
Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips - headalgorithm
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/huawei-risc-v-ai-processors-ascend-us,40238.html
======
gumby
What do they expect. The US tariff wall and embargo is essentially a subsidy
that encourages local development. Without it it’s cheaper to continue to
depend on US controlled designs. Essentially low tariffs make it hard for
local industries to get themselves above the price floor.

These parts aren’t much to get excited abOUT _today_ but they’ve finally given
China a reason to subsidize local efforts, resulting in the long term with an
ecosystem that can take off the us design giants.

~~~
blackflame7000
"Essentially low tariffs make it hard for local industries to get themselves
above the price floor."

This applies to both countries.

~~~
gumby
The point is that it's asymmetrical. The US produces high value products (high
tech bearings, specialized software), stuff whose value is lower than the cost
of transport (paper) and extractive goods (mining and agriculture). Other
countries are more competitive on the low end stuff.

Look at electronics: yes, China has tons of people building phones, but
Chinese companies get about $20 on each iPhone; other parts of the supply
chain get dribs and drabs and Apple pockets a couple of hundred bucks, almost
all of the profit. trying to do all that in the US wouldn't add much to the
GDP and conversely would take people away from working on higher value goods.
So for a wealthy country the tariffs not only don't help, they hurt.

Conversely US restrictions raise the value of Chinese companies working their
own way up the value chain. Before those restrictions were in place it simply
wasn't worth designing, say, a new chip; that takes a long time and while
you're doing so other companies are smoking you by selling low cost chips
designed elsewhere. Essentially the US was sucking the oxygen out of their
competitor's market...but these tariffs stop that.

It's the same principle of why the US wouldn't want its NATO partners spending
too much on defense: essentially bribing them to not have much military is
cheaper than getting entangled in a future war on the continent. Again, trying
to pressure them to spend more is a very expensive move in the medium and long
term.

~~~
blackflame7000
I would not describe any situation that results in perpetual bribery to stave
off war ideal. That's extremely unfair to the American taxpayer. I would much
rather spend that money on our own military so that we can have peace through
strength. What you propose makes the American worker a slave to the rest of
the world in an aims to appease them into not competing. That is ridiculous in
my opinion as companies like Huawei prove that the competition is already
here. Second, how are we ever going to compete when we keep sending them the
designs for our latest gadgets? We're giving away the IP in exchange for cheap
labor again at the expense of the American worker. China is going to be a
major player in the next century and we had best prepare.

~~~
gumby
Why would that unfair to the American taxpayer? Making sure a war you want
doesn't happen saves those taxpayers' lives (and money).

And in the Nato and Japanese case the "bribe" is paid in kind: you get what
you are asking for (the US builds up its military and provides a security
guarantee; those countries don't have to waste money on military expenditures
and in exchange get a higher standard of living than the US). I suppose that's
peace through strength.

> Second, how are we ever going to compete when we keep sending them the
> designs for our latest gadgets?

Sounds like the arguments against free software (AKA Open Source) I heard in
the 80s and 90s.

The American worker isn't going to build these low margin products anyway; the
design is where all the margin is.

------
cmrdporcupine
The problem is that while RISC-V may deliver an excellent open ISA, there is
no equivalent open solution for the GPU/display controller side. As I
understand it, the GPU world is full of patents and dominated by just a few
parties. I don't think there's something that Huawei or other Chinese
manufacturers could easily start with and extend.

So I can see RISC-V being ideal for applications that are not user facing or
don't require fancy graphics -- servers, network hardware, microcontrollers,
etc. But it would be a tough call to put one in a phone, tablet, or laptop.

~~~
mises
Let's be real, the Chinese have been stealing technology right and left for
years. Losses number between $225 and $600 billion per year [0]. One in five
companies has had its technology stolen [1]. They will just steal the tech. Or
maybe they'll decide it's easier to work with AMD (they're already doing it on
the CPU side [2]).

This is not popular to say, but it is accurate and my statements are sourced.
Feel free to provide rebutting evidence if you disagree.

[0]: [https://money.cnn.com/2018/03/23/technology/china-us-
trump-t...](https://money.cnn.com/2018/03/23/technology/china-us-trump-
tariffs-ip-theft/index.html)

[1]: [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-
china-s...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-china-stole-
their-ip-within-the-last-year-cnbc.html)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD%E2%80%93Chinese_joint_vent...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD%E2%80%93Chinese_joint_venture)

~~~
Aperocky
The methodology in the US study seem to suggest that Chinese are inable to do
anything on their own and any technology that US company have that somehow
China also got, is ALL counted as stolen.

