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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

#171

Post by baybal2 »

ausjke wrote: post #64

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 th…

> if US really wants to play hardball Huawei's IC design can be killed nearly instantly once those CAD design software is forbidden.

Latest versions of Virtuosso are sold in underground passageways in Beijing for $4 a pop

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#172

Post by pm90 »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #166
pm90 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop digging further into the hole you've dug. The theory you posit is that Semiconductors were key to the fall of the Soviet Union, and many helpful people have pointed out fallacies in that argument. Your counter is not a very good one. > I think most people on HN are familiar with the story of how computers won WWII, where Von Neumann used them to decipher German and Japanese encrypted communications. Also…

> The theory you posit is that Semiconductors were key to the fall of the Soviet Union Had the Soviets developed IC technology and the US failed to do so, do you still believe the Cold War would have turned out roughly the same? I suspect it would have bolstered the Soviet economy, allowed them to develop technology faster than their adversaries, and ultimately win. You're right, this is a guess, because it's impossi…

Your arguments are completely superfluous and I’m getting tired of repeating the same argument. Any impact of ICs would be minimal considering the massive shortfall in other areas of the Soviet Economy. If you want to speculate wildly on shaky ground, go ahead. But don’t think for a moment that you have some unique insight into how these things work: you clearly don’t, and are just trying to hold on to a ridiculous idea that you think you came up with.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#173

Post by sebastianconcpt »

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…

We should not limit our analysis to nations anymore. There are transnational forces that are becoming historical agents. The Cold War might have ended in terms of nations with the collapse of the USSR but it didn't in terms of political struggle of the movements that gave birth to states like USSR or current China.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#174

Post by sebastianconcpt »

fluffything wrote: post #156
beloch wrote: post #9

I'd be curious to know if Huawei phones and network devices are currently being used for surveillance in Hong Kong.

Probably. Snowden showed that every phone in the USA is used for surveillance by the NSA. I don't have any reason to expect China to be any different.

Exactly. Yet I found NSA surveillance INFINITELY less dangerous than China's.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#175

Post by goatinaboat »

lsc wrote: post #157
Animats wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean autarky, full economic self-sufficiency. China is certainly big enough to operate as an autarky. The US used to, up to about 1980 or so. This is a current goal of the government of China. It's called "Made in China 2025", and was announced in 2015.. "The goals of Made in China 2025 include increasing the Chinese-domestic content of core materials to 40 percent by 2020 and 70 percent by 2025.[5] The plan focu…

>You mean autarky, full economic self-sufficiency. China is certainly big enough to operate as an autarky. The US used to, up to about 1980 or so. You think the US is less industrially capable than in 1980? that... seems unlikely. Sure, we import and export a lot more of our stuff now than we did then, but that's because we live a lot better when we trade (and because the technology of trade has improved vastly.) I m…

You think the US is less industrially capable than in 1980? that... seems unlikely. Sure, we import and export a lot more of our stuff now than we did then, but that's because we live a lot better when we trade (and because the technology of trade has improved vastly.)

Once you lose a capability it’s gone forever. That is why countries cling desperately to domestic steel, shipbuilding, arms and other industries. Once the institutional knowledge is gone and the infrastructure is gone it’s never coming back. And other countries whose interests may not align with your own have you over a barrel.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#176

Post by GhettoMaestro »

onion2k wrote: post #138
GhettoMaestro wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No... that's pure hyperbole. But 10x faster (or capable) and 2x the cost? That's not outrageous. BTW that's where we currently are.

10x faster and more capable at what? The tech in phones might be progressing but the use cases aren't. What most people do on their phones now is the same as they did 10 years ago. Eventually people will realise they don't need more speed, and the focus will switch to things like power effeciency and weight. Just like laptops.

> Eventually people will realise they don't need more speed, and the focus will switch to things like power effeciency and weight. Just like laptops.

Have you been in a coma for 5 years? That has already happened.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#177

Post by spectramax »

ausjke wrote: post #64

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 th…

I am not sure about large companies, essentially every small to mid-sized PCB design/manf company in China uses pirated EDA software, primarily Altium Designer, OrCAD and Mentor Graphics. In fact, piracy of sofware is encouraged by the CCP - I won't name the websites, but in order to get a download link you need a WeChat or Baidu account which is ultimately linked to Citizen ID or Passport through phone number (OTP). Yes, I setup a Windows VM to get access to these sites where you need to install a Baidu download manager in your operating system.

