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Related: https://www.cnet.com/news/chip-designer-arm-ditches-huawei-because-of-trump-ban/ https://www.cnet.com/news/chip-designer-arm-ditches-huawei-b... Unsur
by AlexAltea 6y ago
Related: https://www.cnet.com/news/chip-designer-arm-ditches-huawei-because-of-trump-ban/ https://www.cnet.com/news/chip-designer-arm-ditches-huawei-b...
Unsurprisingly, this has been done by Alibaba-owned T-Head Semiconductor. The obvious result if Chinese vendors start facing obstacles to obtain licenses to manufacture ARM-based chips (or any other non-Chinese architecture).
How can anyone expect that software/hardware-bans to global superpowers can result in anything but their software/hardware-independence in the long run?
- d3ckard 6y agoThat's good though. That means they have to invest in R&D instead of depending on exploiting cheap labour to brute-force their way into the market. If they invest in R&D, they need creative people who are up to date. Such people tend to bring change to the society at large(I'd say democracy is really good for creativeness to flourish). Basically, the goal is not to expunge them from the market, the goal is to make them compete under the same rules.
- varispeed 6y agoDo you know that nothing stops them from rounding up engineers are move them to a camp with an order to develop certain technology in exchange for bread and water and that their families will live? Soviet Union for example used to build entire cities where they crammed engineers from all over the Union, however rather than being exploited, the engineers had special privileges. But that easily could change with a stroke of a pen of a dictator.
- d3ckard 6y agoIt's hard for people to be creative under pressure. Half the work in management of software companies is managing employee stress so they can do their work efficiently. My point is precisely that to get creativeness, you have to create right environment and that environment leads the way to less authoritarian rule.
- varispeed 6y agoThat's true, but if they throw enough people at it (they have plenty), something eventually will come up... Probably the result for them will be having a group of engineers that can be creative under extreme pressure and since they struggle with over-population, the loss of engineers and their families which couldn't keep up would have some positives for them as well.
- sangnoir 6y ago> It's hard for people to be creative under pressure. How is it then, that inventions seem to accelerate during times of war? WWII alone saw the invention of, or massive improvements to rocketry, the jet engine, cruise missiles, Radar, and the Atomic bomb
- oblio 6y agoThey don't, it just seems that way because everything that can be used for war is used. There's a mad rush to productize existing inventions. People tend to focus on wars during discussions about history so their time periods are overemphasized.
- numpad0 6y agoThere is sense of mystique associated with the Soviet Union but the best they managed to build were AKs, Soyuz, Chernobyl, all interesting and robust in its own ways but not all that competitive in terms of performance, so,
- kls 6y agoI understand the sentiment you are trying to express and to some degree I agree but I would argue that the AK is a really bad example that actually is probably the greatest example of the Soviet simple utilitarian technology. Out of all of the battle rifles designed (The big three being the AR, AK and FAL/SCAR) the AK has gone under the least amount of revisions, the biggest revision being the AK-74 where the Soviets decided to go to a smaller caliber to compete with the introduction of the AR and more importantly, really the only revision functionally was the 74 went to a short stroke vs the 47's long stroke. The AK platform has not only survive the test of time, but is probably the most reliable battle rifle built, it is a testament to the genius of Kalashnikov that the AK produced today is functionally the same design as built in 1947. It is also very emblematic of the Soviet thought process in design.
