Arm staff told they must cut all ties with Huawei

[HEXUS]

Cambridge-based Arm must halt contracts, support, and cancel scheduled meetings.

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[Ozaron]

Okay, what? Who sent said memo? The US Gov? What right does the US have to block a UK firm from trading with someone they choose? I guess they could ban Arm, and then lose all of Arm's business?
I'm sure that would be great for American tech.

None of the bans are based on anything other than accusation, so to reach this far I think is beyond stupid. US's ego is so big it can't even see its own boots anymore.

Suppose free trade is only a good thing when it's you who profits.

[LSG501]

Okay, what? Who sent said memo? The US Gov? What right does the US have to block a UK firm from trading with someone they choose? I guess they could ban Arm, and then lose all of Arm's business?

Same sentiment but ARM was purchased in 2016 (iirc) by Softbank of Japan (foolish move to allow it imo, as we've basically lost our fall back cpu manufacturer if we ever need one).

Japan is VERY friendly with USA so while the US ban is basically screwing companies over the odds are that 'everyone' linked with the US will follow suit at some point, the UK already started with the networking gear 'block'.

I wouldn't go as far as to say it's the US's ego that's the issue here... I'd say it's Trumps.

[[GSV]Trig]

How much longer will Trumps reign of stupids continue?
Hoe many smaller companies will go under due to this stupid trade war he's kicked back into the foreground...

[fmq203]

Honestly, I hope this blows up in the face of USA. They need to learn a lesson, they can't do whatever they want.

[DanceswithUnix]

The ARM cores themselves probably aren't much of a long term obstacle. China has CPU design skills which I suspect the Chinese government would be happy to put to use to bash the west with. Adapting the Loongson cpu from MIPS (which is probably still blocked by the US) to the open source RISC-V instruction set shouldn't be that hard.

GPU is probably harder, I don't know how they would replace Mali at short or even medium term.

[Bagpuss]

Same sentiment but ARM was purchased in 2016 (iirc) by Softbank of Japan (foolish move to allow it imo, as we've basically lost our fall back cpu manufacturer if we ever need one).

Japan is VERY friendly with USA so while the US ban is basically screwing companies over the odds are that 'everyone' linked with the US will follow suit at some point, the UK already started with the networking gear 'block'.

I wouldn't go as far as to say it's the US's ego that's the issue here... I'd say it's Trumps.

First of all, whoever owns the company this would have been the result because they would lose access to the US market if they didn't. Ownership is irrelevant to that and secondly ARM doesn't make CPU's, it just designs them and sells those designs for others to make.

[LSG501]

it just designs them and sells those designs for others to make.

Apart from selling it to others how is that different to AMD? They don't have any full scale in house production either... ARM are more than capable of developing an entire cpu/gpu etc and sending it off to be manufactured just like AMD, it's just more financially beneficial for them to sell the designs rather than deal with manufacturing.

The US will not completely block ARM when it's based in the UK and owned by Japan... they are the core of pretty much every mobile device out there which would just be stupid, even for Trump...not to mention you even said it yourself, they don't actually make their own chips, they just design them, so they can just block the ones they don't like like Huawei while keeping the ones they do like like Apple, Qualcom, Samsung etc.

The US likely has issues with ARM's Chinese branch due to it being part owned by Chinese companies due to laws in China, but the worst that will happen there is ARM will be 'asked' not to work there, like now.

[ETR316]

Honestly, I hope this blows up in the face of USA. They need to learn a lesson, they can't do whatever they want.

True! Huawei can put back doors wherever they want, I mean they made the device. If people dont like back doors dont buy it. Why should governments protect people, let citizens protect themselves!

[[GSV]Trig]

Privacy is a myth, as soon as everyone accepts this, the better...

[jab701]

Okay, what? Who sent said memo? The US Gov? What right does the US have to block a UK firm from trading with someone they choose? I guess they could ban Arm, and then lose all of Arm's business?

As it said in the article the export license relates to technology ARM uses which is of US origin. That could be as simple as an ARM design team who is US based who helped create the designs.

