
ARM memo tells staff to stop working with Huawei - yitchelle
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48363772
======
yogthos
This could be a really great thing in the long run. I'm really hoping this
will promote open hardware and software in the future. Huawei is most likely
to start relying on open source tech, since they're under so much scrutiny
that's the best way to show they're being above board. Using open software and
hardware would also show that same thing couldn't happen with their stack in
the future. If they're smart, they'll partner up with some companies in EU to
make it an international effort.

US is basically terrified of losing control of mobile networks when 5G ends up
being implemented by a Chinese company. They're also clearly doing the exact
thing they're accusing China of themselves here. I think that this is going to
backfire spectacularly in the long run.

~~~
zaphar
There is one critical difference between America and China here. American
companies have for the most part not been engaging in wholesale state
sponsored theft of Chinese IP. Whatever you may think of the wisdom of a trade
war, no one can really argue that China hasn't given the US all the ammunition
it needed to give political cover to engaged in one.

~~~
molteanu
When you're advanced enough, there is no need for you do to IP. Maybe the risk
is not worth it or there is nothing to gain from it. It's the same argument
with the open markets. When you're already a developed economy, open markets
benefit you since you have the best products, your production facilities are
in place and you can offer both quantity, quality and reasonable prices. But
when you are a developing nation, protections are needed for key sectors.

US did both of these things. That is, closed markets and protectionism and IP
theft. It doesn't matter that, oh, "this was a long time ago, it doesn't
count". It does. Advantages add up year after year, century after century. I'm
not even trying to defend China, but instead, trying to be clear and honest
about how these things work in the real world, regardless of sentiments and
your favorite team.

I just did a quick lookup, you can do the same. I'm sure there are more
examples out there.

 _In 1787, American agent Andrew Mitchell was intercepted by British
authorities as he was trying to smuggle new technology out of the UK. His
trunk was seized after being loaded on board a ship. Inside the trunk were
models and drawings of one Britain 's great industrial machines. Mitchell
himself was able to escape and sought refuge in Denmark. But his mission marks
the start of a sustained US campaign to steal technology from the world's hi-
tech superpower of the day._ [1]

[1] [https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-
na...](https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-nations-are-
stealing-us-technology-america-has-history)

~~~
pjc50
_Information Feudalism_ (Drahos & Braithwaite) has lots more on this subject.
After both world wars there was a lot of .. forced technology transfer from
Germany.

~~~
saiya-jin
Not only technology per se, but without critical Nazi Germany people like Von
Braun, US wouldn't send anybody to the moon in 60s.

Or all the knowledge happily taken and used from Mendelesque cruel inhuman
'research' done in concentration camps. AFAIK no researcher was morally above
and simply refused to work with those data.

~~~
eropple
_> Or all the knowledge happily taken and used from Mendelesque cruel inhuman
'research' done in concentration camps. AFAIK no researcher was morally above
and simply refused to work with those data._

So I've had cause to research this one in the past.

"All the knowledge"\--most of the Nazi concentration camp research was
_absolute garbage_. Turns out junk-science sadists create junk-science results
and it is generally accepted that the overwhelming bulk Nazi concentration
camp research was useless or near-useless as actual scientific research. I am
unaware of _any_ value being derived from the Josef Mengele work that you seem
to be referring to--Gregor MenDel died sixty years before World War II, but
please correct me if you're referring to someone else.

Some research from the Nazi concentration camp experiments _is_ occasionally
referred to, low-pressure/high-altitude research out of Dachau being arguably,
as I understand it, the most valuable. (The other common cite, Rascher's
freezing tests, were on nonrepresentative subjects and indicate that the
moderate freezing that is safely and ethically studied is amplified, but does
not step change, when freezing becomes extreme.) Where this data is used, it
does not generally form the main body of research and mostly confirms what is
known from other sources.

"Happily"\--in the (rare) cases where Nazi findings are used, it's used with
reluctance. There are evolving and hardening ethical codes around the use of
this data as well, particularly from the 1980s onward; today, the use of any
of this data must be explicitly detailed and the method of its collection is
universally condemned.

Most troublingly for the pursuit of truth and some kind of decency, this
argument typically is used as an ahistorical _tu quoque_ , as is being done in
this case. It's not a particularly good argument, though--even were it more
than if-you-squint-and-pick-and-choose true.