- agurk 6y ago> of all of the battle rifles designed (The big three being the AR, AK and FAL/SCAR) To be pedantic about terminology the Kalashnikov family of rifles are generally not Battle Rifles. Of your listed examples only the FN FAL and some models of the FN SCAR are considered Battle Rifles. Battle Rifles as a term came out in the 80s to distinguish between autoloading rifles soldiers had fielded since WW2 that weren't assault rifles. Assault rifles are defined as a selective fire rifle using an intermediate cartridge with a detachable magazine. An intermediate cartridge being one that is more powerful than a pistol but less so than a traditional rifle cartridge. Germany pioneered, or at least mass-adopted, this concept with the 7.92 Kurz [short] round in WW2. The USSR ran with this concept - through seeing the STG-44 (German 7.92 kurz assault rifle), capturing some German weapon designers and following the train of thought of the period. This ended up with the AK-47, then later variants on this pattern. NATO countries generally also wanted to do this, see the .280 British - the original cartridge of the FAL (and the EM-2). With one big exception - the US Army Ordnance Corps pushed for adoption of a traditional cartridge, and NATO bowed (in part as the US agreed to adopt the FAL) and everyone ended up with the full powered 7.62 NATO round. Despite pushing for it, the US soon found out that having a high powered cartridge (and the sort of weapon that goes with it) wasn't what they actually needed, and they chose the 5.56 NATO round as used in the original M16 rifle (AR-15 platform). The rest of NATO caught up soon enough, often with platforms based of the AR-18/AR-180. This left them in the 80's with a new type of rifle that we would call an Assault Rifle but they also needed to refer to the (more) modern rifles they'd been fielding since the 2nd World War. This resulted in the term Battle Rifle being created to refer to a self-loading rifle using a full power cartridge with a slew of (optional) features like full auto (the SLR [UK's inch pattern FAL] was semi-auto only), pistol grips (the M14 had a traditional stock) and the like. The 7.62 NATO calibre versions of the FN SCAR are generally considered Battle Rifles, whereas the 5.56 NATO versions aren't.
- ddingus 6y agoThey can also round them up and let them live lavishly. There still are walls, limits, secrets of course. Just saying there are any number of ways to advance and they are all available to a sovereign willing to get after advancement. Size matters too. China has size enough for these things to be true.
- coldtea 6y ago>That's good though. That means they have to invest in R&D instead of depending on exploiting cheap labour to brute-force their way into the market. Using cheap labor, copying foreign products, and bypassing copyright worked for the US, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan when they were in their own economic rise, and thus far has been working for China. >Basically, the goal is not to expunge them from the market, the goal is to make them compete under the same rules. What "level field" rules would that be? The European powers used 2/3rds of the world as colonial resources, the US was founded upon the land grab from the native Americans, and benefited from slavery for centuries, and on top of it it uses it diplomatic and military power to gain favorable trade deals, topple and influence local governments to gain them (from banana republics in L.A. to Asia and Europe), and control resources and trade routes.
- sharpneli 6y ago> Using cheap labor, copying foreign products, and bypassing copyright worked for the US, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan when they were in their own economic rise, and thus far has been working for China. That's what makes the arguments from USA so amusing. I mean they basically nicked, against British law, the designs how to mass manufacture textiles. Is US willing to repay, with interest, all the economic damage that did to British industry? Same with all the later patents. US basically started respecting patents of others when they got to the point that they had more of their own. So only when it was profitable. It's basically "It's fine when I do it but now that I'm the big dominant power everyone else must stay in line and let me stay dominant" Don't get me wrong. I'm happy that US did what it did. I'm also happy that the other countries did what they did, because in the end we all benefit more from the countries being more developed than being less developed by "following the rules". Once China gets bit more R&D of their own they will start following the rules simply because it's mostly reciprocal.
- coldtea 6y ago>I mean they basically nicked, against British law, the designs how to mass manufacture textiles. And used slaves to pick the cotton! Talk about "cheap labor". It might sound quaint now, but textiles then where one of the engines of industry growth. The world didn't have mass textiles/clothes production until the industrial revolution. It's like "Yeah, my ancestors bootstrapped this country doing that, and I benefit massively from them doing so, but you shouldn't do it now to bootstrap your country's economy, because I'm all about being legit now - well, aside when I'm not, but we're talking about you now, not me. Heck, no I ain't giving any of those ill granpa's gains back either" - aka "kicking the ladder".
- dkjaudyeqooe 6y ago> exploiting cheap labour to brute-force their way into the market. Do you mean like slavery in the United States?
- literallycancer 6y agoSlavery resulted in zero pressure to innovate and industrialize and was the number 1 reason why the South had a garbage economy.
- kls 6y agowas the number 1 reason why the South had a garbage economy I am not sure what the implication of garbage economy is, but the south was fairly wealthy antebellum. So much so that they supported a large tax base for the federal government which they resented, it lead to the nullification crisis in 1832 and started the long road to the civil war. Southern universities where also considered to be some of the best in the nation pre-war. If you where referring to an economy based on the backs of slaves then yes it could be labeled a garbage economy but if it is in reference to the poverty seen across the south in modern day, the antebellum south was a totally different economy and honestly an entirely foreign culture a culture that was decimated (the bad and good parts) in Reconstruction.
