Softbank’s ARM cuts ties with Huawei, leaving future chip production in doubt

UK chip designer cites “US origin technology" as a reason to cut ties with Huawei.

Read the whole story

 

[maclancer]

They can partner with Samsung... but this is getting beyond ridiculous.

 

[Happy Medium]

Holy crap, that was unexpected. If the EO is read that broadly Huawei could be completely kneecapped no matter how much support the Chinese gov't provides it. China might be strong enough to stand up to America alone, but America + all the nations and companies that work closely with America? AKA the entire rest of the world? I doubt China is anywhere near that powerful economically.

Edit: While I think Trump is a totally bat$&%t crazy person, and is likely a harbinger of rising fascism and a threat to world peace and order, he might, JUUST might actually get China to realize that they're far more reliant on the rest of the world than they think they are. Which in many ways is a good thing. With it's continued economic growth for so long, China and its leaders have developed a very "manifest destiny" type of nationalism. Where they think the rules don't apply to them and they can cheat/steal/subvert/and buy whatever they want and that it'll never turn around to hurt them. This has been in some way helped by normal politicians (and corps) being too nice and too averse to confrontation to punch back. A minor silver lining to the norm-destroying Trump cloud? Maybe. But I still don't think it's worth the way Trump is essentially destroying our constitutional democracy AND the world order that has kept a World War from occurring for more than half a century.

 

[Embattle]

Personally this all feels like a bit of a witch-hunt, I don't doubt that the west has serious issues to resolve with China in the areas of intellectual property etc. but I would perhaps be more supportive if any actual evidence was given rather than just hearsay.

 

[mikesmith]

Holy crap, that was unexpected. If the EO is read that broadly Huawei could be completely kneecapped no matter how much support the Chinese gov't provides it. China might be strong enough to stand up to America alone, but America + all the nations and companies that work closely with America? AKA the entire rest of the world? I doubt China is anywhere near that powerful economically.

Is it unexpected? China is well disliked through the whole western world, which is what makes Trump's decision to go everything alone no matter what so strange, if he wasn't such a prick to everyone the USA could likely get most of the world to go along with realigning the trade relationship China has with the rest of the world.

 

[Static and Noise]

Holy crap, that was unexpected. If the EO is read that broadly Huawei could be completely kneecapped no matter how much support the Chinese gov't provides it. China might be strong enough to stand up to America alone, but America + all the nations and companies that work closely with America? AKA the entire rest of the world? I doubt China is anywhere near that powerful economically.

China has one advantage: They are a dictatorship. They can fight as long as they want, and ignore the grumbling and suffering of the people. They've indicated before (years ago) that they're willing to do just that. Democracies don't have that "luxury".

 

[ChronoReverse]

I'm an ethnic Hong Kong Chinese Canadian citizen so I'm extremely biased but I'm feeling plenty of schadenfreude.

Canada arrested Huawei's "princess daughter" of their CEO on an extradition order based on our treaty with the USA (aka, we're just following the law and our existing agreements).

China has been exerting massive pressure on Canada to break the rules for them to the point of putting arrested (and already convicted for prison) Canadians on death row and making up quality control charges against various products we sell to China (e.g., canola oil, pork, etc.) in order to cut off the purchases altogether as an economic attack.

"Disliked" is putting mildly how many of us feel about China.

 

[dorkbert]

... they could switch to MIPS design they were toting as "home grown" a few decades ago.
I imagine they have the capability to modernize the design, but in the short term they could have all the western patents voided/nationalized and clone the parts outright. (not unlike what US did when it was in a shooting war with the Axis nations.)

 

[MarcMadness]

I'm curious if the export ban affect their ability to use the RISC-V ISA to produce new chips? Could they produce new chips based on this architecture to replace ARM? They have to give up on Google Play anyway, porting Android to RISC-V could be their next move.

