As far as I understood it, CPUs had plateaued outside of efficiencies, GPU power still follows Moore's. Generational benchmarks show big leaps in every new arch on userbenchmark, whereas CPUs from 7 or 8 years ago are only marginally slower (SC) than modern ones.

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#28
More like "Huawei seeks to survive in the future in spite of the US squeezing them. They want to believe these other chips will let them do that."

I don't understand the tech well enough to know how much of a fairy tale or hope and a prayer strategy this is. But calling it "seeks independence" is some incredibly positive spin which makes me suspicious of the claims.

If these other chips are so good, wouldn't you go ahead and migrate to them for the actual benefits rather than researching them as a backup plan?

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#29
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What OS would they run?

A Linux distro probably, at least initially.

Mostly likely, but Android is but a recompile away (sure, not so for 3rd party apps).

Even today, with hardly any hardware, there's (to various degree of completion): Debian, Fedora, Slackware, FreeBSD, and seL4.

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#30

The problem is that while RISC-V may deliver an excellent open ISA, there is no equivalent open solution for the GPU/display controller side. As I understand it, the GPU world is full of patents and dominated by just a few parties. I don't think there's something that Huawei or other Chinese manufacturers could easily start with and extend. So I can see RISC-V being ideal for applications that are not user facing or…

> As I understand it, the GPU world is full of patents and dominated by just a few parties.

This would be a impediment typically, but considering they're blackballed already, how beholden are they to patents? Block imports? Think that's being done already. Requiring US companies to not do business with them? That's being done already.

At this point, they just have to ride out the US/China trade war and then when things are being negotiated, I imagine a "turn a blind eye" to Huawei is going to be given. They're gimped in some ways, but in others they've probably never been more free.

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