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Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

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Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#61

Post by i_am_nomad »

ardit33 wrote: post #40
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #8

This is really impressive for Huawei. I do not mean to say that the trade war between China and the US is the same as the Cold War from before, but I have a fun tidbit to share. One of the more interesting theories I heard for why the US won the Cold War is because Russia struggled to develop IC technology. The Russians were masters of espionage, and I would even give them the edge in mechanical engineering, but the…

I think that electronics/computers by itself do not have much to do with with the fall of soviet union. USSR fell because: 1. its economic model was dysfunctional and a failure 2. Its moderate leaders (aka Gorbachev and his allies), decided to dismantle it, as they realized the model was a failure, and their only other option was to become extremely repressive, roll out tanks and kill people. (north korea is an examp…

It’s amazing to me, and deeply concerning, that you’re being downvoted for this. Those of us who work in tech are so firmly ensconced in that bubble that we actually think microchips defeated the USSR.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#63

Post by zozbot234 »

monocasa wrote: post #52
Cyph0n wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent point. I would say it would be more impressive if China were to build its own EDA tools. At this point, I think the US should start protecting its EDA companies from Chinese investors.

I really doubt that the EDA software is really that much of an investment these days. It's the lithography tech that's the real crown jewel, and it is being protected.

The two are quite linked. You can't make a good open EDA package without knowing current design rules and the like, and if you want design rules that aren't old enough to drink you'll be bound by NDAs, as fabs strive to 'protect' every bit of knowledge about their 'crown jewels'.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#64

Post by ausjke »

Huawei had to license synopsys/cadence/mentor to design their chip(which is using ARM core), if US really wants to play hardball Huawei's IC design can be killed nearly instantly once those CAD design software is forbidden. In the meantime I heard Huawei etc bought a few years' license right before the trade war, they're actually well prepared.

Another way is to restrict chip manufacturing, Taiwan pretty much owns the best technology for that(TSMC), Intel/Samsung has some, Huawei has none.

And you have Android to some degree, without Android there is no Smartphone dominance from China as of now. Open source in general helped China to catch up and overtake the west extremely efficiently, you don't need any business spies anymore, just download/modify/profit.

At the moment USA still has the possibility to contain IC ecosystem if it really wants to do that. In 10~20 years it will be a different story though, by then USA might not have much leverage if anything at all left.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#65

Post by Wowfunhappy »

papito wrote: post #24
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #8

This is really impressive for Huawei. I do not mean to say that the trade war between China and the US is the same as the Cold War from before, but I have a fun tidbit to share. One of the more interesting theories I heard for why the US won the Cold War is because Russia struggled to develop IC technology. The Russians were masters of espionage, and I would even give them the edge in mechanical engineering, but the…

The United States is still better at technology, and Russia is better at espionage. Never underestimate the underdog. There was a massive article on the modern KGB under Putin in 2017(?), I think in the Atlantic. They basically managed to hack into some offline Pentagon systems by distributing infected USB drives around that location, through different outlets, in the hopes that an unsuspecting target will use a USB…

I think you may be thinking of Stuxnet, which was created by the US and Israel and targeted Iranian nuclear reactors.

If you were trying to steal data this way, how would you get it back out of the infected machine? Stuxnet didn't have this problem, because its goal was purely to sabotage.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#66

Post by FpUser »

lsc wrote: post #36
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #8

This is really impressive for Huawei. I do not mean to say that the trade war between China and the US is the same as the Cold War from before, but I have a fun tidbit to share. One of the more interesting theories I heard for why the US won the Cold War is because Russia struggled to develop IC technology. The Russians were masters of espionage, and I would even give them the edge in mechanical engineering, but the…

>And obviously it's not so great for the US. There's a lot of confusion, I think, about how you "win" a trade war; as far as I can tell, autarchy is pretty bad for all involved; trade wars seem like a thing where everyone loses and the 'win' comes from winding down the trade war and trading again.

I would say that the "winner" is the one who got hurt less and can recover faster/better but it is all relative. While 2 sides are busy killing each other the third one might get the benefits

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#67

Post by papito »

hydrox24 wrote: post #37
papito wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States is still better at technology, and Russia is better at espionage. Never underestimate the underdog. There was a massive article on the modern KGB under Putin in 2017(?), I think in the Atlantic. They basically managed to hack into some offline Pentagon systems by distributing infected USB drives around that location, through different outlets, in the hopes that an unsuspecting target will use a USB…

Is the article you are talking about "What Putin Really Wants" by Julia Ioffe[0]? It was published in January 2018. It doesn't have the USB key story you're talking about though. [0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/putins-...

Ah! I was wrong on two counts. This was in the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-an...

And the breach happened in Kabul, NOT the Pentagon.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#69

Post by QuarterReptile »

rootsudo wrote: post #4

I checked out a Huawei store - they're the same asthetic as an apple store with a ton more useful tech then an ipod, macbook and imac. The phones were impressive and very affordable. We're talking $200-300 for 6gb ram devices, 128gb storage, etc. Google, Apple are right to be worried.

Their computers are also matched with Microsoft's for the tallest screen (3:2) you can get, while also being pretty high quality. If you don't want 16:9, the only other options I'm aware of are the newest Dell XPS convertible and Apple (both 16:10). I would get a Huawei Matebook except that it would really rock the boat at my work, and that's not something I want to do.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#70

Post by account73466 »

lsc wrote: post #36
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #8

This is really impressive for Huawei. I do not mean to say that the trade war between China and the US is the same as the Cold War from before, but I have a fun tidbit to share. One of the more interesting theories I heard for why the US won the Cold War is because Russia struggled to develop IC technology. The Russians were masters of espionage, and I would even give them the edge in mechanical engineering, but the…

>And obviously it's not so great for the US. There's a lot of confusion, I think, about how you "win" a trade war; as far as I can tell, autarchy is pretty bad for all involved; trade wars seem like a thing where everyone loses and the 'win' comes from winding down the trade war and trading again.

There was a trade war between US and Japan. What happened to Japan? The same will happen to China but it will take longer because China is more powerful than Japan at the time. All the hatred on China is similar (but stronger) to the one we had on Japan.
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