- zozbot234 6y ago> the south was fairly wealthy antebellum. Not so much when you properly account for the enslaved population. It's just not sensible to only count free citizens, that's clearly a misleading impression.
- ant6n 6y agoLet’s make a compromise and count three-fifths.
- kls 6y agoIt is not a misleading impression, the south as a territory was fairly wealthy for much the same reason that todays California is fairly wealthy, that does not mean that the wealth distribution was good, nor does it mean that I advocate for a return to that system as it was abhorrible. The south was a shining example of wealth concentration and the ability to control that it brings. But economically it was strong, so strong that they had a slogan that cotton was king. The implication was that the European powers and their need for the souths exports would drag them into the war on the souths side. It was prides folly to think ]their economic hand was that strong, and they certainly overplayed it, but it was strong and that is why they felt they could play it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- simonh 6y agoIs it democracy that is good for creativeness, or capitalism? I think what China has shown is that democracy and capitalism can be decoupled. Ive always believed that capitalism and democracy are synergistic forms of freedom. The individual freedom to own property and trade with each other on the one hand, and our freedom as sovereign individuals to have a say in the organisation of society. The CCP has established that these do not depend on each other.
- oblio 6y agoIt's much too early to say. The average Chinese citizen is poorer than the average Romanian (a relatively poor country and a democracy), let alone the average American. China's economy is big because there are a lot of Chinese, not because the average individual is doing so well.
- varispeed 6y agoThe problem is that restrictions are not thought through. If they were banned from using Android altogether, they wouldn't be able (legally) to port it on that architecture in the first place. The same goes with the RISC-V as well - the law could be written to allow only certain countries to use it freely. These obstacles are kind of similar to patents. When you discover something and then you learn someone was first to patent it, you have to invent your own thing, so in this regard these embargos are just an inconvenience rather than a real instrument to force another country to behave in a civilised way. I wonder how authors of RISC-V must feel when their architecture is being appropriated by a country that violates human rights. Is that in the spirit of the free license?
- zamadatix 6y agoIf a country isn't willing to honor human rights why do you think they'll honor some foreign group's license.txt when it comes down to it?
- varispeed 6y agoThe products containing code or chips that are not allowed could be incorporated in the same regime as illegal drugs - so trading or possessing a device with such operating system or technology could be deemed illegal.
- zamadatix 6y agoI'm more talking the 1.4 billion people in China that need CPUs when you try to tell them they can't use ARM or RISC or etc. not the 330 million in the US that want something manufactured. We've already import restricted Android devices from e.g. Huawei, it has had no impact to their need for CPU designs for them though.
- varispeed 6y agoSo if it is their internal market, because of how big they are, there is nothing that you can do unfortunately. Only impose further sanctions that will eventually escalate to a war. In that sense China won, because no country can afford to stand up against them in a meaningful way.
- dkjaudyeqooe 6y agoThe irony is that the Chinese strategy is the make the West dependent on it for various goods, while the US strategy is to ensure China is not dependent on it for the key goods the US has a competitive advantage over. Given that necessity is the mother of invention you can imagine that with China's economies of scale and cheap labor that they will have a competitive advantage sooner than later and the US will become dependent on them for advanced semiconductors.
- phkahler 6y ago>> the US will become dependent on them for advanced semiconductors. The US is already dependent on them. Some debate weather Taiwan is part of China, but either way the US is very dependent on TSMC and has lost its lead in semiconductors.
- bluGill 6y agoChina is dependent on the US for food. China was able to use Brazil for the past few years to work around Trump's trade policies (lets not get into that issue), but Brazil depleted their stores to do so, and in some cases had to import food from the US to replace the the food they exported the China.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoThat's a good thing though. More processors/hardware means more competition and it spurs innovation as opposed to one state committing espionage to get another state's industrial R&D! It leads both to being more independent in case of a war between them which is almost inevitable at this point (probably a proxy war)
- thereddaikon 6y agoISA's are to hardware what API's are to software. They simply provide a spec to conform to. ISA's say little to nothing about the hardware implementation itself. That's the real value and something that every firm that has CPU IP guards. And sadly China isn't lacking in stolen valuable CPU IP. The Chinese branch of ARM went rogue last year. I think its a safe assumption that any sensitive information they may have had is no in the hands of the CCP and will be used to its full potential.
- AtlasBarfed 6y agoYeah, will NVidia's acquisition result in a real push to RISC-V?