Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Arm China Has Gone Rogue

semianalysis.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 686 posts

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#451

Post by oh_sigh »

mikewarot wrote: post #368

We could just give up on the idea of "intellectual property", and go all out in an innovation race.

Ok, so let me innovate. I'm going to dump a bunch of my money into researching and developing a new product. Great, that $100M paid off, now we have something we can produce and market.

Oh, what's that? Someone who didn't put $100M of their own money into R&D just came along and stole our design. Now I'm $100M in the hole, and need to sell my product for more money than my rip-off competitor, because I actually need to make my R&D investment back. Of course, consumers don't care about whether I invested money in R&D or not, they just want the cheapest thing. So they buy the rip-off, and then I go out of business.

I've learned my lesson: Never innovate when someone can come along and just take exactly what you innovated. It's far better to be a parasite, and rip off a true innovator and send them into bankruptcy while you reap the profits.

Where exactly does the innovation race happen?

If I could just steal books and publish them as my own, do you expect there to be an "innovation race" in authorship? Or, will authors-who-earn-money just stop writing because they can't make a living off of it?

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#452

Post by rektide »

civilized wrote: post #387

China has been doing this for, what, 30-40 years now? How is this news? It is astonishing to me how many people have been, apparently, sleeping under a rock for decades, and are just now announcing their bitter realizations that China is not a free market open to Western companies. Hillary Clinton did one of these announcements within the past year or so, and my eyes rolled right out of the back of my head.

> China has been doing this for, what, 30-40 years now? How is this news?

Company take-overs maybe. But to say that this is like the past is either ignorant or misleading. The stakes here are so much different than a mere spat over corporate property.

This is the modern right to build computing machines. One rogue element in China has hijacked not merely a company, but a volume of IP that circumscribes probably hundreds of billions of devices. 99% of the consumer mobile devices on the planet are powered exclusively by this IP and a vast vast range of other consumer devices too. By usurping & overthrowing IP controls, by seizing this asset, Allen Wu has instigated a civilization-level technical fork, where the rest of the world has pre-legally-bound themselves to ban practically all future ARM China chips & any device licensed by ARM China. ARM China meanwhile is incentivized to license, sell & distribute as widely as possible, to make themselves an interesting competitive force, turning the heist into a self-sustaining movement of progress & growth for chipmaking, bolstered by less rules, less cruftiness, less legalese, more can do.

Just to remind everyone, software has eaten the planet. Modern upstarts like RISC-V have been trying to grow a reasonable new basis to compute from, to host software atop, but to be honest, x86 and ARM are the only two players running this world-eater. AMD has gotten to play & keep x86 interesting & competitive because they got a license very very long ago, and ARM has been holding the reigns of the other horse, dictating how it evolves. RISC-V is just getting started, is almost no where, is only beginning to find itself, albeit has some good chops demonstrated on the lower end microcontroller type chips. But so far no one has been able to be interesting with chips. And ARM China is hereby announcing that they give no ducks, that they have whatever blasted sovereignty they want, that they will take & make new as they see fit from here on out. And they will almost certainly find many in China to work with. Which is something ARM in the rest of the world has gotten worse and worse and worse at over the years, as countless companies fold their application processor divisions to increasing competition.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#453

Post by sudosysgen »

keewee7 wrote: post #432

We need to hold responsible the people who de-industrialized the West by sending all our manufacturing to China.

No one and everyone is responsible. Capital has its hands tied and must pursue higher profits. The ones responsible aren't just the ones that signed the paper but the ones that made and perpetuated the system that made that decision necessary.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#454

Post by aduric »

Why is the article blaming SoftBank? They bought Arm fair and square. They can do with their acquisitions as they please. Arm is a profit seeking company like every other profit seeking company. They sold themselves to make their founders rich. They are not some beacon of Western liberty that people like to make it out to be.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#455

Post by lobocinza »

makeitdouble wrote: post #423
cletus wrote: post #91

People need to wake up to the fact that China being a potential market of >1B people is an illusion. This is particularly relevant for any tech company. Let me spell it out: Chinese companies are extensions of the state. They are tools of Chinese foreign and trade policy. What cooperation you think US companies provide the US government, it is nothing in comparison. The Chinese government will ensure that no Western…

