SamuraiBlue
Captain
Although they probably can it would probably be infringement of ARM's IP agreement.
ARM cuts ties with Huawei, threatening future chip designs
- Thread starter s002wjh
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It can, that’s the plan.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
I'm not sure about that. Once something is licensed to you as technology, you are obviously free to not only use it as is but expand on it and use your own iteration. Especially if ARM nullifies its contracts with Huawei like Google has, all bets are off. And by the way, I'm not sure that that's true. Someone else mentioned that ARM has to come up with new editions without US technology and then it would continue to do business with Huawei, and China has a say in it because China owns 51% of ARM China.
From my shallow understanding, which could be wrong, Huawei was licensed use of ARM but it was NOT given the computer language that ARM responds to (which ARM would have to be insane to start giving out because it is not needed for any purpose by the end user other than shaking dependence from the company). This code is needed to communicate with ARM and instruct it on how to change and evolve into later editions. If China wants to create ARMv9 (or HUAv1) as an evolution of ARMv8, they need to crack this language or create one that can function in its stead.
Why don't Huawei just license the instruction set, assuming they have not licensed it already in the past? The restriction is that Huawei cannot use US designed work or US IP on ARM core architectures. This has nothing to do with the instruction set itself. You will have to design a new core architecture that is compatible with the instruction set. This is complex but it has been done, the first by Apple on their A series chipsets and Qualcomm on their Kryo cores. There are also cases of instruction sets that are being run from another company with another core design, a good case is AMD running on Intel X86 set.
This is legally achieved by clean room engineering. You pick these engineers, with no knowledge of the innards of the original architecture, and then you assign them to create something that can execute the set --- achieve the same result without knowing the original process. The result of this is that you create an alternative process that produces the same result.
There's no point in Huawei pursuing a future chip based on the V8 based instruction set.
It simply wouldn't be as good as the current ARM option inside China AND outside of China, it would still be subject to US bans because of US content
It's better just go with a design without US input.
But I doubt we'll get to that point, for the following reasons
ARM currently have a near monopoly on mobile processors, because they license to everyone and have reasonable fees.
But if China/Huawei have no choice but to develop an alternative to ARM, it may take 4-10 years for a viable design/ecosystem to emerge.
And then ARM will face a formidable competitor that can use the Chinese market as a secure base to expand globally.
Also, ARM is a serious contender for inclusion on China's Unreliable Entities List and banned in some form.
Note that China currently consumes 60% of all the world's microchips.
In order to prevent the risk of this happening, I expect ARM will remove US technology in its next processor design, so that it is no longer subject to US law.
Then Huawei would still have access to the next generation of ARM designs and access to TSMC to produce these chips.
ARM can afford the extra costs and the delays caused, because they are a near-monopoly in the mobile market, and improvements in semiconductor performance are plateauing.
Plus I imagine that Masayoshi Son is having to apologise because the contracts that SoftBank-ARM signed with Huawei have been cancelled.
That must be deeply humiliating to him personally, and particularly in Japanese business culture where your word is your bond.
So he wouldn't want to be in that position again.
Arm has no choice but to give China its IP
There’s talk that Arm will not hand its IP to Huawei – but how likely is that?
Followed by
Arm gives up control of IP to China
Arm has given up control of its technology to China, the Nikkei.
I am going to add that Samsung now does it too with their latest Exynos sets. Previously they relied on ARM Cortex cores, and still do for secondary cores, but the main core is something based on Samsung's micro architecture called Mongoose. The initiative in doing this, as Apple and Qualcomm has previous done is that all three wanted cores faster than ARM Cortex, given the competition.
That leaves only Mediatek and Huawei as the remaining licensees of ARM Cortex. With Huawei gone, this is like ARM cutting off one arm and leaving the other arm.
Mediatek supplies to Chinese smartphone makers targeting the mid range. They are kind of like the old AMD, a dwarf facing Intel's titan.
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
excellent write up by Janus Dongye Qimeng listed all the chips that is used in Huawei smart phone I agree with him push come to shove China will design their own chip
If Huawei could not find suppliers from the USA, then they will find alternatives, mostly preferably domestic suppliers in China. And those suppliers are exempted from paying to cooperate taxes in China. This would create a huge boost in domestic companies because they get lowered costs and a big customer at the same time.
