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Regarding Proposed US Restrictions on RISC-V

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Re: Regarding Proposed US Restrictions on RISC-V

#141

Post by chaostheory »

derefr wrote: post #30
olalonde wrote: post #19

It blows my mind that the US keeps treating China, its biggest trade partner, as an enemy. There is no way that China would ever initiate a war against the US. It feels like, if anything, this insistence on treating China as an enemy increases risk for the US.

China would never directly initiate a war against the US; China’s long-term goals have nothing to do with militarily weakening the US, and are rather more focused on a global hegemony achieved by economically cornering emerging markets. However, there are a number of actions China could take against countries other than the US, where the US would either feel obligated to initiate war against China in response; or whe…

Xi invading Taiwan would directly initiate a war with the US. Xi’s illegal actions in the South China Sea is evidence that Xi is willing to cross that line rather than keeping the status quo despite running afoul of PLA leadership and many others within the CCP itself.

Re: Regarding Proposed US Restrictions on RISC-V

#142

Post by JumpCrisscross »

TUSF wrote: post #117
skyyler wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this practice called corruption in other countries? How is this legal?

It's called lobbying, and the courts consider it "free speech". Speech that says "I just spent a million dollars to inconvenience my competitors."

> It's called lobbying, and the courts consider it "free speech"

No, it's called bribery. If you give a politician money it's bribery. The closest we have to this is the revolving door.

Lobbying involves paying someone to give your letter to an elected. When you call your representative, you are lobbying. When the EFF engages the Congress, they are lobbying. There is campaign contributions, which go to a campaign, not the individual, and PACs, which involve buying messaging. But conflating bribery and lobbying is simply incorrect.

Re: Regarding Proposed US Restrictions on RISC-V

#143

Post by amatecha »

https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites...

"Urgent action is needed to prevent U.S. technology and technical know-how from contributing to the PRC’s utilization of this technology."

"the United States should build a robust ecosystem for open-source collaboration among the U.S. and our allies while ensuring the PRC is unable to benefit from that work."

tfw lawyers don't understand what "open source" means :facepalm:

Re: Regarding Proposed US Restrictions on RISC-V

#144

Post by kragen »

mschuster91 wrote: post #109
kragen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

falsely claiming that non-war activities such as propaganda are actually war, as you are doing, is an extremely common way to try to start wars, and has been for millennia you must think hn readers are astoundingly dumb i mean, we are, but not that dumb if you would like there to be no war, here are a couple of things you could try - don't try to dictate where rulers of foreign countries get to be or to stop them fro…

> don't try to dictate where leaders of foreign countries get to be I have zero tolerance for repressive dictatorships. Post 1945 (and partially even before that), the world agreed to at least some sort of basic human rights in peace and in war, but enforcement of that has been sorely lacking - which is what drives authoritarians in their spiral of escalation. And we're seeing right now less than 1000km away from me…

'zero tolerance' for domestic policies of foreign countries is the opposite extreme from 'preferring there to be no war' actually

i mean we tried colonialism already, it makes things worse, not better

the us government has not declared war on china, fortunately

Re: Regarding Proposed US Restrictions on RISC-V

#145

Post by kragen »

germandiago wrote: post #122
mschuster91 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> except you aren't at war, you're trying to start one I would rather like it for there to be no war. The problem is, that decision is not mine, it is not ours to make - China and Russia did that for us, decades ago, when they decided to wage cyber warfare on us: the Chinese mainly in industrial espionage, and Russia in terms of propaganda and "ordinary" cyber crime. Unfortunately we didn't react on this, to the cont…

Hiw much evidence there is of these things? I would say all countries do this. Americans were caught spying even Angela Merkel, supposed to be a friend. FWIW I think all countries with enough power do things like these.

chinese industrial espionage, russian hawkish propaganda, russian crackers, and mass persecution of dissidents in both russia and china are all well-established and lamentable facts

so are government-backed espionage, government-backed hawkish propaganda, and government-backed crackers in countries such as the usa and germany

the usa also has a level of mass imprisonment that russia and china haven't seen in decades, it just isn't for political dissidence, except in a few cases like swartz and assange (who is currently imprisoned in the uk fighting extradition to the usa)

Re: Regarding Proposed US Restrictions on RISC-V

#146

Post by brianhorakh »

RachelF wrote: post #110

If China's military use is the concern here, then it is worth remembering that most weapons systems don't contain the most modern chips. CPUs 10 to 20 years old are common.