 

[TheThirdDictor]

It will be interesting to see how much provocation China will put up with. It would be the commercial equivalent to all-out war, but China could seriously kneecap plenty of US firms by going all-in on supply-chain disruption attacks (looking at you, Apple and Tesla), rare-earth mineral limitations and (certainly) cyber attacks.

If this doesn't get settled fairly quickly, and certainly if trump keeps expanding his attacks, this could get really ugly for US firms, really quickly. China is probably the most significant country in the world, in terms of overall supply-chain influence, across a vast array of industries. It might (or might not) be commercial suicide, but if they decide they really want to hurt the US economy? They can do it in a heartbeat, far more effectively than most think.

 

[anurodhp]

They can partner with Samsung... but this is getting beyond ridiculous.

out of curiosity, how do you think huawei got their bendy screen so fast?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/30/tech/sam ... index.html

 

[Kage_]

I'm guessing the rest of the world is just as sick as we are of the Chinese government encouraging the acquisition of global technology to boost there own development.

 

[nickf]

Holy crap, that was unexpected. If the EO is read that broadly Huawei could be completely kneecapped no matter how much support the Chinese gov't provides it. China might be strong enough to stand up to America alone, but America + all the nations and companies that work closely with America? AKA the entire rest of the world? I doubt China is anywhere near that powerful economically.

China has one advantage: They are a dictatorship. They can fight as long as they want, and ignore the grumbling and suffering of the people. They've indicated before (years ago) that they're willing to do just that. Democracies don't have that "luxury".

That said, 45 and his enablers in Congress seem hell-bent on re-establishing monarchy to the US. I kid, but only slightly.

 

[Orange Crush]

Personally this all feels like a bit of a witch-hunt, I don't doubt that the west has serious issues to resolve with China in the areas of intellectual property etc. but I would perhaps be more supportive if any actual evidence was given rather than just hearsay.

Hypothetically, if US intelligence agencies had concrete evidence of industrial espionage performed by Huawei or the Chinese government (and given their close relationship, the difference isn't necessarily clear), they wouldn't be all that likely to share it publicly.

 

[dorkbert]

That said, 45 and his enablers in Congress seem hell-bent on re-establishing monarchy to the US. I kid, but only slightly.

Monarchy is a lot of work. Dictator for life is much easier.

 

[peragrin]

Personally this all feels like a bit of a witch-hunt, I don't doubt that the west has serious issues to resolve with China in the areas of intellectual property etc. but I would perhaps be more supportive if any actual evidence was given rather than just hearsay.

The problem is Hearsay is all that is available.

Also I am willing to bet all of those things magically become less of an issue if China captiulates to all of Trumps trade demands.

The thing is China, while techincally weaker has all the cards.

All China has to do is stop allowing exports for 7 days. and wall street will collapse. All this back and forth with tariffs well that is just cost of doing business. actually stop that business for a minute and Trump loses a lot of his support. Trump will then dig his heels in.

The thing is 7 days would barely be noticed by the american citizen but would make wall street very nervous.

 

[dio82]

If this doesn't work,: US will sanction all countries doing business with Huawei.

This is also a warning to Europe and the rest of the world: bend your knee before Trump or he will sign executive orders against you. There is no counter to his power since the Supreme Court is with him, 40% of the congress is with him (so he can veto anything he doesn't like) and 40% people is dumb enough to vote for him.

Nobody is bending the knee to Trump on China ...

If you are sufficiently disliked by everybody else, nobody will lift a finger for your cause when a bully punches you in the face. That is the fact of the matter.

Nearly every western company is very wary of China's nationalistic dictatorship, one party corruption and the defence of Chinese companies via military grade intelligence Ops. You will not find anyone trying to protect China here.

 

[PancakeNom]

If ARM doesn't manufacture chips themselves, and instead just licenses their intellectual property to chip manufacturers, what exactly is there to stop Huawei from continuing to manufacture ARM-compatible chips without a license? China has a long history of ignoring foreign copyrights and patents, so what recourse would ARM have if Huawei just kept using their technology regardless?