That's a very fun verdict

~~~
The_rationalist
Especially since China is the number one scientific country in terms of number
of published papers and e.g are the leaders in nuclear fission and AI.

------
DoreenMichele
More like "Huawei seeks to survive in the future in spite of the US squeezing
them. They want to believe these other chips will let them do that."

I don't understand the tech well enough to know how much of a fairy tale or
hope and a prayer strategy this is. But calling it "seeks independence" is
some incredibly positive spin which makes me suspicious of the claims.

If these other chips are so good, wouldn't you go ahead and migrate to them
for the actual benefits rather than researching them as a backup plan?

~~~
FullyFunctional
Software.

There's tremendous inertia in apps which is what gave x86 an effective
monopoly in the 90'es, even when superior options were available (hello
Alpha). Today the situation is actually better and with RISC-V having the same
memory model as Arm, porting from an Arm version is way easier (Neon code not
withstanding) but it's obviously way less attractive than running running
existing code.

~~~
kllrnohj
> Today the situation is actually better and with RISC-V having the same
> memory model as Arm, porting from an Arm version is way easier (Neon code
> not withstanding)

It's really not any different today than it was. The memory model being
similar is kinda nice, but you still need to convince the world to compile for
another arch. And you need to make a CPU good enough to justify the recompile
and ongoing multi-arch maintenance.

~~~
FullyFunctional
IMO it's hugely different, at least in the server space. In the 90'es _all_
servers ran on proprietary platforms (OSes and micro-architectures). To
succeed with an alternative, you had to convince your OS vendor (Microsoft,
Sun, ...) to port. The most famous attempt Windows NT (ran on x86, PowerPC,
Alpha, and possibly more), but the effort fizzled.

Today, the _MAJORITY_ of servers run Linux, even on Microsoft cloud platform,
and a significant part of that is using primarily open source (eg. "LAMP").
If, say, RHEL supports your platform, it's fairly easy for most to move.

Yes, it's not easy to migrate, but it is _way_ easier than it used to be. Now,
non-server application is a different story.

------
addicted
So there are basically 2 possibilities.

It is possible for Huawei, and Chinese companies in general, to build a
successful alternative without using American technology (for the purposes of
this post, I'm defining successful as equivalent to their American tech using
competitors).

It's not possible.

What the actions on Huawei have done, however, is ensure that if that
possibility exists, very significant chunks of Chinese resources will be
devoted to finding it.

It appears China had decided this wasn't completely necessary, and were happy
to rely on Americans for software, and core hardware. But that is obviously
not true anymore, and the biggest long term effect of these actions are
Chinese state resources being poured into directly combating and threatening
American tech's competitive position.

And seeing that the tariffs and capricious action has not been limited to
China, it won't even be surprising if some other nations join in to help,
especially from the EU and/or India and Korea.

~~~
jsizzle
It also shows how short sighted USA is with this. They’ve given China
incentive to reduce their reliance on the US and give the US less leverage
overall. China may set a damaging precedent here with regard to US power

~~~
sangnoir
> China may set a damaging precedent here with regard to US power

I'd say precedent was set when congress blocked China from joining the ISS,
leading to China developing its own space station program.

------
bhouston
I think that RISC-V has a long way to go to be actually competitive with ARM
on a IPC basis. Although it is great to have more competition in the market I
believe that this is more of a 5-10 year goal rather than distinctly near
term.

~~~
Taniwha
RISC-V is an instruction set - I think you're confusing that particular
implementations of RISC-V (of which there are few yet)

~~~
bhouston
But none of them are competitive at all on an IPC basis right?