As I understand it Huawei (via HiSilicon) use some pre-designed components of the ARM processor. However they are also an ARM Architecture licensee and if they create a design completely in-house than it will not be affected by the ban as it doesn't include US technology.

[watercooled]

As I understand it, as jab701 says above, this is down to some of the IP being of US origin. I believe the A76 core is from the Austin, TX design team for example, while A55 etc are from Cambridge, UK, and A75, A73, etc are from the Sophia team. I'm not sure if it would be a simple to compartmentalise as that in reality though as I imagine they share information regardless of the design centre. It really demonstrates the huge idiocy of trying to block off one company - in today's world, things are incredibly interlinked and this nonsense is already massively harmful to Western countries.

OTOH, I wonder if it affects the ARM license itself? E.g. what's stopping Huawei from designing or deriving their own cores? It wouldn't be a quick thing to achieve but they have a lot of money and the motivation to do it. IIRC they already have custom cores for their server CPUs.

[Stukes]

True! Huawei can put back doors wherever they want, I mean they made the device. If people dont like back doors dont buy it. Why should governments protect people, let citizens protect themselves!

(Assuming that's sarcasm). You're being naive if you think the US are doing this to "protect the people". It's also hypocritical after American backdoors in Cisco equipment (and others that I can't remember offhand.) The US is better in a lot of ways than China, but that isn't one of them. They're just normally more subtle about it

Huawei already has the ARM designs, so there's nothing really to stop them continuing to use them, regardless of the US saying "dont!". China isn't well known for following international IP laws at the best of times.
This might slow them down a little as they get their own designs up to spec, but they're a big company with pretty tight relations with the Chinese Govt, so if they want to design their own they will.

This seems like an odd long-term move for the US. In the short term both countries get on bad terms and lose money. In the mid to long term, China gets more self sufficient and becomes a larger threat.
I really hope this doesn't turn into a shooting war, but the less dependent on each other the US and China are, the more likely it is that it will devolve in that direction

[jab701]

I'm not sure if it would be a simple to compartmentalise as that in reality though as I imagine they share information regardless of the design centre. It really demonstrates the huge idiocy of trying to block off one company - in today's world, things are incredibly interlinked and this nonsense is already massively harmful to Western countries.

I used to work designing CPUs for another British Company a while back. They had design teams in the US, China, India. We shared sub-components between sites so that the CPUs were made from technology made on all of the sites. Some processor designs were direct collaboration between teams on two or more sites (the one I worked on was, part of the processor was designed in the UK and the other half in the USA).

OTOH, I wonder if it affects the ARM license itself? E.g. what's stopping Huawei from designing or deriving their own cores? It wouldn't be a quick thing to achieve but they have a lot of money and the motivation to do it. IIRC they already have custom cores for their server CPUs.

There was an article on anandtech or arstechnica which said the Architecture license is unaffected. The architecture license covers the technical manual of what operations each instruction will need to perform etc and permission to produce a processor conforming to the manual (Basically it is permission to use the instruction encodings which are copyrighted) so isn't covered under export licenses.

HiSilicon do make their own cores but I suspect they are the lower end cores. It is a lot of effort to design high end cores and they are bought by a smaller proportion of the market. Mid-range cpus sell in volume as they can be used in phones, routers etc

[jab701]

I don't think this willdevolve to a shooting war. It basically boils down to the fact that Huawei's 5G technology is a year or two ahead of the best US company and the US are worried that they are going to lose the market. This is all about trade and economics...

[watercooled]

It basically boils down to the fact that Huawei's 5G technology is a year or two ahead of the best US company and the US are worried that they are going to lose the market. This is all about trade and economics...

That's really what it appears to be about from an outside perspective, ignoring all of the politics and jingoism. They couldn't get their way by stamping their feet and trying to bully other countries to ban Huawei networking equipment (I wonder if the 'security' claims shared with other countries are as nebulous as the media hysteria), so they resort to this. I think you'd have to be pretty naive to see this not making up at least a part of the motivation, even if you genuinely believe the security stuff.