5 ms·

Does anyone know what restrictions have actually been proposed? Media reporting on it is uselessly vague.

BizarroLand 3y ago
Looks like what they want is to stop Americans from collaborating on RISC-V with any PRC company: Oct 6 (Reuters) - In a new front in the U.S.-China tech war, President Joe Biden's administration is facing pressure from some lawmakers to restrict American companies from working on a freely available chip technology widely used in China - a move that could upend how the global technology industry collaborates across borders. At issue is RISC-V, pronounced "risk five," an open-source technology that competes with costly proprietary technology from British semiconductor and software design company Arm Holdings (O9Ty.F). RISC-V can be used as a key ingredient for anything from a smartphone chip to advanced processors for artificial intelligence. Some lawmakers - including two Republican House of Representatives committee chairmen, Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Democratic Senator Mark Warner - are urging Biden's administration to take action regarding RISC-V, citing national security grounds. The lawmakers expressed concerns that Beijing is exploiting a culture of open collaboration among American companies to advance its own semiconductor industry, which could erode the current U.S. lead in the chip field and help China modernize its military. Their comments represent the first major effort to put constraints on work by U.S. companies on RISC-V. Representative Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House select committee on China, said in a statement to Reuters that the Commerce Department needs to "require any American person or company to receive an export license prior to engaging with PRC (People's Republic of China) entities on RISC-V technology." Such calls to regulate RISC-V are the latest in the U.S.-China battle over chip technology that escalated last year with sweeping export restrictions that the Biden administration has told China it will update this month. "The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is abusing RISC-V to get around U.S. dominance of the intellectual property needed to design chips. U.S. persons should not be supporting a PRC tech transfer strategy that serves to degrade U.S. export control laws," Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement to Reuters. McCaul said he wants action from the Bureau of Industry and Security, the part of the Commerce Department that oversees export-control regulations, and would pursue legislation if that does not materialize. The bureau "is constantly reviewing the technology landscape and threat environment, and continually assessing how best to apply our export control policies to protect national security and safeguard core technologies," a Commerce Department spokesperson said in a statement. "Communist China is developing open-source chip architecture to dodge our sanctions and grow its chip industry," Rubio said in a statement to Reuters. "If we don't broaden our export controls to include this threat, China will one day surpass us as the global leader in chip design." "I fear that our export-control laws are not equipped to deal with the challenge of open-source software - whether in advanced semiconductor designs like RISC-V or in the area of AI - and a dramatic paradigm shift is needed," Warner said in a statement to Reuters. RISC-V is overseen by a Swiss-based nonprofit foundation that coordinates efforts among for-profit companies to develop the technology. The RISC-V technology came from labs at the University of California, Berkeley, and later benefited from funding by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Its creators have compared it to Ethernet, USB and even the internet, which are freely available and draw on contributions from around the world to make innovation faster and cheaper.
- whelp_24 3y ago
  Are these senators invested in ARM?
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    These senators believe the Earth is 6000 years old. Their worldview doesn't get any more rational from there.
    - germandiago 3y ago
      I am not american but I would assume this is just mocking.
      - CamperBob2 3y ago
        It's not.
      - burnished 3y ago
        You would want that to be the case yeah. The search terms would be 'marco rubio' and 'young earther', I believe.
        CamperBob2 3y ago
        Not to mention, second in line to the Presidency: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mike-johnson-son-monitor-porn-intake-covenant-eyes-1234870634/?ICID=ref_fark https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mike-joh...
        BizarroLand 3y ago
        Third. The VP is second in line
        CamperBob2 3y ago
bunnie 3y ago
The concern is that the restrictions would follow the pattern of existing rules around semiconductor equipment and fabricated chips [1]. They are fairly broad and stipulate that US persons cannot transfer technology to any company on an entity list. iirc there was a clarification to the rule that also put a burden on US persons to confirm that they aren't working with a trading front or shell company for the listed entities, which makes any interaction potentially hazardous, because how are you even supposed to check for that? Note that violations of these rules can "include up to 20 years of imprisonment and up to $1 million in fines per violation, or both" [2]. And the use of "US persons" language means that it's not just companies, it's individual developers too. If you read the text of the rules, they restrict any kind of technology transfer to these companies. In the case of selling fabrication equipment, that's...fairly clear cut. Don't sell stuff to people on the list, and your deal was probably a few million dollars anyways so you can afford lawyers to research if you're dealing with a shell company. But the concern is for RISC-V "technology transfer", what happens if you push to a git repository, and...someone from one of these entities pulls your commits? Are you now liable? What if you give a lecture on RISC-V, and someone from one of these entities was in attendance? Or perhaps you're in charge of crafting an IP strategy for your SoC company. If you pick RISC-V, the ambiguous and changing rules around who you can license your products to is problematic; a client you have today could end up being banned tomorrow. Whereas if you license an ARM core, you don't have to worry about going to jail. It then becomes a no-brainer to just license the ARM core. Basically, the concern is they will copy/paste the existing rules that are somewhat more tightly confined because they apply to atoms, but instead insert language referring to bits and ideas. [1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/10/13/2022-21658/implementation-of-additional-export-controls-certain-advanced-computing-and-semiconductor https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/10/13/2022-21... [2] https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/enforcement/oee/penalties https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/enforcement/oee/penalties
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
Mostly ones that defy constitutional guarantees of free speech.