ARM may be able to seek import bans in other nations, but as China is Huawei's largest market, they'd still be able to sell a good amount of them.

 

[EspHack]

this could backfire quite badly, the chinese are very patriotic people by today's standards, they might just get the nudge they needed to push for a completely independent tech sector, start a price war in places like india among other things

sure the "US and partners" might still have a dominant position worldwide, but thats increasingly fading away, and those in the middle would be more than happy with the situation

 

[VengenceIsMine]

They can partner with Samsung... but this is getting beyond ridiculous.

Depends on the legalities involved, Samsung might cut them off as much as ARM and for the same reasons. MediaTek might be a better bet though their flagship chips aren't as good. It gets really tricky from there though, MediaTek is Taiwanese and has chips but is an ARM licensee as well. I guarantee you that TSMC won't want to risk alienating ARM and the US government both by just allowing Huawei's HiSilicon division to continue to manufacture their Kirin SoC's and the Chinese Fabs are 2-3 generations behind. This is really bad for Huawei, considerably worse than losing Google Play and services, there are no easy answers here and if they remain cut off from ARM for any real length of time they are dead meat, their domestic competitors won't miss the opportunity to take share from them.

 

[dio82]

Personally this all feels like a bit of a witch-hunt, I don't doubt that the west has serious issues to resolve with China in the areas of intellectual property etc. but I would perhaps be more supportive if any actual evidence was given rather than just hearsay.

The problem is Hearsay is all that is available.

Also I am willing to bet all of those things magically become less of an issue if China captiulates to all of Trumps trade demands.

The thing is China, while techincally weaker has all the cards.

All China has to do is stop allowing exports for 7 days. and wall street will collapse. All this back and forth with tariffs well that is just cost of doing business. actually stop that business for a minute and Trump loses a lot of his support. Trump will then dig his heels in.

The thing is 7 days would barely be noticed by the american citizen but would make wall street very nervous.

Oh please ... "the West" will survive just fine without Chinese Exports in Walmart. But without Chinese exports into the world, China will collapse into an economic black hole with serious riots and an end to the dictatorship.

Also please stop this non-sense one dimensional thinking that somebody holds "all the cards". China, the US, Japan and EU each hold a lot of cards. The only question is which cards can be played and the total weight of the various sides. China versus the rest will lose badly.

 

[ChronoReverse]

I'm a ethnic Hong Kong Chinese Canadian citizen so I'm extremely biased but I'm feeling plenty of schadenfreude.

Canada arrested Huawei's "princess daughter" of their CEO on an extradition order based on our treaty with the USA (aka, we're just following the law and our existing agreements).

China has been exerting massive pressure on Canada to break the rules for them to the point of putting arrested (and already convicted for prison) Canadians on death row and making up quality charges against various products we sell to China (e.g., canola oil, pork, etc.) in order to cut off the purchases altogether as an economic attack.

"Disliked" is putting mildly how many of us feel about China.

Hong Kong has extradition treaty with the US but it didn't stop them from finding excuse not to detain Edward Snowden. Given the status of her you would be a fool not to treat this as a political issue rather than a simple legal matter - especially when Trudeau has treated SNC Levalin as a political issue. Canada simply choose to appease US over China.

Still, this does not mean China can arbitrary detain Canadian and/or "upgrade" the sentence of the convicted and Trudeau should have a tougher stance on that.

Even if you assume this must be made into a political football (even though that's not the point here), the USA is far more important the Canada in every single aspect. Whereas Hong Kong is de facto run by Mainland China at this point despite the supposed independent government we're supposed to have had.

In any case, China's happy to throw its weight around whenever it thinks it can get away with it.


(It's amusing that you're citing the SNC affair when Trudeau is getting rightfully crucified for it)

 

[Random John Smith Guy]

Holy crap, that was unexpected. If the EO is read that broadly Huawei could be completely kneecapped no matter how much support the Chinese gov't provides it. China might be strong enough to stand up to America alone, but America + all the nations and companies that work closely with America? AKA the entire rest of the world? I doubt China is anywhere near that powerful economically.