US blacklisted Huawei in what is evidently ZTE style surgical strike. It appears Huawei is pretty much dead. What can Huawei or China do to overcome this or to retaliate? What will China do?
61 Answers
, Interested in Chinese history and geography
· Upvoted by , former Principal Engineer at Huawei (2016-2018) and , lives in China (1993-present)
Let’s look at facts, not opinions.
Let me introduce the whole supply chain of Huawei’s most popular phone in 2019: P30.
The “brain” of the Huawei P30 mobile phone is called Kirin 980 System-on-Chip designed by HiSilicon. And HiSilicon is the sub-company under Huawei. Why is it called System-on-Chip? Because it is a chip that contains many components designed by the rest of the world and put together in a single chip.
So what is inside the System-on-Chip?
Instruction set architecture: HiSilicon purchased the CPU and GPU architectural license from ARM in Cambridge, UK. With the license, HiSilicon can use the ARM instruction set (armv8) and develop their own 64-bit CPU architecture. And the bus standard such as AMBA is also licensed from ARM.
CPU, GPU: HiSilicon employs several hundred people in Shenzhen, China to design their custom CPU cores, accelerators, and IP components. In order to design their own CPU, they need to use Electronic design automation (EDA) tools from Synopsis, Cadence, and Xilinx. These EDA companies are all American companies in California, USA. HiSilicon needs to pay them license fees to use their tools to design and simulate their own CPUs.
Meanwhile, HiSilicon can also integrate existing softcore designed by ARM, such as powerful core Cortex A76 and power efficient core Cortex A55. Both are in the same chip. The big core is designed in Austin, Texas, USA and the small core is designed in Cambridge, UK. Some of the low-end CPU cores are also purchased from MediaTek in Taiwan. Meanwhile, HiSilicon can also purchase other intellectual properties from ARM including the Mali T830 GPU and the interconnect subsystems. Mali GPU is designed in the ARM headquarters in Cambridge, UK.
Memory: HiSilicon designed their own logic in the memory controller and SRAM systems. SRAM and DRAM cells are licensed from Samsung, Korea. The future 7nm 3D stacked RAM would also be designed from Samsung but manufactured in Dalian, China.
DSP & Camera: HiSilicon purchased the Camera lens design IP and control system from Leica Camera from Germany, where most of the system was designed in Wetzlar, Germany. And the actual lens is manufactured by Largan Precision in Taiwan and Sunny Optical Technology in mainland China. The electrical motors for driving camera to change focus is manufactured by Mitsumi in Tsurumaki, Japan. To translate light into signals, the photosensitive film is designed by O-film in Shenzhen, China (also supplier for iPhone X). HiSilicon purchased the hardware solutions for auto-focus and image stabilization from ON Semiconductors in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. The HD video processing chip is licensed from Sony, Japan. And HiSilicon designed their own image processing hardware accelerators (ISP), purchased many DSP IP patents from CEVA in California, USA and AI chips from Cambricon Technologies from Beijing, China.
Baseband: HiSilicon purchased IP license to use WIFI, GPS and Bluetooth IP from Broadcom from San Jose, California. For the 3G support, HiSilicon has to pay a royalty fee to patents held by Qualcomm from San Diego, California. For later 4G LTE and 5G, HiSilicon has its own patents and baseband processor called Balong, which was designed by several hundred people across China. HiSilicon has also purchased the Beidou Navigation system from Chinese Academy of Sciences. Note that some of the chip verification tasks are performed by Indian Engineers in Hyderabad, India.
Radio Frequency: To multiplex between various communication signals and amplify analog signals to different wireless frequencies, they need radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs). Most of the patents in RFIC was held by RF Micro Devices from North Carolina, USA and now became Qorvo after merging with TriQuint. In the RFIC chips, you need a few power amplifiers, high-end capacitors manufactured by Murata Manufacturing in Kyoto, Japan. You also need surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors designed and manufactured by TST Taiwan and Microgate in Shenzhen. You also need a few silicon-on-insulator switches designed by Skyworks Solutions in the USA and manufactured by Skyworks in China. For the antennas components, they are designed and manufactured by Sunway Co. in Shenzhen and Rosenberger (USA) factories based in Shanghai, China. In the age of 5G, Huawei analog devices have to use these devices from the USA, Japan, and China as well.