A point on addressing China as market: for a non US company, I think there just isn’t any market that will be much easier to compete in either way. If we imagine a Swedish chip maker that wants to become a global powerhouse, the US will dip a finger or two in it to make sure it mostly goes along their interests, otherwise the maker will just get banned from US use (Huawey…). China will do the same if the chips ever t…

And Canada, Mexico, Europe, South America, Oceania and many other countries on Asia.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#456

Post by jonplackett »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #437
MichaelGroves wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one talks about it? China inventing paper, printing and gunpowder is something every school child knows. I think I've heard about it about a million times. These facts are common knowledge; certainly paper and gunpowder. Printing is an odd example; the reason Gutenberg was influential is not the reason most people think. He did not invent movable type. He invented systems for mass producing movable type, particula…

>China inventing paper, printing and gunpowder is something every school child knows. Just anecdata, but prior to reading your comment I thought the Egyptians invented paper (papyrus) and Gutenberg invented printing.

Nitpick: Paper is different to papyrus and was much more important because you don’t need reeds to make it, which Egypt had a monopoly of. After the Roman Empire collapsed no-one could get papyrus and had to use parchment which was super expensive and resulted in most people becoming illiterate because they could’t afford writing / reading material (the dark ages)

Then paper came along (from China) and made it cheap again.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#457

Post by markus_zhang »

ethbr0 wrote: post #444
edderly wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no strong opinions on this, but for background, there are a bunch of Silicon Valley types like Eric Weinstein (Thiel Capital) who maintain that there are sinister undertones to the growing influence of Chinese immigrants in Tech and Higher Education. https://djonesvi.medium.com/eric-weinstein-on-the-secretly-c... Obviously that can veer into uncomfortable conclusions i.e. is it true, or is this kind of racist?

I mean, if the US wanted to "solve" the issue, it's pretty easy. Offer anyone who graduates with a STEM degree from a reputable institution US citizenship... and require they if they renounce their Chinese citizenship (which happens automatically per Chinese law, but just to be sure).

I don't think it's going to dispel the scary monster because some people would argue that "They have roots in China", so maybe just get every Chinese out of the door?

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#458

Post by bombcar »

ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #371
ithkuil wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Japan seals/stamps (hanko) are still widely used as signatures.

Ditto Korea. Something that shocked me is that it is common in medium-sized sole proprietorships (tech startups, small businesses, research labs) for the CEO to give their personal seal to the accountants/secretaries. It the West the equivalent would be giving away an autopen for your signature.

It’s more common in the west than you think - we had a printer loaded with MIRC toner and a SIMM with the CEOs signature for printing checks.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#459

Post by ethbr0 »

markus_zhang wrote: post #443
gumby wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let me spell it out: Chinese companies are extensions of the state. I generally don’t like such jingoistic statements but I think this is basically true, at least in the 2020s. I will also note that this has come as a surprise to many Chinese entrepreneurs, most famously (but far from exclusively) Jack Ma.

The point is that it's true when you point the finger to US companies. US companies are extensions of the US elites (while the state is just a tool). Actually US elites have way more power over foreign companies than Chinese elites do. I really don't think it's gonna make any real difference if we are facing (strong state + weaker corporations) or (strong corporations + weaker state).

> US companies are extensions of the US elites (while the state is just a tool)

Incorrect. In the US, the state, the courts, corporations, elites, and everyone else all have competing and overlapping interests, and out of that democracy comes the sausage.

In China, the system is specifically rigged so that the state always trumps everyone else, when it decides it needs to.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#460

Post by markus_zhang »

jollybean wrote: post #447
makeitdouble wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A point on addressing China as market: for a non US company, I think there just isn’t any market that will be much easier to compete in either way. If we imagine a Swedish chip maker that wants to become a global powerhouse, the US will dip a finger or two in it to make sure it mostly goes along their interests, otherwise the maker will just get banned from US use (Huawey…). China will do the same if the chips ever t…

The US is not going to interfere in 'Swede Corp' unless it's a serious issue of state security. Spottily could be worth $500B and they would not care. Recently Erickson took the spotlight as one of the few alternatives to 5G Huawei there was talk of US sate intervention but that might have been a good thing for them, otherwise, if they came to totally dominate 5G gear sales, again, the US wouldn't really have cared.…

State security is simply a facade that can be easily pulled up. For example speak to the French about this (Alston).
Post reply on HN