There is also specific Chinese forum lingo that is used to thank people who post pirated software ("1st floor", "2nd floor", etc.)

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#178

Post by fluffything »

t0ddbonzalez wrote: post #168
fluffything wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unlike say in the PC world, where the dominant OS/Software stack has an almost impenetrable reliance on x86 Huawei also makes its own x86 chips, GPUs, and even FPGAs (e.g. TPU-like systems), and while Huawei Cloud still runs other vendors hardware, it's becoming more and more "Huawei-hardware only" each quarter. I think the US has not realized yet how good it had it, and how much it has screwed things up. The EU, R…

> 'Right now, e.g., the EU is on the "let's ban all Huawei products, China spies on us!" boat' Really? Citation please. Mike Pompeo's been going around Europe threatening dire consequences for any country which uses Huawei tech ("We won't work with allies that use Huawei equipment in their 5G networks", etc.), but I haven't heard of any calls for a ban at EU level... Can you show me some proof that the EU wants to ba…

There aren't any EU level bans - I don't think the EU government has authority for that.

What currently exist is a lot of controversy around using Huawei in Europe:

* Huawei products banned from being used by all of Spain's Department of Defense projects and personnel: https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/e4ntuk/huawei_smartp...

* Angela Merkel Faces Part revolt over allowing Huawei to build 5G: https://www.dw.com/en/angela-merkel-faces-party-revolt-over-...

* Germany Intelligence Services argues that Huawei cannot be trusted: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-29/german-sp...

and many more. This is enough to nudge public opinion in one particular direction (Huawei == evil), and politicians sometimes do what voters want over here.

This is obviously a quite brittle status quo, and one or two impactful articles here and there about how the US / NSA "collect data" on EU citizens might be enough to turn the wind the other way.

The real news behind all of these articles is that China is now perfectly able to compete with the US technology companies at this particular level. That's interesting because for many countries, depending on the US for most of their electronics is a big risk worth minimizing, so I expect a shift from a US dominated industry to a balance between US and Chinese technologies being integrated in these countries. Nobody wants to exclusively depend on China either.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#179

Post by AstralStorm »

goatinaboat wrote: post #175
lsc wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You mean autarky, full economic self-sufficiency. China is certainly big enough to operate as an autarky. The US used to, up to about 1980 or so. You think the US is less industrially capable than in 1980? that... seems unlikely. Sure, we import and export a lot more of our stuff now than we did then, but that's because we live a lot better when we trade (and because the technology of trade has improved vastly.) I m…

You think the US is less industrially capable than in 1980? that... seems unlikely. Sure, we import and export a lot more of our stuff now than we did then, but that's because we live a lot better when we trade (and because the technology of trade has improved vastly.) Once you lose a capability it’s gone forever. That is why countries cling desperately to domestic steel, shipbuilding, arms and other industries. Once…

Well, you can bring it back with a major expenses. The problem is competition against vertical semi-integration which is present in China. (Multiple companies but same place - cheap transport and high availability plus widespread knowledge.)

The remaining industries are also integrated or partially integrated.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#180

Post by AstralStorm »

GhettoMaestro wrote: post #176
onion2k wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10x faster and more capable at what? The tech in phones might be progressing but the use cases aren't. What most people do on their phones now is the same as they did 10 years ago. Eventually people will realise they don't need more speed, and the focus will switch to things like power effeciency and weight. Just like laptops.

> Eventually people will realise they don't need more speed, and the focus will switch to things like power effeciency and weight. Just like laptops. Have you been in a coma for 5 years? That has already happened.

Not quite, new phones still go for higher performance as well as stronger power saving. That's because they do need to consume high end media - decode and encode high resolution video, perhaps play games, run complex algorithms to handle camera pictures. This has some obvious limits but we're not close to them.

The most power hungry component is the display... The technology there has not kept up, in fact they grow bigger and consume more power.

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