Disagree.

Yes- Us Weapons platforms are.

This is how the us build pure cold war style "for military use only" tech. The money wasted reinventing the wheel by defense contractors is why Americans will never have affordable healthcare or sustainable social services.

China simply doesn't do that afaik, it's civilian and military tech isn't always developed independently.

Restated: China blurs the line between military and police state tech. It's tech is frequently multi purpose.

Drones, bipedal and quad petal robots, ai/ml applications etc. Are not 10-20 years old. They are running the latest risc-v cores.

China being "more socialist" really embraced open source, multi use, drtw. It could be many reasons.

I was surprised to discover one the boards an esp32-cam (xtensa core) purchased off aliexpress was originally designed to be used in ccp military/police surveillance applications. I don't know which came first, but the esp32-cam board is so extremely well suited for that specific military application that the entire design and layout of the board made sense to me.

Espressif a Shanghai based company now is making both xtensa and risc-v chips.

Re: Regarding Proposed US Restrictions on RISC-V

#147

Post by anigbrowl »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #9
deutschepost wrote: post #4

Wasn’t RISC-V developed in the US? And the first company to produce chips with this ISA, SiFive is US based too. Why would it make sense to ban it in the US? They literally invented it.

This is basically ARM lobbying to hamper their challenger. There is no legitimate reason for it. (That doesn't mean we don't still need to fight it.)

How do you know it's ARM though? Taking low-cost potshots at China is an easy choice for some conservative politicians, there's a large number of voters/small $ donors who are easily activated by the claim to 'standing up to communism'.

Re: Regarding Proposed US Restrictions on RISC-V

#148

Post by xtian »

chaostheory wrote: post #124
xtian wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are western companies blocked from accessing China’s domestic market? Because they are obligated to follow local laws? That’s like saying GDPR blocks American companies from operating in Europe.

This isn’t a new subject. For instance, both Google and Facebook are not allowed in China despite their past attempts to comply with mercurial and vague CCP laws. https://www.businessinsider.com/major-us-tech-companies-bloc... I’m sure there are more US companies and industries that are not allowed to compete in China’s domestic market. The GDPR is protectionist legislation for EU companies, but it doesn’t prevent US…

So how does Microsoft manage it? Bing and other Microsoft properties are accessible in China.

Re: Regarding Proposed US Restrictions on RISC-V

#149

Post by hakfoo »

ajross wrote: post #134
snvzz wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>RISC-V is much more of a threat to ARM microcontroller vendors (STMicro, NXP, Atmel et. al.) How is RISC-V threatening them exactly? They can (and should) switch to RISC-V. Note NXP is already doing so[0], and that Atmel is part of Microchip[1]. 0. https://www.nxp.com/company/about-nxp/leading-semiconductor-... 1. https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/fpgas-and-plds/fpga...

Business advice that is tantamount to "Oh, you should just make a better product" is basically bad business advice. Of course they should, everyone should. But the problem is that if they tried, it (1) costs money and (2) leverages no existing advantages. These low-margin companies live and die on compatibility and integration. The reason you pick a STM32-whatever as your choice for your new product is generally at l…

I'm not sure that's such a case for STMicro.

Microcontrollers are, all things considered, not that much about the ISA itself, especially when we've gotten to 32-bit controllers big enough to program in C or higher-level languages.

People aren't reading the raw assembly and juggling registers themselves anymore. But they do care about the onboard peripherals, documentation, and tooling. The STM32 ecosystem is huge because they've nailed those things.

I could see a STM32Vxxx range, same basic design but drop a RISC-V core in, and new-dev projects will adopt it if it's got the same functionality bit is a nickel cheaper.

Re: Regarding Proposed US Restrictions on RISC-V

#150

Post by chaostheory »

xtian wrote: post #148
chaostheory wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t a new subject. For instance, both Google and Facebook are not allowed in China despite their past attempts to comply with mercurial and vague CCP laws. https://www.businessinsider.com/major-us-tech-companies-bloc... I’m sure there are more US companies and industries that are not allowed to compete in China’s domestic market. The GDPR is protectionist legislation for EU companies, but it doesn’t prevent US…

So how does Microsoft manage it? Bing and other Microsoft properties are accessible in China.

Most likely because China relies on Windows? I don’t know and it’s a moot point.

All I know is that there has been a large swath of US and other Western companies that are barred from doing business in China. That’s a fact. As to why, it’s likely protectionism for local mainland companies who wouldn’t have been able to compete.

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