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China already has an (uncompetitive) alternative stack, covering silicon to operating system. The problem is with building a competitive stack, Huawei can't ge

China already has an (uncompetitive) alternative stack, covering silicon to operating system. The problem is with building a competitive stack, Huawei can't get access to a 7nm fab in China, nor is their talent skilled in working with the limitations of said newer process, which kneecaps their ability to build chips competitive with Qualcomm and Apple. Huawei can build 7nm chips at TSMC, but due to their ARM license revocation and Qualcomm's inability to license them cellular patents under FRAND during this dispute, TSMC is unlikely to fab IP infringing chips. If TSMC were to fab these chips, their other 7nm clients (primarily Apple, followed by ARM licensees Qualcomm & AMD (which uses ARM TrustZone)) would all be in an uproar as ARM would likely prohibit the use of their designs at TSMC fabs. Wrt China building their own 7nm fab, it is very unlikely they will get it off the ground in the next few years. Only TSMC & Samsung have succeeded in this, Intel, Global Foundries (formerly AMD) and many others have spent tens of billions and half a decade trying to build better than 14nm processes to no avail.

devereaux 7y ago
> VThe problem is with building a competitive stack, Huawei can't get access to a 7nm fab in China yet > Huawei can build 7nm chips at TSMC, but due to their ARM l ARM -> RISC, as ARM is not the only game in town. For example, at the moment I am having a lot of fun with a Unielec u7621 board (2 mini PCIe, mSata and USB3 with hardware accelerated NAT to handle 1Gbps) that costed me about $45 : https://openwrt.org/toh/unielec/u7621-06 https://openwrt.org/toh/unielec/u7621-06 I would love to see MIPS64 SOCs with a few GBs of RAM to replace my raspberries
- metildaa 7y ago
  This is a pretty weak rebuttal, the MT7621 based board you cite has two MIPS 24k CPUs, straight out of 2005: https://wikidevi.com/wiki/MIPS_24K https://wikidevi.com/wiki/MIPS_24K All of the MT7621"s speed is from ASICs that accelerate NAT & WPA2, without that silicon external to the CPU, any kind of crypto would slowly chug along. More competitive offerings like the OrangePi PC Plus ($19) and FriendlyARM boards based on Allwinner chips offer much nore performance for the dollar, but these are literally foriegn IP blocks Allwinner licensed, glued together and sent off to a 45n or 28nm fab to have manufactured. Most of the work Allwinner did for these chips was on a trashcan ready, buggy board support package.
  - devereaux 7y ago
    > the MT7621 based board you cite has two MIPS 24k CPUs, straight out of 2005 Yes, I'm having a lot offun with a 14 year old CPU, so I want to see a modern one, if possible with free software GPU support like for the Mali > without that silicon external to the CPU, any kind of crypto would slowly chug along Which is exactly why I want to see MIPS64 that can do all that without hardware acceleration - and much more with it.
    - metildaa 7y ago
      > I want to see a modern one, if possible with free software GPU support like for the Mali The Mali drivers that were just mainlined last month aren't necessarily feature complete like Intel, Via or AMD GPU drivers. Mali is licensed from ARM, which would be a showstopper for US embargoed companies. > Which is exactly why I want to see MIPS64 that can do all that without hardware acceleration - and much more with it. If MIPS64 were competitive on price, we would have a plethora of tablets & boards based on it. Currently, dated Mips 24k cores are a $0.10 afterthought that is used to boot and initialize the dedicated ASICs. We've started seeing ARM cores eat the router market though, they're likely delivering more performance for that $0.10.
      - devereaux 7y ago
        I care more about freedom than performance here. Not feature complete is fine as long as it works for what I do, and that I can tweak it to do more. Eventually, something that is not licensed from a western company (or which can't be protected by IP law) but that is fast enough for most uses will also become a $0.10 afterthought. The mips24k is remarkable in that you can comfortably run a linux kernel with a lot of userland utilities and even text mode software -- just what we used to run on Linux computers many years ago!
        metildaa 7y ago
        MIPS is a product of Wave Designs in California. We're years away from a non-western influenced CPU being commercially available.
ngcc_hk 7y ago
And also the software market (which others except apple and even that). Google play is off limit. It is still the world is free trade to china but not other way round. With that strategy agreed by ours, china will win forever. QED.
- metildaa 7y ago
  China has a very distorted market, which has limited Alibaba and Tencent's ability to expand beyond China. The lack of an app store is a problem unique to China that led to WeChat and similar becoming omnibus apps, doing many things moderately well. This isn't a problem in most other countries, as our govts don't block Google Play and FDroid.