Looks like what they want is to stop Americans from collaborating on RISC-V with any PRC company: Oct 6 (Reuters) - In a new front in the U.S.-China tech war, President Joe Biden's administration is facing pressure from some lawmakers to restrict American companies from working on a freely available chip technology widely used in China - a move that could upend how the global technology industry collaborates across borders. At issue is RISC-V, pronounced "risk five," an open-source technology that competes with costly proprietary technology from British semiconductor and software design company Arm Holdings (O9Ty.F). RISC-V can be used as a key ingredient for anything from a smartphone chip to advanced processors for artificial intelligence. Some lawmakers - including two Republican House of Representatives committee chairmen, Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Democratic Senator Mark Warner - are urging Biden's administration to take action regarding RISC-V, citing national security grounds. The lawmakers expressed concerns that Beijing is exploiting a culture of open collaboration among American companies to advance its own semiconductor industry, which could erode the current U.S. lead in the chip field and help China modernize its military. Their comments represent the first major effort to put constraints on work by U.S. companies on RISC-V. Representative Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House select committee on China, said in a statement to Reuters that the Commerce Department needs to "require any American person or company to receive an export license prior to engaging with PRC (People's Republic of China) entities on RISC-V technology." Such calls to regulate RISC-V are the latest in the U.S.-China battle over chip technology that escalated last year with sweeping export restrictions that the Biden administration has told China it will update this month. "The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is abusing RISC-V to get around U.S. dominance of the intellectual property needed to design chips. U.S. persons should not be supporting a PRC tech transfer strategy that serves to degrade U.S. export control laws," Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement to Reuters. McCaul said he wants action from the Bureau of Industry and Security, the part of the Commerce Department that oversees export-control regulations, and would pursue legislation if that does not materialize. The bureau "is constantly reviewing the technology landscape and threat environment, and continually assessing how best to apply our export control policies to protect national security and safeguard core technologies," a Commerce Department spokesperson said in a statement. "Communist China is developing open-source chip architecture to dodge our sanctions and grow its chip industry," Rubio said in a statement to Reuters. "If we don't broaden our export controls to include this threat, China will one day surpass us as the global leader in chip design." "I fear that our export-control laws are not equipped to deal with the challenge of open-source software - whether in advanced semiconductor designs like RISC-V or in the area of AI - and a dramatic paradigm shift is needed," Warner said in a statement to Reuters. RISC-V is overseen by a Swiss-based nonprofit foundation that coordinates efforts among for-profit companies to develop the technology. The RISC-V technology came from labs at the University of California, Berkeley, and later benefited from funding by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Its creators have compared it to Ethernet, USB and even the internet, which are freely available and draw on contributions from around the world to make innovation faster and cheaper.

whelp_24 3y ago
Are these senators invested in ARM?
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  These senators believe the Earth is 6000 years old. Their worldview doesn't get any more rational from there.
  - germandiago 3y ago
    I am not american but I would assume this is just mocking.
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      It's not.
    - burnished 3y ago
      You would want that to be the case yeah. The search terms would be 'marco rubio' and 'young earther', I believe.
      - CamperBob2 3y ago
        Not to mention, second in line to the Presidency: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mike-johnson-son-monitor-porn-intake-covenant-eyes-1234870634/?ICID=ref_fark https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mike-joh...
        BizarroLand 3y ago
        Third. The VP is second in line
        CamperBob2 3y ago

bunnie 3y ago

The concern is that the restrictions would follow the pattern of existing rules around semiconductor equipment and fabricated chips [1]. They are fairly broad and stipulate that US persons cannot transfer technology to any company on an entity list. iirc there was a clarification to the rule that also put a burden on US persons to confirm that they aren't working with a trading front or shell company for the listed entities, which makes any interaction potentially hazardous, because how are you even supposed to check for that? Note that violations of these rules can "include up to 20 years of imprisonment and up to $1 million in fines per violation, or both" [2]. And the use of "US persons" language means that it's not just companies, it's individual developers too. If you read the text of the rules, they restrict any kind of technology transfer to these companies. In the case of selling fabrication equipment, that's...fairly clear cut. Don't sell stuff to people on the list, and your deal was probably a few million dollars anyways so you can afford lawyers to research if you're dealing with a shell company. But the concern is for RISC-V "technology transfer", what happens if you push to a git repository, and...someone from one of these entities pulls your commits? Are you now liable? What if you give a lecture on RISC-V, and someone from one of these entities was in attendance? Or perhaps you're in charge of crafting an IP strategy for your SoC company. If you pick RISC-V, the ambiguous and changing rules around who you can license your products to is problematic; a client you have today could end up being banned tomorrow. Whereas if you license an ARM core, you don't have to worry about going to jail. It then becomes a no-brainer to just license the ARM core. Basically, the concern is they will copy/paste the existing rules that are somewhat more tightly confined because they apply to atoms, but instead insert language referring to bits and ideas. [1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/10/13/2022-21658/implementation-of-additional-export-controls-certain-advanced-computing-and-semiconductor https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/10/13/2022-21... [2] https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/enforcement/oee/penalties https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/enforcement/oee/penalties

dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago

Mostly ones that defy constitutional guarantees of free speech.