~~~
cbsks
>today, the use of any of this data must be explicitly detailed

Do you have any examples of papers which source such data? I'm curious to read
the justification of it.

~~~
jdietrich
The most common example is the Dachau hypothermia experiments.

[https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199005173222006](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199005173222006)

------
xvilka
Hopefully, it will not only boost RISC-V adoption, but also the FOSS
EDA[1][2][3] tools, FPGA[4][5] and ASIC[6][7][8] design tools, various high-
level languages, and toolkits to work with hardware designs. You can also
follow my idea[9] and initiative to create low-level hardware IR instead of al
tools parsing or producing Verilog/VHDL. Apparently, both are a pretty bad fit
for chip design, thus many high-level languages[10] were created.

[1] KiCAD [http://kicad-pcb.org/](http://kicad-pcb.org/)

[2] Qucs [https://github.com/Qucs/qucs](https://github.com/Qucs/qucs)

[3] gEDA [http://www.geda-project.org/](http://www.geda-project.org/)

[4] Yosys [https://github.com/YosysHQ/yosys](https://github.com/YosysHQ/yosys)

[5] SymbiFlow [https://symbiflow.github.io](https://symbiflow.github.io)

[6] The OpenROAD
[https://theopenroadproject.org](https://theopenroadproject.org)

[7] The OpenROAD [https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-
Project](https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project)

[8] Chisel3
[https://github.com/freechipsproject/chisel3](https://github.com/freechipsproject/chisel3)

[9]
[https://github.com/SymbiFlow/ideas/issues/19](https://github.com/SymbiFlow/ideas/issues/19)

[10] [https://github.com/drom/awesome-hdl](https://github.com/drom/awesome-
hdl)

------
DCKing
I see a lot of people dreaming about Huawei needing to pivot to open source
technology, but the overwhelmingly likely outcome here is that the trade
dispute gets (partially) resolved to the extent that Huawei can operate as
usual again.

Dreaming of Huawei backed RISC V SoCs is a pipe dream anyway, at least for
mobile processors. For a mobile SoC you need a GPU as well. There are no
viable open source GPU architectures, and all vendors are US-based (Vivante,
Broadcom (?), AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Intel, only the first three ever do
licensing deals) or UK based (ARM (Mali), PowerVR).

~~~
shard
Vivante was a US company in name only (engineering in China) and after
acquisition in China (by Verisilicon, whose founder and CEO is the brother of
the founder and CEO of Vivante), it's not even a US company in name.

Also, other US companies with GPUs besides the first 3 in your list are are
open to licensing if the fees are big enough. I can't give more details than
that though.

~~~
desdiv
>Also, other US companies with GPUs besides the first 3 in your list are are
open to licensing if the fees are big enough.

This is a news story about a UK company being prohibited from dealing with
Huawei due to its products containing "US origin technology". So I'm assuming
that US GPU companies would also be prohibited from licensing to Huawei due to
their IP's "US origin".

~~~
sanxiyn
Note that Imagination Technologies (a company behind PowerVR) made an explicit
statement that they are not affected by US ban because they have no US origin
technology. Read Bloomberg report here:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-20/european-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-20/european-
chipmakers-drop-as-huawei-ban-cripples-supply-chain)

~~~
DCKing
Ah, so PowerVR seems to be still a viable path even if this does not get
overturned, and if Huawei can magically move to MIPS or RISC V in a reasonable
timeframe.

------
captainbland
It's a pretty bold move by ARM to stop working with Huawei even if it does
believe that it's affected by the American ban. It seems like it's very likely
to damage their image in the eyes of other non-western technology firms who
could end up on America's radar. Won't a lot of execs be scratching their
heads thinking, "what if we're next to be cut off in this trade war?"

~~~
simonh
If it is subject to the ban, it would be a pretty bold move to ignore it and
carry on in violation of US law. Not an easy position to be in.

~~~
greatpatton
Yeah like US rules the world and US laws should apply to everyone! Then don't
be surprised if the rest of the world prefer Chinese because as of today the
last imperialistic power is the USA. By the way nobody outside of the US voted
for your smart president.