China has one advantage: They are a dictatorship. They can fight as long as they want, and ignore the grumbling and suffering of the people. They've indicated before (years ago) that they're willing to do just that. Democracies don't have that "luxury".

China has much less room for error than you think. At the moment the CCP is in flux as Xi consolidates power, and a slowdown of more than a percentage point or two could cause serious problems. If China actually tipped into recession, all bets are off. Their social contract allows the CCP more or less unlimited leeway in exchange for economic development. Furthermore, the rapid aging of China will produce large economic problems. More likely than a collapse, though, would be an internal struggle within the CCP that ends up deposing Xi.

Ultimately China is, I think, only a concern for the next 20 years. 20 years from now China will be old, slow, and most crucially counterbalanced by a significantly wealthier, more modern India that will prove more problematic than the US. The downside of this, though, is much like with Imperial Germany, it's entirely possible that looking at this they will use their narrow window of opportunity in the late 2020s to early 2030s, after military reforms are complete, but before they're too old/troubled to do so, to pursue a war over, say, Taiwan, hoping that nobody cares at that point.

 

[VengenceIsMine]

If ARM doesn't manufacture chips themselves, and instead just licenses their intellectual property to chip manufacturers, what exactly is there to stop Huawei from continuing to manufacture ARM-compatible chips without a license? China has a long history of ignoring foreign copyrights and patents, so what recourse would ARM have if Huawei just kept using their technology regardless?

ARM may be able to seek import bans in other nations, but as China is Huawei's largest market, they'd still be able to sell a good amount of them.

Huawei doesn't manufacture the chips, they are manufactured by TSMC in Taiwan and ARM has massive relationship with them and the US government does with Taiwainese government as well. Huawei could try to go with domestic fabs but they are 2-3 generations behind, their flagships would be crushed by domestic competitors using MediaTek or Qualcomm chips fabbed at TSMC or Samsung. Oppo, Vivo, Lenovo, Xiaomi and the rest will not likely support Huawei very much in this, Huawei was an existential threat to them and they know it.

 

[yh852]

Personally this all feels like a bit of a witch-hunt, I don't doubt that the west has serious issues to resolve with China in the areas of intellectual property etc. but I would perhaps be more supportive if any actual evidence was given rather than just hearsay.

The problem is Hearsay is all that is available.

Also I am willing to bet all of those things magically become less of an issue if China captiulates to all of Trumps trade demands.

The thing is China, while techincally weaker has all the cards.

All China has to do is stop allowing exports for 7 days. and wall street will collapse. All this back and forth with tariffs well that is just cost of doing business. actually stop that business for a minute and Trump loses a lot of his support. Trump will then dig his heels in.

The thing is 7 days would barely be noticed by the american citizen but would make wall street very nervous.

Oh please ... "the West" will survive just fine without Chinese Exports in Walmart. But without Chinese exports into the world, China will collapse into an economic black hole with serious riots and an end to the dictatorship.

Also please stop this non-sense one dimensional thinking that somebody holds "all the cards". China, the US, Japan and EU each hold a lot of cards. The only question is which cards can be played and the total weight of the various sides. China versus the rest will lose badly.

So basically back to the Eight Nation Alliance right? I can't see how this will end amicably. It'll be impossible for either side to back down at this point, and definitely hurt China more than others. But with it down, so goes the growth to the global economy, and ultimately impact all of us negatively.

 

[clarityoffline]

With how often Trump reverses course on decisions like this I'm kinda surprised at how quickly companies are moving to comply with the EO. Especially after the ZTE flipflop.

 

[Digital Dud]

China bans virtually every foreign tech company from doing business there but they throw a huge hissy fit when the US bans a single Chinese company.