Don't get me wrong, I would love a RISC-V chip that is competitive with the
ARM chips in smartphones but I think we are quite aways away from it for the
time being.

RISC-V is most successful as microcontrollers who do not have to be state-of-
the-art fast, they just have to work reliably.

~~~
kinghajj
BOOM is close to Ivy Bridge IPC in one benchmark.
[https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~celio/](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~celio/)

~~~
atdrummond
Using MHz as a divisor really benefits BOOM and extrapolating from IPC makes
some assumptions regarding the future ability of the chip to scale to similar
frequencies as Intel's product line.

Assuming the best performing BOOM chip refers to the 2018 HotChips tapeout,
that chip operated at 1.0 GHz. The lowest speed Ivy Bridge Core/Pentium (a
design getting close to a decade old, FWIW) was 2.5 GHz. This means on a core-
to-core basis Ivy Bridge is 2.7x more performant. This ignores the benefit of
the additional core count of the Core series of Ivy Bridge procs.

Today's 9900K is also around 40% more performant than the comparable Ivy
Bridge (4960X). That would suggest the performance gains modern Intel design
holds over BOOM is closer to 3.8x on a core-to-core basis.

Being within an order of magnitude performance-wise is impressive given that
BOOM is mainly a one-man show. That said, having about a quarter of Intel's
present chips' performance doesn't strike me as particularly "close".

~~~
kinghajj
IPC means "instructions per cycle," so it's correct to divide the scores by
frequency. Totally agree that in total performance, no realized BOOM chip
comes close to mainstream Intel chips. I think Chris is working at Esperanto
Technologies
([https://www.esperanto.ai/technology/);](https://www.esperanto.ai/technology/\);)
hopefully, they upstream performance improvements to the BOOM open-source
repo.

~~~
atdrummond
I understand and I appreciate the test from an intellectual standpoint. But
the IPC definition is orthogonal to meaningful performance benchmarking when I
can't get real world equivalent clock frequencies of each processor type.

~~~
atdrummond
@Taniwha - I can't reply to you directly because we're so deep, thread-wise.

I appreciate and understand the discussion around IPC and how BOOM is a
significant improvement on the state of the craft. I cut my early programming
teeth by developing PPC and SPARC versions of my business' embedded software
products. I'm a longtime fan of alternative architectures and keep up with the
industry through attendance at events such as Hot Chips. I am familiar with
the terminology here and am not disputing it or the findings of the benchmark.

My point was that using IPC in this way obfuscates how far these architectures
have yet to go to be competitive in certain markets. Said market
competitiveness was the original discussion topic up-thread.

~~~
detaro
You can always click on the timestamp of a comment to got the comment
permalink and reply from there.

~~~
atdrummond
That didn't seem to work at the time but both options are now available. Too
late to delete and re-post, regardless.

------
jasoneckert
It's hard to speculate what's going to happen in the end with the tech
industry when there is turmoil - there are too many factors and actors at
play.

But, I, for one, enjoy watching it tremendously (it's like "soaps" for us tech
folk).

------
Petrova
Imagine the irony if Huawei turns into an open source company that is the best
option for user privacy.

Just by going with RISC-V they eliminate the issues with the Intel management
engine.

I'm curious what Huawei will do next.

~~~
ohyes
That seems... unlikely.

~~~
panpanna
Does it? Their first arm doc was extremely open.

It is often used by academics for researching really low level stuff.

~~~
jdnenej
Their history with android is very poor. Their phones are next to impossible
to physically open and they offer no way to unlock the bootloader but there
are individuals who will charge you a fee to have the bootloader unlocked
using their exploits.

------
uncletaco
I wonder if this will contribute to the world having RISC-V laptops sooner
rather than later.

~~~
jimmaswell
Why would we want RISC-V on laptops?