~~~
sanxiyn
US laws should not apply to everyone, but in practice they do, sort of. The
most prominent example is internet services censoring nipples due to US
stupidity.

~~~
greatpatton
US laws apply to everyone because US laws are extraterritorial in nature:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritorial_jurisdiction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritorial_jurisdiction)

~~~
Zak
The EU is trying to assert extraterritorial jurisdiction as well with the GDPR
and its like. If all countries start doing this sort of thing with any degree
of success, international and online business as we know it won't be possible.

~~~
DCKing
No it doesn't. It only applies if you operate within the EU, and if you do
business with (the data of) EU citizens. I'm not sure what else you can
reasonably expect there.

~~~
muraiki
It's actually not clear that GDPR only affects EU citizens:

> Here’s the issue: the law uses the term “data subject” but doesn’t define
> the term. Some may assume that data subjects are EU citizens, but that
> analysis seems to exclude the explicit language of the law and practical
> considerations. There’s tourism, travel, residencies, students abroad, and
> much more to consider. Because GDPR uses inconsistent qualifiers when
> referring to data subjects and informal descriptions of who a data subject
> is, the public has been left with varying interpretations and significant
> challenges. [1]

In some interpretations, a US citizen who is traveling in the EU and orders
something from a US company would be considered a data subject, and the
company they ordered from would need to comply with the GDPR.

So how would that be enforced? Either through treaties or by requiring non-EU
companies to establish a representative entity in an EU member state. [2]

[1] [https://kirkpatrickprice.com/blog/what-is-gdpr-personal-
data...](https://kirkpatrickprice.com/blog/what-is-gdpr-personal-data-and-who-
is-a-gdpr-data-subject/)

[2]
[https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/30513](https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/30513)

------
Tepix
Just wow. Is ARM doing its share of anticipatory obedience?

China is not going to keep still. My expectation is that they will support
Huawei (and other chinese companies) in a big way to establish alternatives to
ARM, Android, Windows (?) and other technologies missheld from them.

Copyright is being used similar to DRM. Companies will take notice. This
promises to be good for Open Source, perhaps also Open Hardware.

------
mirimir
> He said it would greatly affect the firm's ability to develop its own chips,
> many of which are currently built with ARM’s underlying technology, for
> which it pays a licence.

Maybe China could just change its laws to void ARM's patents. Then Huawei
wouldn't need to worry about licensing.

Extreme, I know. But China will very likely, at some point, need to counter
this somehow.

Edit: I wonder if China could afford a trade boycott against the US. Also,
doesn't it own tons of US bonds? What if it had a fire sale on them? How would
that affect the US?

~~~
ac29
> I wonder if China could afford a trade boycott against the US. Also, doesn't
> it own tons of US bonds? What if it had a fire sale on them? How would that
> affect the US?

Most people overestimate this. Of the $22T US Debt, only $6T is held by all
foreign accounts combined, $1T of which is held by China. The majority of US
Debt is held domestically.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States)

~~~
manacit
Indeed, the bond market is liquid and deep. If China wanted to dump the
Treasuries they own, the US could easily opt to buy them back to prop the
price up as a method of last resort, which would likely not have a huge
impact.

It would probably hurt them in the long term if anything - weakening the
dollar makes their export-driven economy more expensive, ultimately stifling
growth.

~~~
mirimir
OK, that's good news.

But hey, I live in the US. Most everything in big-box stores is made in China.
I can't quite imagine how China could just cut off exports to the US. But
maybe they have a slush fund. And I certainly can't imagine how the US could
function without stuff from China. Who could fill the gap?

I was in the US during the 70s oil boycott. Gas lines. Oil too expensive to
stay warm in the winter. It sucked.

------
dharma1
How long would it take Huawei (or a bunch of Chinese companies) to develop
MIPS or RISC-V based phones? Too long to run out of cash (given that their
sales for the foreseeable future just cratered) - or doable?

~~~
Symmetry
I'd guess on the order of 5 years. Taking silicon from idea to mass production
is something that takes a long time and this isn't something that Huawei has
done before.