 

[elty]

I'm a ethnic Hong Kong Chinese Canadian citizen so I'm extremely biased but I'm feeling plenty of schadenfreude.

Canada arrested Huawei's "princess daughter" of their CEO on an extradition order based on our treaty with the USA (aka, we're just following the law and our existing agreements).

China has been exerting massive pressure on Canada to break the rules for them to the point of putting arrested (and already convicted for prison) Canadians on death row and making up quality charges against various products we sell to China (e.g., canola oil, pork, etc.) in order to cut off the purchases altogether as an economic attack.

"Disliked" is putting mildly how many of us feel about China.

Hong Kong has extradition treaty with the US but it didn't stop them from finding excuse not to detain Edward Snowden. Given the status of her you would be a fool not to treat this as a political issue rather than a simple legal matter - especially when Trudeau has treated SNC Levalin as a political issue. Canada simply choose to appease US over China.

Still, this does not mean China can arbitrary detain Canadian and/or "upgrade" the sentence of the convicted and Trudeau should have a tougher stance on that.

Even if you assume this must be made into a political football (even though that's not the point here), the USA is far more important the Canada in every single aspect. Whereas Hong Kong is de facto run by Mainland China at this point despite the supposed independent government we're supposed to have had.

In any case, China's happy to throw its weight around whenever it thinks it can get away with it.


(It's amusing that you're citing the SNC affair when Trudeau is getting rightfully crucified for it)

I am not arguing China is more important than the US to Canada. I am just saying given the status of her, the extradition request was a political issue and not "simply follow the law" as you have suggested.

 

[dio82]

Personally this all feels like a bit of a witch-hunt, I don't doubt that the west has serious issues to resolve with China in the areas of intellectual property etc. but I would perhaps be more supportive if any actual evidence was given rather than just hearsay.

The problem is Hearsay is all that is available.

Also I am willing to bet all of those things magically become less of an issue if China captiulates to all of Trumps trade demands.

The thing is China, while techincally weaker has all the cards.

All China has to do is stop allowing exports for 7 days. and wall street will collapse. All this back and forth with tariffs well that is just cost of doing business. actually stop that business for a minute and Trump loses a lot of his support. Trump will then dig his heels in.

The thing is 7 days would barely be noticed by the american citizen but would make wall street very nervous.

Oh please ... "the West" will survive just fine without Chinese Exports in Walmart. But without Chinese exports into the world, China will collapse into an economic black hole with serious riots and an end to the dictatorship.

Also please stop this non-sense one dimensional thinking that somebody holds "all the cards". China, the US, Japan and EU each hold a lot of cards. The only question is which cards can be played and the total weight of the various sides. China versus the rest will lose badly.

So basically back to the Eight Nation Alliance right? I can't see how this will end amicably. It'll be impossible for either side to back down at this point, and definitely hurt China more than others. But with it down, so goes the growth to the global economy, and ultimately impact all of us negatively.

Yes, I fully agree. It won't be pretty for anyone.

Honestly, something must be done with China, but it is again the doofus in charge who just happens to be doing kinda the right thing for a host of very wrong reasons.

The proper way to curb stomp China and break their neck would have been via western world collaboration on CO2 taxes, but that is not palatable to the deplorables represented by Trump.

 

[ChronoReverse]

I'm a ethnic Hong Kong Chinese Canadian citizen so I'm extremely biased but I'm feeling plenty of schadenfreude.

Canada arrested Huawei's "princess daughter" of their CEO on an extradition order based on our treaty with the USA (aka, we're just following the law and our existing agreements).

China has been exerting massive pressure on Canada to break the rules for them to the point of putting arrested (and already convicted for prison) Canadians on death row and making up quality charges against various products we sell to China (e.g., canola oil, pork, etc.) in order to cut off the purchases altogether as an economic attack.

"Disliked" is putting mildly how many of us feel about China.

