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There is an ongoing fight between ARM China and ARM HQ, and the CEO of ARM China simply refused to accept her dismissal. [1] I guess this is a political point (
by bakuninsbart 6y ago
There is an ongoing fight between ARM China and ARM HQ, and the CEO of ARM China simply refused to accept her dismissal. [1] I guess this is a political point (and I'm sorry), but it might be that ARM China simply refuses to acknowledge US sanctions in the future.
> At this point, if I was China, I would invest heavily in RISC-V based cores, and openly release highly competitive designs.
That's actually exactly what they are doing![2] Alibaba claims to have developed the most powerful RISC-V processor up to date [3] and Huawei has long been rumoured to be working on their own design.
[1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/China-tech/Arm-China-asks-Beijing-to-intervene-in-row-with-UK-parent https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/China-tech/Arm-China-asks-B...
[2] https://cntechpost.com/2020/07/25/risc-v-processor-designed-by-five-chinese-university-students-successfully-tape-out/ https://cntechpost.com/2020/07/25/risc-v-processor-designed-...
[3] https://www.nextplatform.com/2020/08/21/alibaba-on-the-bleeding-edge-of-risc-v-with-xt910/ https://www.nextplatform.com/2020/08/21/alibaba-on-the-bleed...
- jiggawatts 6y agoIt never occurred to me that a division of a company could just... secede from the parent company. What could the parent company even do if something like this occurred across less-then-friendly national boundaries? Could the parent company sue to force the errant division to close? In what court? It's bizarre that it's not more common...
- riffraff 6y agoit's even more bizarre: Wu controls Arm China because he's physically in control of a seal that gives him power to sign documents with the company authority[0]. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-07-01/main-street-doesn-t-want-weird-loans https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-07-01/main-s... look for "Who controls a company?"
- jsjohnst 6y agoThis is so comical and yet so expected when you give arbitrary importance to things like that.
- oehtXRwMkIs 6y agoIt's a cultural thing, though it does seem a bit extreme in this case.
- mtgx 6y agoCouldn't Arm publicly ignore that seal of authority? Kind of like when a certificate expires and you revoke it? I don't understand how the guy controls anything. Even if say he has all the designs copied in China, Arm Global could just declare those are stolen designs and anyone that uses it without paying the global company directly would be in violation of that and could be sued (in other countries, if not China). I think the only reason this comical and absurd situation continues is only because - like many tech companies before it - Arm continues to hope for bread crumbs in the "huge Chinese market" and accept being at the mercy of the CCP, even though this has proven to be a disastrous strategy for most other companies that thought like this. In the end, the government just gives your tech to the local companies, that end up dominating there, and maybe even globally later on, with your tech.
- ksec 6y ago>Couldn't Arm publicly ignore that seal of authority? Kind of like when a certificate expires and you revoke it? They did. And in other for a new Seal to be approved, it required something else ( I cant remember what it was ) which was also in the hand of the CEO. So in China under their law ARM China is perfectly fine and there is nothing they can / would do. ( Not that they are trying to help ) ARM UK and US can't do much apart from not supplying future design to ARM China. I should note all of these was before UK and China's tension got worse.
- meroes 6y agoreminds me of bearer shares
- danudey 6y agoFor those not familiar with them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearer_instrument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearer_instrument Most commonly know example is "bearer bonds", which are often used in heist movies and similar films, including, in the original script, in Ferris Bueller's Day Off[1]. [1] https://goat.com.au/ferris-buellers-day-off/today-i-learned-a-deleted-scene-wouldve-turned-ferris-bueller-day-off-into-a-much-darker-movie/ https://goat.com.au/ferris-buellers-day-off/today-i-learned-...
- StavrosK 6y agoNow that you mention it, it is weird. However, I'm guessing the two divisions are very integrated (especially in things like sales), so a division seceding would have to set up its own sales pipelines and basically become a competitor. I don't know how easy that is, which probably explains why it's not more common.
- TazeTSchnitzel 6y agoLocal branches seceding or being de-facto severed from their corporate parents happened several times in WW2.
- brazzy 6y agoAfterwards as well: https://www.handelsblatt.com/english/companies/carl-zeiss-an-optics-makers-story-is-a-lens-on-german-history/23780306.html?ticket=ST-960319-bAEdL1c4ZrTkCgWGaZDS-ap4 https://www.handelsblatt.com/english/companies/carl-zeiss-an...