EDIT: Apparently Huawei has been developing their own ARM cores via
architectural liscence so they might be able to hack together a poor solution
in less time than that by sticking with ARM in the short term and they might
be able to get a decent MIPS SoC (for pre-existing Android compatibility)
working in less time than 5 years.

~~~
sanxiyn
Not just developing. They did a tapeout.

------
b_tterc_p
The article says ARM doesn’t manufacture the chips but licenses out the tech.
Does Huawei manufacture it? Is there any reason for Huawei to not just take
their last known tech spec and start producing and developing it in house?

~~~
sanxiyn
HiSilicon (fully owned subsidary of Huawei) designs SoC and TSMC manufactures
it.

------
lisk1
The thing US dont understand at this point is that companies outside of US are
willing to exchange IPs with Chinese, which means that companies that are not
dependent on US technologies will benefit greatly from this ban. Too impulsive
decision by the US but they are too focused to be not outrun. Well only the
time will tell

------
yread
That seems like a pretty big deal. I wonder if they have a response to that
(like the "spare tyres in the safe" [0]). Would be cool if future phones from
Huawei ran on China produced MIPS chips

[0] [https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/huaweis-chip-
arm...](https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/huaweis-chip-arm-
hisilicon-says-it-has-long-been-preparing-for-us-ban-scenario)

~~~
unixhero
Well RISC v5 is open source.

~~~
naraic0o
I think you mean RISC-V (V being the Roman numeral for 5).

The MIPS ISA is now also open source, as of Q1 2019[0].

[0] [https://www.mips.com/mipsopen/](https://www.mips.com/mipsopen/)

~~~
sanxiyn
Note that this is MIPS Release 6, which is incompatible with existing MIPS
ISA. For example, Debian is planning to create an entirely new port, mipsr6,
in addition to mips.

------
kbumsik
Now I'm wondering what will happens to ESP8266/ESP32. ESP8266 is a Wi-Fi SoC
which was extremely popular in hobbyist world, and its successor, ESP32, is
widely accepted in industry too. Will it have any impact on companies that use
ESP such as Particle [1] and Arduino?

[1]: [https://www.particle.io/](https://www.particle.io/)

~~~
sanxiyn
I don't think so. Espressif is not Huawei.

~~~
kbumsik
But it's a Chinese SoC company. I'm wondering if the fight between US and
China will widen to any SoC companies in the long term.

~~~
pi-rat
Probably not, you can only escalate this trade war so many times before it
becomes unsustainable by one or both parties.

China will probably retaliate by banning a major US tech company, maybe Apple?
Keep doing this a couple of times and pressure/lobbying/economic damage will
force a resolution.

~~~
cobookman
If China bans iPhones I'm 100% positive they'll just be smuggled in.

~~~
sanxiyn
Sure, but I am also 100% positive it will hurt Apple revenue a LOT.

------
rement
What about Motorola Mobility? Their main focus is on consumer electronics
(mostly smartphones) but it is also a Chinese owned company. Is the main
concern with Huawei the telecom and networking equipment?

~~~
sanxiyn
Yes, I think it is mostly about Huawei, not about Chinese companies in
general.

------
smallstepforman
ARM management are shooting themseves in the head here, this will divert
Huawei funds to Risc-V instead. Time to dump ARM shares.

~~~
deepaksurti
ARM is no longer publicly listed, it is a private subsidiary of Soft Bank
group.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Holdings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Holdings)

~~~
baybal2
Well, you can still find a PE broker yourself

------
sigmar
So what is going to happen with the Hisilicon[1] chips? Do they still get to
keep using all the licenses they already agreed to? What will they do when
they next cortex implementation comes out? Copy it?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiSilicon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiSilicon)

~~~
sanxiyn
HiSilicon already developed their own ARM64 core (not Cortex) in Kunpeng 920,
although it is a server chip and not a mobile chip. I think HiSilicon is
entirely capable of developing (not copying) their own core.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
The thing about ARM is that they more or less act like they own the ISA
itself, and have a huge patent portfolio. There's an expectation that a
company have an "architecture license" to make their own ARM-compatible core
from scratch (unless it's an obsolete version of the ISA, e.g. Amber [1]). So
while you're right that Cortex _per se_ isn't relevant, there's still a
question of whether HiSilicon will legally be able to sell any new ARM-
compatible core they design.