Hong Kong has extradition treaty with the US but it didn't stop them from finding excuse not to detain Edward Snowden. Given the status of her you would be a fool not to treat this as a political issue rather than a simple legal matter - especially when Trudeau has treated SNC Levalin as a political issue. Canada simply choose to appease US over China.

Still, this does not mean China can arbitrary detain Canadian and/or "upgrade" the sentence of the convicted and Trudeau should have a tougher stance on that.

Even if you assume this must be made into a political football (even though that's not the point here), the USA is far more important the Canada in every single aspect. Whereas Hong Kong is de facto run by Mainland China at this point despite the supposed independent government we're supposed to have had.

In any case, China's happy to throw its weight around whenever it thinks it can get away with it.


(It's amusing that you're citing the SNC affair when Trudeau is getting rightfully crucified for it)

I am not arguing China is more important than the US to Canada. I am just saying given the status of her, the extradition request was a political issue and not "simply follow the law" as you have suggested.

Everything is political when it comes to this stuff of course but even outside that area, Canada would do the exact same thing. Any suggestion that Canada should have done what China says is only logical if your interests lays with China rather than Canada (note that I do not say the USA).

With that said Canada is deliberately following its agreements to the letter because Canada is caught between giants demanding opposite things. The most ideal thing to us would have been the "princess" not having been stupid enough to put herself in a situation to have been arrested (in Canada).

 

[peragrin]

Personally this all feels like a bit of a witch-hunt, I don't doubt that the west has serious issues to resolve with China in the areas of intellectual property etc. but I would perhaps be more supportive if any actual evidence was given rather than just hearsay.

The problem is Hearsay is all that is available.

Also I am willing to bet all of those things magically become less of an issue if China captiulates to all of Trumps trade demands.

The thing is China, while techincally weaker has all the cards.

All China has to do is stop allowing exports for 7 days. and wall street will collapse. All this back and forth with tariffs well that is just cost of doing business. actually stop that business for a minute and Trump loses a lot of his support. Trump will then dig his heels in.

The thing is 7 days would barely be noticed by the american citizen but would make wall street very nervous.

Oh please ... "the West" will survive just fine without Chinese Exports in Walmart. But without Chinese exports into the world, China will collapse into an economic black hole with serious riots and an end to the dictatorship.

Also please stop this non-sense one dimensional thinking that somebody holds "all the cards". China, the US, Japan and EU each hold a lot of cards. The only question is which cards can be played and the total weight of the various sides. China versus the rest will lose badly.

And that is why you are wrong. China, controls every single electronic device, most building construction, most automobile construction, Every single manufacturer buys something that comes from China, or buys a product which is made from parts in china.

it isn't just cheap junk, but your BMW, toyota, or Ford has all sorts of products and materials that came from China to start with. Even an all wood product you build your self with screws and wood bought from home depot? The screws came from china. the boxes the screws came in where recycled in china, and then just printed and packed in the USA. The wood you use came from Canada(most likely), The tools you used to build it, all built in china.

Capitalism exported itself out to china 30 years ago. if you understood just how deeply it is done you would be depressed.

The end is that does the EU have more to gain working with China againist the USA, ornot. and if china stops exporting to the usa then the EU gets massive boost.

 

[mdrejhon]

I'm an ethnic Hong Kong Chinese Canadian citizen so I'm extremely biased but I'm feeling plenty of schadenfreude.

Canada arrested Huawei's "princess daughter" of their CEO on an extradition order based on our treaty with the USA (aka, we're just following the law and our existing agreements).

China has been exerting massive pressure on Canada to break the rules for them to the point of putting arrested (and already convicted for prison) Canadians on death row and making up quality control charges against various products we sell to China (e.g., canola oil, pork, etc.) in order to cut off the purchases altogether as an economic attack.

"Disliked" is putting mildly how many of us feel about China.

As a fellow Canadian, we've long been one of the "most liked" countries on average (consistently top 10 worldwide). Then being somehow legally blackmailed into a situation that does significant damage to the Canada brand. How impolite.