Wednesday, May 22nd 2019
ARM Revokes Huawei's Chip IP Licence
As the trade war between the US and China continues to unfold, we are seeing major US companies ban or stop providing service to China's technology giant Huawei. Now, it looks like the trade war has crossed the ocean and reached the UK. This time, UK based ARM Holdings, the provider of mobile chip IP for nearly all smartphones and tablets, has revoked the license it has given Huawei.
According to the BBC, ARM Holdings employees were instructed to suspend all interactions with Huawei, and to send a note informing Huawei that "due to an unfortunate situation, they were not allowed to provide support, deliver technology (whether software, code, or other updates), engage in technical discussions, or otherwise discuss technical matters with Huawei, HiSilicon or any of the other named entities." The news came from an internal ARM document the BBC has obtained.
So, what does this mean?
For starters, let's elaborate a bit on what exactly ARM's business is, and what connections they have with Huawei. ARM is the license provider of the ARM processor IP, which is used in all CPUs that are built around the ARM instruction set architecture. That means that whenever a microchip is designed using the ARM ISA, in order to be commercially sold, ARM needs to approve it. Those approvals are of course followed by a fixed fee the licensee is paying. How does that affect Huawei you might ask. A lot, actually. ARM is found in every chip Huawei designs and sells. Huawei's subsidiary, HiSilicon actually designs the chips, but that makes no difference. There exists a company called "ARM-China" but it has terminated the contract with Huawei as well.
The big questions now is, whether this termination affects existing devices sitting on retailer shelves, existing processors sitting in warehouses, chips currently being fabricated, or only future chip designs. In the worst case it could mean that Huawei is facing an immediate sales ban of all their phones or tablets using ARM processors, which will be a huge deal for the company.
What I think will happen in the short-term, is that they will most likely try to outsource chip manufacturing to someone with a license, like MediaTek (China) or Samsung (Korea), or adopt another industry standard ISA. A good candidate for that would be RISC-V, which is a (relatively) new and open architecture that requires no licensing. Having seen huge growth in China for all kinds of applications, from AI to IoT, RISC-V would be a logical decision, especially since the architecture is royalty-free.
But there is a problem. Currently, all of Huawei's efforts have been focused on Android, which is basically tailor-made for ARM chips. Android, mind you, is running on top of Linux, which has been ported to various other architectures in the past. The Linux kernel itself already supports RISC-V, and is available in distributions like Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD and NetBSD, so there exists a possibility that Huawei will build its new software and hardware stack on top of those.
Source:
BBC
According to the BBC, ARM Holdings employees were instructed to suspend all interactions with Huawei, and to send a note informing Huawei that "due to an unfortunate situation, they were not allowed to provide support, deliver technology (whether software, code, or other updates), engage in technical discussions, or otherwise discuss technical matters with Huawei, HiSilicon or any of the other named entities." The news came from an internal ARM document the BBC has obtained.
For starters, let's elaborate a bit on what exactly ARM's business is, and what connections they have with Huawei. ARM is the license provider of the ARM processor IP, which is used in all CPUs that are built around the ARM instruction set architecture. That means that whenever a microchip is designed using the ARM ISA, in order to be commercially sold, ARM needs to approve it. Those approvals are of course followed by a fixed fee the licensee is paying. How does that affect Huawei you might ask. A lot, actually. ARM is found in every chip Huawei designs and sells. Huawei's subsidiary, HiSilicon actually designs the chips, but that makes no difference. There exists a company called "ARM-China" but it has terminated the contract with Huawei as well.
The big questions now is, whether this termination affects existing devices sitting on retailer shelves, existing processors sitting in warehouses, chips currently being fabricated, or only future chip designs. In the worst case it could mean that Huawei is facing an immediate sales ban of all their phones or tablets using ARM processors, which will be a huge deal for the company.
What I think will happen in the short-term, is that they will most likely try to outsource chip manufacturing to someone with a license, like MediaTek (China) or Samsung (Korea), or adopt another industry standard ISA. A good candidate for that would be RISC-V, which is a (relatively) new and open architecture that requires no licensing. Having seen huge growth in China for all kinds of applications, from AI to IoT, RISC-V would be a logical decision, especially since the architecture is royalty-free.