[1]
[https://opencores.org/projects/amber](https://opencores.org/projects/amber)

~~~
baybal2
ARM licensed cores under 3 legal entities. UK's parent company, ARM China in
mainland, and ARM China in Hongkong.

Under all 3, jurisdiction the ARM is screwed if Huawei will begin claiming
their contractual obligations from them. Maybe UK courts will give them some
special treatment.

------
ckugblenu
This looks more like a global chess match than anything else.

~~~
molteanu
This looks like the USA is afraid of China's might, so what else should it do
than to fight it's rise and development with all means possible (like it's
already doing in the Middle East [1]). Or did you actually think this is all
about "democracy", "free markets", "dictators" and the like? When the battle
gets rough, big guns show up.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_containment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_containment)

~~~
ghobs91
Or maybe this is retaliation for the billions Chinese companies have made off
stolen American IP. Ever thought of that? To imply this is pure protectionism
is over simplifying it.

~~~
jolfdb
Or maybe IP theft is retaliation for the opium wars.

It's silly to look at a centuries long geopolitical struggle for hegemony
through the lens of fair play as though it's just a game among friends.

~~~
ghobs91
In which case this move against huawei is "just business".

It's their problem now to figure out how to develop top tier hardware and
software without stealing it from American companies and rebranding it.

~~~
logicchains
I thought the problem was that they had developed something better than what
the US currently has, their 5G implementation, and that's what has the US
worried.

~~~
criddell
I always thought that it was about 5G being a significant chunk of future
telecom infrastructure (which impacts national defense) and they don't want to
buy it from Chinese companies.

------
zhangshine
As a Chinese, I am hoping our government will invest more money in high-tech
industries rather than real estate. It is a chance for China to escape the
middle income trap.

------
Iv
To all the people thinking geopolitics, please just remember that ARM is owned
by Softbank now. For this kind of decisions, this is a Japanese company.

~~~
sanxiyn
For this case, the relevant information is that ARM has a design center at San
Jose. The news is, in a sense, unsurprising.

------
als0
ARM has design centers in the USA so this doesn’t surprise me.

------
achina_001
As a Chinese and arm employee here, the ban makes me feel shame on the
original motivation of creating the joint venture between local govement and
arm, which is trying to help local companies like Huawei to work around the
exactly ban like this.

Arm China really does a bad job. Besides, its empolyee turn over rate also
rise to about more than 40% from 5% since the creation of Arm China due to the
bad management:(

------
walshemj
This is interesting I was listening to onw of the War on the rocks podcasts
and their commentary was that the commerce department has to produce in < 150
days the details of what this will mean.

Everyone seems to be jumping the gun here "working towards the president
maybe"

------
imtringued
I bet this will backfire. ARM isn't exactly known for building fast CPUs,
therefore there is a lot of room for a slightly worse but cheaper competitor
that designs the SoCs in China from start to finish.

------
tyingq
Maybe a boost for RISCV.

------
eleitl
As if RISC-V needed any PR.

------
Waterluvian
I wonder if this all makes Huawei grumble and feel the costs of the kind of
government they work under. I wonder if it has any effect towards more
liberalism in China.

------
mark_l_watson
Hopefully not too off topic: I am in the USA and I have always wondered how
long we could hold on to having the world’s reserve currency. I have to wonder
if even some of our close allies take pause in my government’s ability to
economically attack commercial competitors like Huawei, and in the past the
‘axis of evil’ oil producing countries that had announced their willingness to
sell oil in currencies other than the US dollar.

I am concerned this is going to eventually backfire on us.

~~~
chii
> I am in the USA and I have always wondered how long we could hold on to
> having the world’s reserve currency.

until the US cannot maintain superior millitary power.

> I am concerned this is going to eventually backfire on us.

it certainly will, the same way any collapsing superpower "backfires". The
brunt of it will be felt by the citizens, while the rich and powerful would
have an "out".

~~~
pjmlp
I am pretty sure trying to face China on that front will have quite a
different outcome than securing oil sources in Middle East countries, sadly
for the whole planet.