- Macha 6y agoAs a Chinese subsidiary of a western company, isn't there a requirement that Arm China is 51% owned by Chinese owners. If the Chinese government pushed the matter, I imagine those 51% would have to vote the way China wants, so the parent company's mere 49% ownership counts for nothing if China wants otherwise
- DiogenesKynikos 6y agoNo, there is no such requirement. However, Softbank decided to sell a majority of its operations in China to Chinese investors in 2018.[1] It appears that fear of US sanctions motivated the sale. 1. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Softbanks-Arm-China-JV-to-begin-operation-amid-trade-tensions https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Softbanks-Arm-Chi...
- DiogenesKynikos 6y agoInteresting that my entirely factual and accurate comment, with a source, is downvoted so heavily.
- ksec 6y agoMy guess is that they dont read the source, they just thought you were taking about ARM as a whole and mixing up with the recent news of Nvidia.
- evancox100 6y agoOther commenter is wrong, ARM the UK company only owns 49% of the JV, other Chinese companies hold the rest. Supposedly ARM + at least one other shareholder were in agreement about firing the JV CEO, meeting the 50% threshold. But I think you are right, if China really had an issue with something, what could you do?
- gertrunde 6y agoSomewhat reminds me of Coca-Cola in Germany around World War 2.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoThis sounds interesting, is there a good place I can read more?
- badwolf 6y agohttps://www.businessinsider.com/how-coca-cola-invented-fanta-in-nazi-germany-2019-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-coca-cola-invented-fanta...
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoThank you!
- derefr 6y agoDuring WWI, the US took control of the US-local division of the British-owned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marconi_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marconi_Company, reorganizing it into what would be known as the Radio Corporation of America — RCA.
- LostTrackHowM 6y agoIt never occurred to me that a division of a company could just... secede from the parent company. Typical in very corrupt countries. I grew up in one. People who lead big/important corporations are always part of the ruling party. And they do everything they can to stay in power. And another data point, I was working for a startup one of who's investors was Sequoia, in a meeting a person from Sequoia advised us on some cloud company we can use, mentioned they are also investors in it. We asked about their China division, and he told us the China division while technically part of the same company, is in practice a complete separate thing and we shouldn't trust it at all.
- throwaway4good 6y agoDo you have any info on Huawei's rumoured own processor design?
- bakuninsbart 6y agoSo Huawei is a premium member of RISC-V International[1], and probably one of the drivers of their move to Switzerland. They repeatedly threatened to move to RISC-V [2], but so far, their semiconductor subsidiary always licensed from ARM.[3] I personally expect some announcement to be made late this year or early 2021. Huawei in general waits very long before it announces products or services, perk of not being a publicly traded company. Just as an interesting example, they seem to be developing a programming language and want to release it early next year, but no public announcement of any kind has been made yet. [4] [1] https://riscv.org/membership/members/ https://riscv.org/membership/members/ [2] http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201908/23/WS5d5fe368a310cf3e355679b1.html http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201908/23/WS5d5fe368a310cf3e3... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiSilicon#Smartphone_application_processors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiSilicon#Smartphone_applicati... [4] https://cntechpost.com/2020/09/13/huawei-rumored-to-be-developing-its-own-programming-language-char/ https://cntechpost.com/2020/09/13/huawei-rumored-to-be-devel...
- throwaway4good 6y agoOk. So they seem to think that RISC-V is safe from US sanctions.
- GregarianChild 6y agoThe Alibaba RISC-V processor was announced at ICSA'20 [1] if you want more detail. I don't know about Huawei, I imagine that all Chinese processor companies have backup plans for when they are prevented from using Arm -- the writing has been on the wall for a while ... Moving the RISC-V foundation to Switzerland and setting up Arm China as a separate entity were all part of the preparation. [1] https://conferences.computer.org/isca/pdfs/ISCA2020-4QlDegUf3fKiwUXfV0KdCm/466100a052/466100a052.pdf https://conferences.computer.org/isca/pdfs/ISCA2020-4QlDegUf...
- tw04 6y ago>but it might be that ARM China simply refuses to acknowledge US sanctions in the future. And then what? Sure they can sell last-generation chips within China - but they won't have access to any R&D and anything they try to export will be confiscated.
- chaosharmonic 6y agoHuawei also openly stated after the trade ban first started that this was their Plan B if ARM licensing were to go sideways. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/huawei-risc-v-ai-processors-ascend-us,40238.html https://www.tomshardware.com/news/huawei-risc-v-ai-processor...