devereaux 7y ago

> VThe problem is with building a competitive stack, Huawei can't get access to a 7nm fab in China yet > Huawei can build 7nm chips at TSMC, but due to their ARM l ARM -> RISC, as ARM is not the only game in town. For example, at the moment I am having a lot of fun with a Unielec u7621 board (2 mini PCIe, mSata and USB3 with hardware accelerated NAT to handle 1Gbps) that costed me about $45 : https://openwrt.org/toh/unielec/u7621-06 https://openwrt.org/toh/unielec/u7621-06 I would love to see MIPS64 SOCs with a few GBs of RAM to replace my raspberries

metildaa 7y ago
This is a pretty weak rebuttal, the MT7621 based board you cite has two MIPS 24k CPUs, straight out of 2005: https://wikidevi.com/wiki/MIPS_24K https://wikidevi.com/wiki/MIPS_24K All of the MT7621"s speed is from ASICs that accelerate NAT & WPA2, without that silicon external to the CPU, any kind of crypto would slowly chug along. More competitive offerings like the OrangePi PC Plus ($19) and FriendlyARM boards based on Allwinner chips offer much nore performance for the dollar, but these are literally foriegn IP blocks Allwinner licensed, glued together and sent off to a 45n or 28nm fab to have manufactured. Most of the work Allwinner did for these chips was on a trashcan ready, buggy board support package.
- devereaux 7y ago
  > the MT7621 based board you cite has two MIPS 24k CPUs, straight out of 2005 Yes, I'm having a lot offun with a 14 year old CPU, so I want to see a modern one, if possible with free software GPU support like for the Mali > without that silicon external to the CPU, any kind of crypto would slowly chug along Which is exactly why I want to see MIPS64 that can do all that without hardware acceleration - and much more with it.
  - metildaa 7y ago
    > I want to see a modern one, if possible with free software GPU support like for the Mali The Mali drivers that were just mainlined last month aren't necessarily feature complete like Intel, Via or AMD GPU drivers. Mali is licensed from ARM, which would be a showstopper for US embargoed companies. > Which is exactly why I want to see MIPS64 that can do all that without hardware acceleration - and much more with it. If MIPS64 were competitive on price, we would have a plethora of tablets & boards based on it. Currently, dated Mips 24k cores are a $0.10 afterthought that is used to boot and initialize the dedicated ASICs. We've started seeing ARM cores eat the router market though, they're likely delivering more performance for that $0.10.
    - devereaux 7y ago
      I care more about freedom than performance here. Not feature complete is fine as long as it works for what I do, and that I can tweak it to do more. Eventually, something that is not licensed from a western company (or which can't be protected by IP law) but that is fast enough for most uses will also become a $0.10 afterthought. The mips24k is remarkable in that you can comfortably run a linux kernel with a lot of userland utilities and even text mode software -- just what we used to run on Linux computers many years ago!
      - metildaa 7y ago
        MIPS is a product of Wave Designs in California. We're years away from a non-western influenced CPU being commercially available.

ngcc_hk 7y ago

And also the software market (which others except apple and even that). Google play is off limit. It is still the world is free trade to china but not other way round. With that strategy agreed by ours, china will win forever. QED.

metildaa 7y ago
China has a very distorted market, which has limited Alibaba and Tencent's ability to expand beyond China. The lack of an app store is a problem unique to China that led to WeChat and similar becoming omnibus apps, doing many things moderately well. This isn't a problem in most other countries, as our govts don't block Google Play and FDroid.