
ARM cuts ties with Huawei, threatening future chip designs - ulfw
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/22/18635326/huawei-arm-chip-designs-business-suspension
======
ulfw
A British company owned by a Japanese company afraid of US repercussions.

Whatever one might think of the Huawei story - for people living outside the
US, one starts to wonder if tech's over-reliance on Silicon Valley engineering
has gone too far.

~~~
grezql
ARM uses US tech to build their chips. If US stops supplying this tech to ARM
that would hurt ARM. So I think they are doing the right thing here.

Besides, Huawei gets no sympathy from me. Too many years of stealing IP.
Someone had to say no.

~~~
navigatesol
> _Too many years of stealing IP._

So, wait: do we _like_ intellectual property and patents stiffing innovation,
or do we not? Only when it benefits us? I can never keep this straight.

~~~
NotPaidToPost
The US did not recognise foreign copyright (meaning American publishers could
freely 'steal' British and others' books) until they had an interest in
protecting their own IP.

There is a lot of hypocrisy in order to feed the current anti-Chinese campaign
but the fact is that everyone behaves the same.

------
gumby
In the long run this kind of approach will simply spur development of Chinese
alternative technologies and expertise. Until now such investment hasn’t been
worth doing at serious levels.

------
bubblewrap
Rather than strengthening the position of US companies, I think this might
weaken them in the long run. Who wants to depend on US products if they are
liable to be taken away at a moment's notice?

~~~
luckylion
Pretty much every Western country will, because they depend on the US. If the
empire goes, the provinces follow.

It's another thing for Russia, but they are already well aware. India?
Probably still in a role where US-dependence does more good than harm. For
Africa, it doesn't matter as much, and South America likely remembers that
it's unwise to stray too far from the northern neighbor's wishes.

~~~
stareatgoats
Your optimism regarding the future of the US empire is belied by long term
trends, not only the phenomenal rise of the Chinese economy: The EU has since
it's inception had its eyes set on greater independence from the US. Case in
point, Macron and Merkel are calling for a European army now, but not because
of Trump, it's been the plan all along.

Trumps current heavy-handedness in international relationships is instead a
direct response to this disintegration of the empire, and it's just hastening
the demise. The worrisome part is how the US (and all its hurrahh-boys) are
signalling that they will not accept this turn of events peacefully.

~~~
luckylion
I'm not optimistic about the long term future of that model, I just don't see
any emancipation of the EU. Of course, Trump is not at all what Merkel,
Macron, Juncker etc want, but he's also not at all part of the 20th century US
empire.

What China or Russia do is this: key industries must be domestic. The EU
countries never did this, they've accepted the US as the provider for
information discovery (search), information transmission (news) and
communication, granting them enormous powers. Merkel's own BND (certainly not
without her knowledge, it's closely lead by the Bundeskanzleramt) cooperated
with the NSA to provide access to virtually all German internet traffic so the
NSA could spy on German citizens wholesale.

Good luck with that EU army. If the state of Germany's Bundeswehr is any
indicator, we'll be lucky if the EU army has a functioning bicycle in 2040.

------
dharma1
I wonder if the outcome of all of this will be massive Chinese investment into
RISC-V and linux

~~~
0815test
That would be quite ironic indeed. But the Chinese seem to be more invested in
MIPS, and even some homegrown x86-64 - so that's probably what we're going to
see instead. One thing we should note is that Huawei doesn't really have a
culture of openness, so this whole kerfuffle is a lot worse of a problem for
them than it could be otherwise!

------
NotPaidToPost
In 5 to 10 years ARM will not be selling anything to Chinese companies, which
will have all moved to domestic and/or open designs.

That's the only possible end result.

~~~
theredbox
So Chinese companies wont be selling anything to the rest of the world.

We already know that they are capable of building their own designs or
software. The thing is NOBODY will ever use it outside of China.

The whole point of this situation is to force China to open more their market
so we can at least pretend we have a fair trading environment.

~~~
NotPaidToPost
Of course they'll be selling plenty to the rest of the world.

It will be beneficial since it will give third countries a choice and help
reduce their reliance on the US/monopolistic incumbents.

Trump's game really is to hurt China so that they don't become "number one on
his watch" (his words). It's a good old power struggle behind the rhetoric of
"fair trading environment".

~~~
cfarm
@theredbox is saying that China can ship its tech to the world, but the world
can't currently ship its tech to it (great firewall). That seems unfair.

~~~
NotPaidToPost
Of course the world can currently sell its tech to China. And it does.

~~~
cfarm
Google, FB, Amazon, Microsoft is severely limited in China as examples.