NFC & Touch: NXP Semiconductors in the Netherland provide NFC solutions for Huawei. And the chip is developed by Infineon in Simens, Germany. Goodix Co in Shenzhen provides the fingerprint sensor. USB Type-C solutions are provided by Shenzhen Everwin Precision.
Fabrication: After HiSilicon integrating all the soft IP and package into one SOC, the design is sent to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in Taiwan for physical layout and fabrication. The fabrication process of the SOC chip is a very complex task. For the most important steps, TSMC needs to import mask alignment systems (MAS) designed by ASML from the Netherlands. They also need to use a lot of wafer chemicals from Shin-Etsu in Japan, Siltronic AG from Germany and SUMCO Corporation from Minato in Japan.
Material: However, most of the chemical products and semi-products are imported from China. The most representative one is the rare earth metals in China. For other materials including glasses and steel, BYD in Shenzhen is responsible for manufacturing mobile phone gradient frames and high-density glasses. Shengyi Electronics produces all the PCB board for the phone.
Screen: Huawei P30 used Samsung OLED rigid screen but P30 Pro used the OLED soft screen designed by BOE Technology in China. Some screens are also manufactured by LG, Korea and manufactured in Guangzhou, China. Now both Korean and Chinese companies are dominating in the screen market.
Assemble: Huawei then orders all the components from each service provider and ship the components to Foxconn in Zhengzhou, China. Workers in Foxconn assemble all the components together into one complete phone.
This is the supply chain for a single phone in Huawei. And this is not even the main product for Huawei but they still managed to beat Apple and become the second largest smartphone company without entering the USA market. Huawei’s main strength is its communication infrastructure and solutions. However, it is difficult for me to compile a supplier list since I am not familiar with it.
Now please count how many these suppliers are from the USA, China, Japan, and Korea. For each company listed above, please go to their own website and check how much fraction of their products are actually sold to Huawei or Chinese market and how much their materials are imported from China. You would be amazed to find that Huawei is normally their biggest customers and they couldn’t leave China anymore.
That means if you kill Huawei, then most of the suppliers would hurt a lot too. Some would die. Most of them are the only high-value companies left in Korea and Japan. They could not suffer a 40% market loss. That would be a huge blow to Korea and Japan economy.
Clearly, the guy behind trump has no idea of the current situations in the semiconductor industry. I guess most people in Quora didn’t know as well.
Is Huawei dead?
Of course not. Ten years ago, Huawei has already initiated backup plans for various scenarios from the USA government. They even have the extreme backup plans for the scenarios when the whole of China is blocked from using the x86 instruction set.
If Huawei could not find suppliers from the USA, then they will find alternatives, mostly preferably domestic suppliers in China. And those suppliers are exempted from paying to cooperate taxes in China. This would create a huge boost in domestic companies because they get lowered costs and a big customer at the same time.
US blacklisted Huawei in what is evidently ZTE style surgical strike. It appears Huawei is pretty much dead. What can Huawei or China do to overcome this or to retaliate? What will China do?
61 Answers
, Interested in Chinese history and geography
· Upvoted by , former Principal Engineer at Huawei (2016-2018) and , lives in China (1993-present)
Let’s look at facts, not opinions.
Let me introduce the whole supply chain of Huawei’s most popular phone in 2019: P30.
The “brain” of the Huawei P30 mobile phone is called Kirin 980 System-on-Chip designed by HiSilicon. And HiSilicon is the sub-company under Huawei. Why is it called System-on-Chip? Because it is a chip that contains many components designed by the rest of the world and put together in a single chip.
So what is inside the System-on-Chip?
Instruction set architecture: HiSilicon purchased the CPU and GPU architectural license from ARM in Cambridge, UK. With the license, HiSilicon can use the ARM instruction set (armv8) and develop their own 64-bit CPU architecture. And the bus standard such as AMBA is also licensed from ARM.
CPU, GPU: HiSilicon employs several hundred people in Shenzhen, China to design their custom CPU cores, accelerators, and IP components. In order to design their own CPU, they need to use Electronic design automation (EDA) tools from Synopsis, Cadence, and Xilinx. These EDA companies are all American companies in California, USA. HiSilicon needs to pay them license fees to use their tools to design and simulate their own CPUs.
