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

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

#101

Post by ptx »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #46
dahfizz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sure, not so for 3rd party apps. Ideally, once there is a JVM that runs on riscv, those apps are ported for free. An openJDK port is underway. I have no idea how much work it would be for Android to port its APIs, but Google certainly has the manpower if this is something they want.

I don't know why there would be _any_ porting involved. Arm and RISC-V are so similar that the compiler should take care of it. The major pain points today are the JITs, which applies to Java and JavaScript in particular. There has been preciously little (public) progress on these.

Huawei wrote their own AOT compiler[1] for Android (on ARM) so they seem to have the necessary expertise in this area.

[1] https://www.scmp.com/tech/innovation/article/3022747/heres-w...

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

#102

Post by nickik »

bhouston wrote: post #9
Taniwha wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RISC-V is an instruction set - I think you're confusing that particular implementations of RISC-V (of which there are few yet)

But none of them are competitive at all on an IPC basis right? Don't get me wrong, I would love a RISC-V chip that is competitive with the ARM chips in smartphones but I think we are quite aways away from it for the time being. RISC-V is most successful as microcontrollers who do not have to be state-of-the-art fast, they just have to work reliably.

Look into the Esperanto chips. They will actually over quite high performance soft cores, competing with high level arm.

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

#104

Post by chillee »

joking wrote: post #95
zsrxx wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't a GPU power a computer?

You can calculate the value of each screen pixel without knowing the value of the others. To calculate the n value of a fibonnaci sequence you have to calculate the n-1 and n-2 values first, so it doesn't matter how many cores do you have. Gpus are for the former and CPUs for the latest.

Nitpick: I understand your point in general, but it's not actually true that you need to calculate the n-1 and n-2 values first for Fibonacci.

You can use Binet's formula or matrix exponentiation to calculate it without such a dependency.

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

#105

Post by gruez »

madez wrote: post #59
gruez wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but I doubt it. It's there to support a bunch of features that companies want (eg. remote management, trusted computing, etc.). The reason why the consumer version has it is that most consumers don't mind, and having a seperate sku with it disabled/not present would cost extra. This won't change with RISC-V. You might be able to get a low performance part without it, but all the mainstream (ie. high performanc…

Intel has a huge variety of different models. They are experts in market segmentation. They could do that. But they won't, and there are few who could do that. With RISC-V, it is reasonable to expect multiple vendors to provide CPUs. There is a very good case to expect non-backdoored chips.

>Intel has a huge variety of different models. They are experts in market segmentation. They could do that. But they won't, and there are few who could do that.

That's true, but the way they do that is in a way that requires minimal changes. In terms of the management engine, that means not including AMT module (software) but keeping the rest of the ME (hardware). After all, it also does some essential things like power management and the bootloader. Removing it completely would also mean re-implementing the essential functionality.

The best you can hope for if you want to use mainstream parts is something like me cleaner where the management engine is only there for the boot, but is disabled afterwards. Something without an management engine would certainly possible, but would be limited to niche products like the librem.

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

#106

Post by blackflame7000 »

gumby wrote: post #77

What do they expect. The US tariff wall and embargo is essentially a subsidy that encourages local development. Without it it’s cheaper to continue to depend on US controlled designs. Essentially low tariffs make it hard for local industries to get themselves above the price floor. These parts aren’t much to get excited abOUT today but they’ve finally given China a reason to subsidize local efforts, resulting in the…

"Essentially low tariffs make it hard for local industries to get themselves above the price floor."

This applies to both countries.

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

#107

Post by addicted »

So there are basically 2 possibilities.

It is possible for Huawei, and Chinese companies in general, to build a successful alternative without using American technology (for the purposes of this post, I'm defining successful as equivalent to their American tech using competitors).

It's not possible.

What the actions on Huawei have done, however, is ensure that if that possibility exists, very significant chunks of Chinese resources will be devoted to finding it.

It appears China had decided this wasn't completely necessary, and were happy to rely on Americans for software, and core hardware. But that is obviously not true anymore, and the biggest long term effect of these actions are Chinese state resources being poured into directly combating and threatening American tech's competitive position.

And seeing that the tariffs and capricious action has not been limited to China, it won't even be surprising if some other nations join in to help, especially from the EU and/or India and Korea.

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

#108

Post by Fr0styMatt88 »

addicted wrote: post #107

So there are basically 2 possibilities. It is possible for Huawei, and Chinese companies in general, to build a successful alternative without using American technology (for the purposes of this post, I'm defining successful as equivalent to their American tech using competitors). It's not possible. What the actions on Huawei have done, however, is ensure that if that possibility exists, very significant chunks of Ch…

I think this is actually a good outcome, at least from a standpoint of avoiding a technical monoculture (especially in hardware). It's probably also good for general innovation as a whole.

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

#109

Post by ryanmarsh »

Is it just me or does this read like copypasta from a Chinese -> English translated press release?

From TFA:

In a similar vein, Huawei has launched MindSpore, a development framework for AI applications in all scenarios. The framework aims to help with three goals: easy development, efficient execution and adaptable to all scenarios. In other words, the framework should aid to train models at the lowest cost and time, with the highest performance per watt, for all use cases.

Another key design point of MindSpore is privacy. The company says that MindSpore doesn’t process the data itself, but instead “deals with gradient and model information” that has already been processed.

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

#110

Post by erichocean »

addicted wrote: post #107

So there are basically 2 possibilities. It is possible for Huawei, and Chinese companies in general, to build a successful alternative without using American technology (for the purposes of this post, I'm defining successful as equivalent to their American tech using competitors). It's not possible. What the actions on Huawei have done, however, is ensure that if that possibility exists, very significant chunks of Ch…

> without using American technology

Eh, RISC-V was developed at UC Berkeley. In the United States.

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