~~~
cmiles74
Maybe it won't contain a vendor "management engine".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#Claims...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#Claims_that_ME_is_a_backdoor)

~~~
gruez
Maybe, but I doubt it. It's there to support a bunch of features that
companies want (eg. remote management, trusted computing, etc.). The reason
why the consumer version has it is that most consumers don't mind, and having
a seperate sku with it disabled/not present would cost extra. This won't
change with RISC-V. You might be able to get a low performance part without
it, but all the mainstream (ie. high performance) parts will have it.

~~~
madez
Intel has a huge variety of different models. They are experts in market
segmentation. They could do that. But they won't, and there are few who could
do that.

With RISC-V, it is reasonable to expect multiple vendors to provide CPUs.
There is a very good case to expect non-backdoored chips.

~~~
gruez
>Intel has a huge variety of different models. They are experts in market
segmentation. They could do that. But they won't, and there are few who could
do that.

That's true, but the way they do that is in a way that requires minimal
changes. In terms of the management engine, that means not including AMT
module (software) but keeping the rest of the ME (hardware). After all, it
also does some essential things like power management and the bootloader.
Removing it completely would also mean re-implementing the essential
functionality.

The best you can hope for if you want to use mainstream parts is something
like me cleaner where the management engine is only there for the boot, but is
disabled afterwards. Something without an management engine would certainly
possible, but would be limited to niche products like the librem.

~~~
madez
> Something without an management engine would certainly possible, but would
> be limited to niche products like the librem.

I don't share this forecast. I think many private customers would view a
machine without the ME and it's capabilities as a plus for a product when the
marketing is done right. Especially since most don't care for the
capabilities.

~~~
gruez
>I don't share this forecast. I think many private customers would view a
machine without the ME and it's capabilities as a plus for a product when the
marketing is done right

A lot of people say they value privacy, but when push comes to shove, they'll
willingly trade privacy for convenience and cost. See: any facebook/instagram
user, or iOS users who use google maps. iOS/Mac is marketed as _the_ private
phone/computer, but their market share shows how little consumers are willing
to pay a premium for privacy (except in the US where iOS share is surprisingly
high). You can try to convince consumers otherwise, but in truth, a management
engine with backdoors/0days isn't really applicable to most consumers' threat
model. The risks from social engineering attacks or unpatched software is a
much greater threat.

------
StreamBright
Is there a comparison between RISC-V and Power? IBM recently published the
POWER instruction set.

------
mark_l_watson
I looked for MindSpore and only found references to MindSpore Studio. Anyone
have a link to a git repo and docs? I saw that it also supports CPUs in
addition to their custom hardware.

TensorFlow and Keras have such a large first mover advantage, the custom chips
and MindSpore would have to be very efficient and inexpensive to make real
inroads.

------
ryanmarsh
Is it just me or does this read like copypasta from a Chinese -> English
translated press release?

From TFA:

 _In a similar vein, Huawei has launched MindSpore, a development framework
for AI applications in all scenarios. The framework aims to help with three
goals: easy development, efficient execution and adaptable to all scenarios.
In other words, the framework should aid to train models at the lowest cost
and time, with the highest performance per watt, for all use cases._

 _Another key design point of MindSpore is privacy. The company says that
MindSpore doesn’t process the data itself, but instead “deals with gradient
and model information” that has already been processed._

------
coliveira
I am glad to have lower prices and more healthy competition

------
gok
By moving away from ARM, mostly designed in the UK and with Japanese owners?
Sounds like they're really just seeking general independence.

~~~
detaro
The ARM that is following US sanctions against Huawei due to its large
presence in the US and reliance on what it says is "U.S.-origin technology"?

------
HNcantBtrustd
Whenever I hear the horrors of the tradewar in a positive light, I wonder if
this is the Russian propagandists in action.

How can war be good? Delighting in the suffering of everyone?

~~~
mensetmanusman
Every ‘war’ that is not actually involving bloodshed can be good, because
competition has been the spur of amazing human endeavors throughout history.
Sometimes people need motivation to try something hard...

