5 ms·
in which way? china seems more like a toothless tiger in this regard
by mbit8 6y ago
in which way? china seems more like a toothless tiger in this regard
- ginko 6y agoAccording to this[1] 30% of Nvidia's sales are in China. Arm's numbers are similar. If China banned the sale of Nvidia GPUs or added some punitive tariff that'd hurt quite a bit. [1] https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/nvidia-diversifying-away-from-china-smart-device-platform-15141993 https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/nvidia-diversifyi...
- jackjeff 6y agoBut does China have an alternative to ARM CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs? They tried blocking Github in the past and it did not actually work well. I imagine something like blocking the production lines of multiple factories would just ensure that these are relocated elsewhere.
- nitrogen 6y agoMIPS and RISC-V for CPUs; AMD, Intel, and others for PC and embedded GPUs.
- michaelt 6y agoARM's products are predominantly IP and China has a famously lax attitude towards enforcing western-style IP laws. China wouldn't need an import ban - just a ban on paying license fees.
- adventured 6y agoThat can work both directions. If China is going to disregard all US intellectual property rights, then the US can do the same to China (which is the world's largest manufacturer and has at least as much to lose as the US does over such an approach in the coming decades as they seek to move into high value manufacturing increasingly). That means as China produces its first leading semiconductor products, US companies are free to reverse engineer them and immediately begin producing them (whether in Vietnam, Mexico, Taiwan, South Korea, India or Arizona and Texas), all without compensating China a dime. As China begins producing its first leading pharma/biotech products, US companies are free to steal all IP from those companies and sell it as their own all around the world, with zero compensation to China. And so on. China is going to become the world's largest economy and will soon have the most to lose (if they don't already). Let's see how they like it when the tables are turned.
- sounds 6y agoEscalating the tensions is not a solution; it just makes it harder down the road to find actual, workable solutions. Bluntly put, do we want a trade war with China to go hot?
- stjohnswarts 6y agoI think we do. They've had a very favored status for decades now. I didn't like a much of what Trump did, but playing hardball with China, I definitely liked that.
- dirtyid 6y agoUS has massive IP portfolio advantage, it will lose more. IP intensive sectors account for 1/3 of US GDP and affects as much employment. China is very far away from that and even if she creeps towards or surpass parity, these sectors will employ relatively smaller fraction of total population, i.e. it will affect Chinese society less - these nascent sectors may mature slower or not progress, versus US/west already heavily invested would actively regress. These scenarios have very different ramifications. It's in both US/west and Chinese interests to maintain general IP racket and deal with sectors of exception. China is obviously not going to respect IP that it is willing to license if said denied via sanctions / geopolitical posturing. Just like military R&D, lack of access = valid rationale to espionage and undermine. West sanctions arms export to China after Tiananmen, now China has massive indigenous military industry. Semiconductors seems no different. Would have been better to draw out reliance on foreign hardware.
- ksec 6y agoChina has already sunk in billions into RISC-V. So they are working on it. And it would not suspires me they will weaponise it against ARM.
- api 6y agoThe winner would be us, as we have more to choose from, and since RISC-V is open nothing much will stop non-Chinese manufacturers from also making their versions. We may see a reverse version of the familiar Chinese tech cloning in this case.
- stingraycharles 6y agoI’d imagine that a Chinese sanction on ARM chips would cause quite some trouble for all the manufacturing of electronic devices that’s happening in China, and that’s even without considering the large consumer market that China is.
- linker3000 6y agoYep, When Western Digital acquired HGST, the corporation was 'obliged' to hold off full integration for 2 years due to the requirements of the Chinese government: https://www.theregister.com/2015/10/19/mofcom_says_yes_wd_hgst_merger/ https://www.theregister.com/2015/10/19/mofcom_says_yes_wd_hg...
- mepian 6y agoChina successfully blocked the sale of NXP to Qualcomm, as said in the article. Neither company was Chinese.
- someperson 6y agoI have to agree, if companies based in China can't license ARM chips (like Rockchip, Allwinner) and can't manufacture ARM chips then what are they going to put into all their electronics from Xiaomi, Huawei etc? They'd have to start manufacturing their existing ARM design without license (good luck exporting that).
- opless 6y agoHave you noticed that there's a scramble to RISC-V?
- petra 6y agoThey could ban the manufacturing of anything with an ARM core, in China, in the extreme case.
- cwhiz 6y agoThat would be an epic own goal. The west is desperate to reduce chip manufacturing reliance on China.
- greatpatton 6y agoCan you tell me which chips are produced in PRC? (Not Tawain and TSMC)
- cwhiz 6y agoThat’s a complicated geopolitical question. SMIC produces lots of chips. But if China tries to clamp down on ARM production, it will hurt TSMC.
- nicoburns 6y agoThe chips might be mostly produced in Taiwan, but they are mostly assembled into products in China. If China banned use of ARM chips in products that would disrupt basically the entire smartphone supply chain. Of course, this would greatly harm China too. But they can still use the threat of doing without actually doing it.
- adventured 6y agoThe majority of Samsung's phones are made outside of China (eg their huge presence in Vietnam). It can obviously be done and done affordably. Samsung wouldn't do that just for fun. If Samsung can move their assembly out of China, so can Apple.
- nicoburns 6y agoI'm sure Apple could, but not overnight. I'd imagine it would take them at least a year. Which would make for a pretty major disruption.
- perfopt 6y agoNVIDIA has significant board design and assembly work in China. Plus they would not want to be locked out of a large economy. A good chink of ARM's revenue is probably already coming from China and sanctions could hurt that as well
- erikpukinskis 6y agoC-word is probably a typo, but flagging anyway.
- cbozeman 6y agoYou are truly the chink in this person's armor.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoMaybe you should invest in a dictionary instead...
- greatpatton 6y agoSotbank holds massive investment in China. For instance Softbank own 25% of Alibaba (this 25% are way more valuable than ARM). So yes they do have a large power over Softbank not complying to their decision.
- boboche 6y agoWait till China pulls a hong kong on taiwan. It will be clearer...