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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

#181

Post by goatinaboat »

AstralStorm wrote: post #179
goatinaboat wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Say you have a century-old widget factory that closes (a common story here in Wales). The widget making machinery gets sold off, even if for scrap. The factory site gets demolished and redeveloped. The widget makers retire or retrain and they tell their kids “don’t go into the widget business, it’s a dead end”. All the colleges cancel their widget courses, no demand.

A decade or two passes and rebooting your widget industry will be an order of magnitude harder than it was to start in the first place.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#182

Post by JoeAltmaier »

goatinaboat wrote: post #181
AstralStorm wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Say you have a century-old widget factory that closes (a common story here in Wales). The widget making machinery gets sold off, even if for scrap. The factory site gets demolished and redeveloped. The widget makers retire or retrain and they tell their kids “don’t go into the widget business, it’s a dead end”. All the colleges cancel their widget courses, no demand. A decade or two passes and rebooting your widget i…

Maybe not any more? You can hire internationally now, its never been easier to research widgets. New technologies and manufacturing techniques make it a whole different widget ballgame anyway - you probably wouldn't do it the same anyway.

In fact, many industries reinvent themselves periodically just to stay current. Restarting a factory can't be much different.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#183

Post by gruez »

takeda wrote: post #132
gruez wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Smart phones were introduced a decade ago. Flagship phones costed then around $500, now we got to the point that they costing $1,000+ like if mass producing wouldn't cut the cost down. If making smartphones is really as easy as you make it out to be, and smartphone prices are rising, then why isn't that being captured in the global profit share? Considering that Androids are vastly more popular than iOS phones, ther…

Can't view your link.

seems like you need a search engine referrer to unlock the paywall.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#184

Post by goatinaboat »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #182
goatinaboat wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you have a century-old widget factory that closes (a common story here in Wales). The widget making machinery gets sold off, even if for scrap. The factory site gets demolished and redeveloped. The widget makers retire or retrain and they tell their kids “don’t go into the widget business, it’s a dead end”. All the colleges cancel their widget courses, no demand. A decade or two passes and rebooting your widget i…

Maybe not any more? You can hire internationally now, its never been easier to research widgets. New technologies and manufacturing techniques make it a whole different widget ballgame anyway - you probably wouldn't do it the same anyway. In fact, many industries reinvent themselves periodically just to stay current. Restarting a factory can't be much different.

Here I’m using widgets as a synonym for the kinds of heavy industries we used to have. Reopening a steel mill or a tin mine is not something you can do overnight.

People forget that a factory itself is a sophisticated machine and operating it is an advanced skill that relies heavily on experience. A car factory is considerably more complex than any of the cars it produces, for example. Or, we never had a fab in Wales, but it’s a similar analogy. And then there’s the logistics, the supply chain, again a massively complex thing that is often overlooked. Maybe the factory had hundreds of suppliers and subcontractors, they would all need to be rebooted too. It’s a fractal problem.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#185

Post by dtwest »

fluffything wrote: post #150
throwGuardian wrote: post #144

The be honest, American companies never had a monopoly in any of the parts needed to build a commercially viable phone. Unlike say in the PC world, where the dominant OS/Software stack has an almost impenetrable reliance on x86, phones were mostly ARM based (in an attempt to prevent Intel's chokehold). And communication standards require FRAND patent grants allowing anyone to build for the spec. That said, even as re…

> 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…

Do you think China wasn't aware of how well the US had it? They had no intention of letting it stay that way. The US did not force them into it, they wanted to do this all along. Recent political action may have sped things up, but this has all been in the works for a long time.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#186

Post by asveikau »

pm90 wrote: post #153
asveikau wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen people who dislike the democratic party in the US on both the left and the right adopt this stance in the context of the Trump-Russia question. The argument goes that all the former Soviet, but current NATO/EU states (and states with factions who might want to join, like Ukraine) never wanted to leave Russian control. I disagree with this, but I would note that it's too simple to say something is simply g…

> The argument goes that all the former Soviet, but current NATO/EU states (and states with factions who might want to join, like Ukraine) never wanted to leave Russian control. You mean "conspiracy theory". I know you're pointing it out as a dubious argument, but stuff like this is what impressionable minds latch onto on the internet.

Yes, I do consider it a conspiracy theory, but stopped short of describing it that way directly. It is also a little personal for me, as I have some Lithuanian heritage.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#187

Post by perl4ever »

dirtyid wrote: post #130
perl4ever wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of comparing the number of disputes without at least normalizing for the size of the economy and the length of time being discussed? It looks unserious.

Because multiple indicators conform to reveal the flimsy narrative behind China being some supreme violator of free trade. Controlling for time, China should have received 112 claims since it's accession, almost 3x more. You can examine the cases more closely here and judge magnitude for yourself, but the basic pattern is that the US is the biggest exploiter of free trade and the institution that supports it, by magn…

"Controlling for time, China should have received 112 claims since it's accession, almost 3x more"

In 2005, in roughly the middle of the timeframe, the US economy was almost 6 times the size of China's.

Maybe you could expand on why you don't think claims should scale with the size of the economy, since you seemed to ignore the suggestion of normalizing for that.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#188

Post by CharlesColeman »

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…

> 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.

Not exactly: that's only true if you let neoliberal economists set your economic policy.

Countries like China recently gained those industrial capabilities, and the reason for that is not just because they have access to cheaper labor. More importantly, they have industrial policy that prioritizes the development of domestic industry.

Nothing fundamental prevents Western democracies (perhaps collectively) from implementing industrial policies that prioritize industrial development rather than stuff like finance in its ever more byzantine forms [1].

[1] I read somewhere that financial development is only really beneficial up to a point. Past that point, it actually does more harm than good.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#189

Post by OnlineGladiator »

pm90 wrote: post #172
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

I never claimed it was my own idea - it's not. I just found it interesting and wanted to share it with people, and judging by the upvotes many other people also found it interesting. Isn't that why we're all on HN - to talk about things we find interesting?

I think you're looking at this as a debate instead of a conversation. I don't care whether or not you agree with me. I'm sorry you found the idea so distasteful.

Re: Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips

#190

Post by CharlesColeman »

Cyph0n wrote: post #120
monocasa wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You always get screwed in niche B2B on a single seat license. There's no way the chip manufacturers are actually spending anywhere near that much. And they really aren't that complex. China has more than enough capability to reproduce them. I guess I'm not sure how to prove a negative here. What do you think is so special about EDA software that isn't fairly easy replicable? Other than the fab design rules, which if…

And I’m not sure why you still think that EDA tools are so simple. I guess we’re at an impasse, then. Going back to my first comment: I would be extremely impressed if China is able to build a home-grown, state-of-the-art EDA toolchain. I also still think that the US should work to protect its existing advantage in this area.

> I would be extremely impressed if China is able to build a home-grown, state-of-the-art EDA toolchain.

Software is something that's relatively easily stolen, and I'm kinda skeptical it's a national-interest trade secret that can be effectively protected. It probably wouldn't be that hard for a nation-state to hack the EDA vendor and grab their source tree and a build server image. Even if an obviously-pirated version is never released, that level of access would greatly accelerate the development of a workalike clone. That clone may not end up being state of the art, but it could be good enough to neutralize any advantage.

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