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RISC-V chip technology emerges as new battleground in US-China tech war

reuters.com

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Re: RISC-V chip technology emerges as new battleground in US-China tech war

#41

Post by galangalalgol »

sneak wrote: post #32
mvncleaninst wrote: post #14

> "I fear that our export-control laws are not equipped to deal with the challenge of open-source software - whether in advanced semiconductor designs like RISC-V or in the area of AI - and a dramatic paradigm shift is needed," Warner said in a statement to Reuters. This is clearly an attack on open source. Seems incredibly odd that they use the word "export" to refer to information (that is to say: speech) I really…

They’ve done this before, famously with encryption software. prz and djb did great work to stop it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States > After four years and one regulatory change, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that software source code was speech protected by the First Amendment and that the government's regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional. FWIW, I imagine in…

Didn't the us government recently force krakenSDR to pull down their passive radar software under these laws? That would seem to violate precedent.

Re: RISC-V chip technology emerges as new battleground in US-China tech war

#42

Post by thayne »

I suspect (but have no concrete evidence) that the real motivation behind this is that one or more companies feel threatened by risc-v, and hope that they by hindering collaboration, they can hobble their competitors on both sides of the ocean.

Re: RISC-V chip technology emerges as new battleground in US-China tech war

#43

Post by miohtama »

whatever1 wrote: post #38

I can see both of the sides of the argument. It seems that we use US funding to help everyone circumvent ARM and x86. The problem is that US enemies are also recipients of the US technology contributions. But what is the alternative? Stop publishing everything ?

Exactly. You make everything illegal or “regulated” (practically banned). The EU is already leading the way and has touched machine learning, end-to-end capable encryption and software distribution in various of its regulation directives.

- Communications (every chat software must come with spyware installed)

- AI (machine learning is too scary and authors say it will kill mankind, worse than a climate change)

- RISC-V (terrorists can use it in missiles)

- Open source (terrorists can run missiles and super computers with Linux)

- Software distribution (either because of communications or AI)

- Cryptocurrency wallets (interacting with a software wallet you wrote yourself makes your a suspicious and banks will deplatform you on the basis of anti-money laundering)

You need to remember that end-to-end encryption exporting was illegal in the US until 90s. Now when Trump has stacked supreme court with his own sockpuppets they may want to reverse any decision regarding this like they did with abortion.

Re: RISC-V chip technology emerges as new battleground in US-China tech war

#44

Post by 0xParlay »

trealira wrote: post #40
DiabloD3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Since Trump's election, both parties have gotten nationalist and protectionist. Biden led efforts to protect American companies with subsidies to companies that bought from American companies in both the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. If export restrictions push manufacturing out of America, I find it entirely plausible that it happened due to the ignorance and/or incompetence of the politicians pushing f…

[flagged]

Re: RISC-V chip technology emerges as new battleground in US-China tech war

#45

Post by fakeslimshady5 »

deadmutex wrote: post #10
Taniwha wrote: post #6

RISC-V is all about not bowing down to one company, or one country - cheaper better chips from China are just as good as cheaper better chips from the USA or Europe - and competition, that great capitalist American institution, is a good thing here - we don't need any archaic old cold warriors messing with our markets

> cheaper better chips from China are just as good as cheaper better chips from the USA or Europe This may be a bit naive. How do you make sure that there are no intentional security issues / backdoors in Chips from a vendor? An interesting clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfXxgb9N_qI .

[dead]

Re: RISC-V chip technology emerges as new battleground in US-China tech war

#48

Post by igravious »

samtheprogram wrote: post #39
sneak wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve done this before, famously with encryption software. prz and djb did great work to stop it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States > After four years and one regulatory change, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that software source code was speech protected by the First Amendment and that the government's regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional. FWIW, I imagine in…

> FWIW, I imagine in 4-5 years this “battle” will pretty much already be decided wrt chipmaking in China. If I'm understanding you correctly... It's not that easy for China (or the US) to spin up their own fabs, particularly ones that compete to those in Taiwan. Even with some expertise and fat pockets, you might not get the same results. It's a lot of trial and error and improving yield for small processes to the po…

“China is expected to outnumber all other regions in new chip manufacturing facilities, with 20 supporting mature technologies planned.”

https://www.semi.org/en/news-media-press-releases/semi-press...

Why is it not easy for China to spin up their own fabs? They have a strategic plan / industrial policy[1]. They have the industrial base[2][3]. They have pumping out engineering graduates[3]. †

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025

[2] “From 1900 to 1999, the US produced 4.2 billion tonnes of cement. It consumed 4.4 billion tonnes.

China produced 2.4 billion tonnes in 2020, and 2.5 billion tonnes in 2021. This means it produced 4.9 billion tonnes in these two years.”

(China produced more cement in two years than the US did in the whole 20th century)

https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-us-cement

[3] “China is by far the world’s largest silicon producer, with a production volume estimated at six million metric tons in 2022.

The total production volume of silicon worldwide was an estimated 8.8 million metric tons that year.”

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1260896/china-silicon-pr...

[4] “China awarded 1.38 million engineering bachelor’s degrees in 2020. The comparable American number is 197,000 (144,000 in engineering and 54,000 in computer science), or just one-seventh of China’s total.”

https://asiatimes.com/2022/07/a-tale-of-two-talents/

† You know the way we have this mental model in our heads for the size of the US economy post WWII versus the rest of the world?, we're going to have to update our mental model of the size of China's economy today versus the rest of the world.

Re: RISC-V chip technology emerges as new battleground in US-China tech war

#49

Post by igravious »

sneak wrote: post #32
mvncleaninst wrote: post #14

> "I fear that our export-control laws are not equipped to deal with the challenge of open-source software - whether in advanced semiconductor designs like RISC-V or in the area of AI - and a dramatic paradigm shift is needed," Warner said in a statement to Reuters. This is clearly an attack on open source. Seems incredibly odd that they use the word "export" to refer to information (that is to say: speech) I really…

They’ve done this before, famously with encryption software. prz and djb did great work to stop it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States > After four years and one regulatory change, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that software source code was speech protected by the First Amendment and that the government's regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional. FWIW, I imagine in…

> FWIW, I imagine in 4-5 years this “battle” will pretty much already be decided wrt chipmaking in China.

Ay, for sure by 2030 at current rates of development

Re: RISC-V chip technology emerges as new battleground in US-China tech war

#50

Post by sneak »

galangalalgol wrote: post #41
sneak wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve done this before, famously with encryption software. prz and djb did great work to stop it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States > After four years and one regulatory change, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that software source code was speech protected by the First Amendment and that the government's regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional. FWIW, I imagine in…

Didn't the us government recently force krakenSDR to pull down their passive radar software under these laws? That would seem to violate precedent.

According to the following link:

https://hackaday.com/2022/11/19/open-source-passive-radar-ta...

> There’s no indication that there’s been any legal action from the USA government – the team’s being proactive, as fas as we’re told.

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