Meanwhile, HiSilicon can also integrate existing softcore designed by ARM, such as powerful core Cortex A76 and power efficient core Cortex A55. Both are in the same chip. The big core is designed in Austin, Texas, USA and the small core is designed in Cambridge, UK. Some of the low-end CPU cores are also purchased from MediaTek in Taiwan. Meanwhile, HiSilicon can also purchase other intellectual properties from ARM including the Mali T830 GPU and the interconnect subsystems. Mali GPU is designed in the ARM headquarters in Cambridge, UK.
Memory: HiSilicon designed their own logic in the memory controller and SRAM systems. SRAM and DRAM cells are licensed from Samsung, Korea. The future 7nm 3D stacked RAM would also be designed from Samsung but manufactured in Dalian, China.
DSP & Camera: HiSilicon purchased the Camera lens design IP and control system from Leica Camera from Germany, where most of the system was designed in Wetzlar, Germany. And the actual lens is manufactured by Largan Precision in Taiwan and Sunny Optical Technology in mainland China. The electrical motors for driving camera to change focus is manufactured by Mitsumi in Tsurumaki, Japan. To translate light into signals, the photosensitive film is designed by O-film in Shenzhen, China (also supplier for iPhone X). HiSilicon purchased the hardware solutions for auto-focus and image stabilization from ON Semiconductors in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. The HD video processing chip is licensed from Sony, Japan. And HiSilicon designed their own image processing hardware accelerators (ISP), purchased many DSP IP patents from CEVA in California, USA and AI chips from Cambricon Technologies from Beijing, China.
Baseband: HiSilicon purchased IP license to use WIFI, GPS and Bluetooth IP from Broadcom from San Jose, California. For the 3G support, HiSilicon has to pay a royalty fee to patents held by Qualcomm from San Diego, California. For later 4G LTE and 5G, HiSilicon has its own patents and baseband processor called Balong, which was designed by several hundred people across China. HiSilicon has also purchased the Beidou Navigation system from Chinese Academy of Sciences. Note that some of the chip verification tasks are performed by Indian Engineers in Hyderabad, India.
Radio Frequency: To multiplex between various communication signals and amplify analog signals to different wireless frequencies, they need radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs). Most of the patents in RFIC was held by RF Micro Devices from North Carolina, USA and now became Qorvo after merging with TriQuint. In the RFIC chips, you need a few power amplifiers, high-end capacitors manufactured by Murata Manufacturing in Kyoto, Japan. You also need surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors designed and manufactured by TST Taiwan and Microgate in Shenzhen. You also need a few silicon-on-insulator switches designed by Skyworks Solutions in the USA and manufactured by Skyworks in China. For the antennas components, they are designed and manufactured by Sunway Co. in Shenzhen and Rosenberger (USA) factories based in Shanghai, China. In the age of 5G, Huawei analog devices have to use these devices from the USA, Japan, and China as well.
NFC & Touch: NXP Semiconductors in the Netherland provide NFC solutions for Huawei. And the chip is developed by Infineon in Simens, Germany. Goodix Co in Shenzhen provides the fingerprint sensor. USB Type-C solutions are provided by Shenzhen Everwin Precision.
Fabrication: After HiSilicon integrating all the soft IP and package into one SOC, the design is sent to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in Taiwan for physical layout and fabrication. The fabrication process of the SOC chip is a very complex task. For the most important steps, TSMC needs to import mask alignment systems (MAS) designed by ASML from the Netherlands. They also need to use a lot of wafer chemicals from Shin-Etsu in Japan, Siltronic AG from Germany and SUMCO Corporation from Minato in Japan.
Material: However, most of the chemical products and semi-products are imported from China. The most representative one is the rare earth metals in China. For other materials including glasses and steel, BYD in Shenzhen is responsible for manufacturing mobile phone gradient frames and high-density glasses. Shengyi Electronics produces all the PCB board for the phone.
Screen: Huawei P30 used Samsung OLED rigid screen but P30 Pro used the OLED soft screen designed by BOE Technology in China. Some screens are also manufactured by LG, Korea and manufactured in Guangzhou, China. Now both Korean and Chinese companies are dominating in the screen market.
Assemble: Huawei then orders all the components from each service provider and ship the components to Foxconn in Zhengzhou, China. Workers in Foxconn assemble all the components together into one complete phone.
