Arm's new chip architecture will power future devices, possibly including Apple's

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  • Reply 21 of 74
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,311member
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    elijahg said:
    cloudguy said:
    dk49 said:
    If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 
    See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
    The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
    A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
    Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios. 

    Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.

    It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.

    It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course. 

    In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc. 

    Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.

    It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too. 
    You would be accurate in stating that Huawei is on a possible path to that, but factually, Huawei is not anywhere close to where Apple is in SOC development, and that takes into account the short term advantage that Huawei has with integration of 5G into its smartphone SOC. I also take exception to their Android fork being very developed, though of course, you have disagreed with that in the past, against published evidence that it is mostly a vanilla copy.

    Samsung has attempted to, but has never been able to replicate Apple's success and continue to trail in SOC performance, and density, and Qualcomm develops a range of SOC's for its many customers.

    As I have stated before; every year, Apple ships about 70% of its units based on its single, current (A14), A series processor, and this year, it appears that Apple will approach 250m iPhone units, which is in the neighborhood of 175 million A14's, not including iPad's. Not in anyone's universe will Qualcomm come close to those numbers for the Snapdragon 888, nor Samsung for the Exynos 2100, nor Huawei for the Kirin 9000. 

    What's interesting is how much of an advantage Apple continues to carry over its competitors, and the M series is yet another instance.
    Huawei is right up there with Apple on SoC development. On process node and even besting Apple on transistor density. On timing. On getting their modems on SoC, on ISP and DSP development, on secure enclave etc.

    The amount of processors Apple ships is totally irrevelant. What does that have to do with the advantages of owning the whole stack? And you are making some utterly wild projections anyway. Why not try to run with something that is more realistic, like what they shipped last year? Either way, quantity would still mean nothing but if that is what you want, Mediatek reportedly shipped over 350 million processors last year.

    As for the advantage Apple continues to have over competitors, are you claiming that not being able to ship a latest generation 5G modem on SoC is an advantage?

    And as for 'the Android fork' (eh?) not being very developed, it already contained more APIs than Google GMS Android, and two days ago, Beta 3 was released, adding 1,000 more APIs. Considering no one outside China has even seen the system, you are jumping to A LOT of uninformed conclusions. Especially as the system already has a release date for handsets: 24 April.

    I think we should just wait and see on that one. 
    Huawei/HiSilicon is dead in the water without access to a leading node fab, so what you state is factually untrue. Rumors of a Kirin 9010 at 3 nm are pure fantasy, as there are no fabs in the PRC that are capable of less 14 nm. There were very few Kirin 9000 produced, perhaps 8 million total, and the Kirin 9000 was trailing A14 and Qualcomm 888 in performance.

    Apple owning its own stack is why Apple has the M1, and will follow up with more performant M Series. Apple owning its own stack is why Apple doesn't have to be concerned with SOC cost, and hasn't created mid, and low range, variants of the current A Series, other than AX which powers iPad.

    I misstated that Apple doesn't have 5G integrated on the SOC, That should be restated as Apple does not have 5G integrated on the A14 die. Of course, in the future, Apple will integrate 5G on die, but in the meantime, consumers aren't concerned about how Apple implements 4G, and units sold in proof of that.

    Yeah, we should "wait", but it should be noted that you have no specific knowledge of Huawei's Harmony OS as it pertains to smartphones either; you're merely parroting Huawei Marketing.
    edited April 2021 williamlondonmuthuk_vanalingamDogpersonAlex_Vwatto_cobra
  • Reply 22 of 74
    seanjseanj Posts: 318member
    melgross said:
    cloudguy said:
    rob53 said:
    Is Apple required to push their Apple developed ARM designs back to the main ARM design architecture? It appears v9 will include many of the ideas Apple has developed. 

    As for Nvidia buying Arm Ltd there better be a whole lot more investigation into how Nvidia will be allowed to control the architecture and its users before they’re allowed to buy them. 
    You are wrong on both counts.