But there is a problem. Currently, all of Huawei's efforts have been focused on Android, which is basically tailor-made for ARM chips. Android, mind you, is running on top of Linux, which has been ported to various other architectures in the past. The Linux kernel itself already supports RISC-V, and is available in distributions like Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD and NetBSD, so there exists a possibility that Huawei will build its new software and hardware stack on top of those.
88 Comments on ARM Revokes Huawei's Chip IP Licence
But yes, obvious security concerns are obvious. Makes one wonder how secure the reactors in China are. How many state-sponsored actors already have means to cause mass meltdowns in China? Scary thought.
Advantage of old nuclear reactors built during the Cold War being decommissioned today is there are really no systems to even hack.
On a more serious note, I really hope Huawei/China start fighting this with all the -economical- teeth and claws they have. Not really a fan of this de facto monopoly the US has on the tech world, and someone really should have a stand to this political bullying.
Couldn't have imagined I'd be backing the CPC in this life, but whaddya know...
China currently holds the number one (or did very recently) place in super computers with it's homegrown, domestic designed loongson based MIPS64 system supercomputers. Android fully supports MIPS64. If you think losing an arm license means 0 options you could not be more wrong.They don't need to. They already did just that with MIPS.
:D
Seriously, only thing this does is prevent ARM from collecting royalties...
The most recent TOP500 is a little old (few months), but pegs them third:Still respectable and useful tech.
Anyways what I hear is that it's rather energy efficient. I have no idea how the performance scales, but going from a literal 800MHz brick PC called the Fuloong (what I worked on) to a Supercomputer and Octocore MIPS notebook in only 4 years suggest the design is very flexible already.
As RTB (I think) said in the last thread, this will herald a "silicon curtain" between the [real] east and west rivaling the iron curtain of the 20th century. Locked out technologies, un-interoperable architecture, alien software, etc. Not good.
...but no, that's an overly pessimistic view of the situation. More realistic is that Huawei is put out to pasture and China pretends like it never existed. Life goes on...and China probably tries to pull the same stunt with ZTE. It took almost a decade for the west to shut the door on Huawei, contingency plans have probably been in motion for a long time already.
It is not like a country that had been nuked twice by the USA, and still has US military base and an entire Carrier Strike Group station there would say no to Trump.
www.cnbc.com/2019/05/23/panasonic-suspends-some-shipments-to-huawei-amid-us-blacklist.htmlUS's military is in and around Japan at Japan's request (off topic):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.–Japan_Status_of_Forces_Agreement
China only keeps agreements as long as it suits them to, this pattern has been repeated over and over again which in itself proves what they really have in mind. Actions in the Yellow Sea by building those "Islands" to assume more direct control over it is yet another example of just how agressive towards this end they are. Everyone that's not part of China itself is an adversary in their eyes like it or not - Expect them to play fair, ain't happening.
I have to say in all fairness the US and others aren't innocent either, that's just the truth but the overall means and goal of such is something that matters to everyone no matter where you are.
I can assure you once China gets it's claws into your system and takes over you'll change your mind.....That is if you're not part of it yourself and if you're not, you are a problem to be solved.
And they will solve it if at all possible by any means required of them.
if that would actually be so, is there a chance of for example blizzard backing out from diablo immortal? XD
or like Epic going under?
I know its far fetched but yeah.
Itd only make sense if US was more wary of other Chinese companies from now on...
If you were a business on its last legs in terms of finances. You wouldn't turn down money from foreign investors...
Tencent supposedly owns some 48.2% stake in epic. So epic still gets to do as they please to a certain extent
www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-tech-usa-consumer/huawei-unwanted-asian-shops-shun-phone-trade-ins-on-google-suspension-worries-idUSKCN1SS16O
One starting point:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
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The major difference between those companies is that both Microsoft and Facebook were in markets that their governments did not appreciate the dangers of until it was too late. The problem with Huawei is that the data collection is done at the hardware level and goes right back to the manufacturer. Just like the data that Snodden released on the States put a shudder in Western countries' to ban 5G from Huawei. Not because they are Huawei but because they are a Chinese company that has official and unofficial ties to the government. China is trying very hard to take over the world.