This is the supply chain for a single phone in Huawei. And this is not even the main product for Huawei but they still managed to beat Apple and become the second largest smartphone company without entering the USA market. Huawei’s main strength is its communication infrastructure and solutions. However, it is difficult for me to compile a supplier list since I am not familiar with it.
Now please count how many these suppliers are from the USA, China, Japan, and Korea. For each company listed above, please go to their own website and check how much fraction of their products are actually sold to Huawei or Chinese market and how much their materials are imported from China. You would be amazed to find that Huawei is normally their biggest customers and they couldn’t leave China anymore.
That means if you kill Huawei, then most of the suppliers would hurt a lot too. Some would die. Most of them are the only high-value companies left in Korea and Japan. They could not suffer a 40% market loss. That would be a huge blow to Korea and Japan economy.
Clearly, the guy behind trump has no idea of the current situations in the semiconductor industry. I guess most people in Quora didn’t know as well.
Is Huawei dead?
Of course not. Ten years ago, Huawei has already initiated backup plans for various scenarios from the USA government. They even have the extreme backup plans for the scenarios when the whole of China is blocked from using the x86 instruction set.
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
(cont)
What would China do?
Let’s look at the latest retaliations approaches from China:
China announced that all domestic semiconductor supplier companies would be granted tax-free for five years. They do not have to pay taxes for five years! This means that they can lower their operational costs and beat their foreign competitors. This is really what the USA has been complaining about China. And now China keeps doing regardless of what the USA has to say.
If Huawei could not find suppliers from the USA, then they will find alternatives, mostly preferably domestic suppliers in China. And those suppliers are exempted from paying to cooperate taxes in China. This would create a huge boost in domestic companies because they get lowered costs and a big customer at the same time.
I have been talking with many Chinese scholars in different areas in the semiconductor industries in China. They said the reason why Huawei purchases intellectual properties from so many sources is not that Huawei didn’t have the technology, but it is more that for the most the area they do not bother to reinvent the wheels and they want to bind the interests with the rest of the world.
There are indeed a few key technologies China still lags behind, such as the fabrication process and RF chips. But we should know how did China manage to come so far. Thanks to the technology blockade and sanctions in the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls in Paris, China is banned to access all the high-end technology. Thanks to them, China can have the opportunity to “reinvent the wheels” on its own.
Meanwhile, metros in Beijing already installed 5G coverage thanks to Huawei technology.
But now, I am sitting in the underground in London. My phone can not connect to any signal. So I have to read offline posts about a wonderful post-Brexit article. People around me are all looking at offline novels, on their Huawei phones.
For the analysis of the “supply chain” of the software side, please refer to my answer:
I hope you could learn something more about the situation as well.
What would China do?
Let’s look at the latest retaliations approaches from China:
China announced that all domestic semiconductor supplier companies would be granted tax-free for five years. They do not have to pay taxes for five years! This means that they can lower their operational costs and beat their foreign competitors. This is really what the USA has been complaining about China. And now China keeps doing regardless of what the USA has to say.
If Huawei could not find suppliers from the USA, then they will find alternatives, mostly preferably domestic suppliers in China. And those suppliers are exempted from paying to cooperate taxes in China. This would create a huge boost in domestic companies because they get lowered costs and a big customer at the same time.
I have been talking with many Chinese scholars in different areas in the semiconductor industries in China. They said the reason why Huawei purchases intellectual properties from so many sources is not that Huawei didn’t have the technology, but it is more that for the most the area they do not bother to reinvent the wheels and they want to bind the interests with the rest of the world.
There are indeed a few key technologies China still lags behind, such as the fabrication process and RF chips. But we should know how did China manage to come so far. Thanks to the technology blockade and sanctions in the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls in Paris, China is banned to access all the high-end technology. Thanks to them, China can have the opportunity to “reinvent the wheels” on its own.
Meanwhile, metros in Beijing already installed 5G coverage thanks to Huawei technology.
But now, I am sitting in the underground in London. My phone can not connect to any signal. So I have to read offline posts about a wonderful post-Brexit article. People around me are all looking at offline novels, on their Huawei phones.
For the analysis of the “supply chain” of the software side, please refer to my answer:
I hope you could learn something more about the situation as well.
Last edited:
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