    1. The v9 contains things that ARM developed independently that are inferior to Apple's tech.
    2. Apple WILL NOT be required to push their ARM designs back. First off, as a co-founder with a permanent architectural license, Apple is for all intents and purposes an independent entity here. Second, even if they weren't, the other ARM licensees like MediaTek, Huawei, Qualcomm and Samsung don't either. This is a real issue because for awhile both Samsung and Qualcomm were able to develop custom CPU cores that were significantly better tham ARM's generic CPU cores. (Samsung fell behind and gave up; Qualcomm's are only slightly better.) And Qualcomm's Adreno GPU design is MUCH BETTER than ARM Holdings' Mali. (The bad ARM GPUs are a major reason why Google uses Intel for Chromebooks. Samsung ditched Mali for an AMD GPU design. Nvidia's mobile GPU design - hardware and software - is much better also.) So if generic licensees like Qualcomm, Samsung and Nvidia aren't required to give up their IP to ARM Holdings there is no way that Apple - whose license is on far better terms - won't.

    Basically Nvidia buying ARM has nothing to do with Apple. Nvidia doesn't even want in on the CPU game anyway. They tried that already: they made CPUs for the original batch of Android devices. When companies abandoned them for the Qualcomm/Samsung/MediaTek trio they tried to manufacture and sell their own devices - the Nvidia Shield tablet and the Nvidia Shield set top box - but that failed also. Even the Nintendo Switch uses Nvidia CPU designs that are like 4 years old because Nvidia exited that market and never updated them. The Nintendo Switch Pro will have a slightly updated Tegra CPU, but it still won't use the latest ARM cores or the latest process. Nvidia buying ARM is all about cloud, edge and IoT stuff plus ML/AI stuff, and those are areas that an end user consumer hardware company like Apple only dabbles in.
    I wouldn’t say that vi is inferior to Apple’s work. This isn’t what Apple is doing. Apple will very likely upgrade their own work to v9, as they did with v8.
    Agreed Apple will undoubtedly upgrade the A and M series to v9, as will Amazon with its Graviton chips, etc, etc. The performance on tasks such as ML using v9 we’re finding are many orders of magnitude faster.
    All this does is hasten the end of the tired old Intel x86 architecture.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 23 of 74
    cloudguy said:
    Wait what? I thought Apple was an ARM Holdings co-founder, had a permanent architectural license and their own custom design for PCs that was radically different from - and better than - the small core design for embedded systems that the ARM pushes for Cortex-A for smartphones and the somewhat better (but still not very good) Marvell and N1 core designs that are used on servers (which again aren't very good as they constitute 3% of the market, forcing Amazon, Microsoft, Google etc. to also make their own core designs and causing Marvell, HP and most other ARM server vendors to drop out of the market leaving Ampere as the only player)? Even Fujitsu, who makes ARM supercomputers, relies on a custom design (a combination of the RISC license based on SPARC that they bought from Sun back in the day and things they licensed from ARM). 

    While the M1 chip has a single core score that rivals Intel Core i7 and i9, the best Cortex Core for PCs and mobile barely surpasses the Intel Pentium. (Qualcomm is hyping up the multicore score, but even there it takes 8 performance cores to merely rival the Geekbench 5 score for the quad core Intel i5). I thought that Apple having their own big core design that ARM Holdings can't come close to was why Nvidia's purchase of ARM Holdings is like "meh" for Apple as their custom CPU and GPU designs are much better - by several times - than Cortex, Mali (the ARM Holdings GPU) and even Nvidia (either their old GPU architecture or their new Ampere one) anyway.
    The best I've seen from ARM is the Cortex-X1 which is used in the Snapdragon 888 which at 5nm ran neck-and-neck with A11's 7nm Lightning cores - Lightning won overall but the X1 won at floating point. The 888 is a triple tier SoC with a single X1 at the top as its single, highest performance core, and I believe it's a five wide design.

    In 2008, Apple acquired PA Semi and worked with cash strapped Intrinsity and Samsung to produce a FastCore Cortex-A8; the frenemies famously split and Apple used their IP and Imagination's PowerVR to create the A4 and Samsung took their tech to produce the Exynos 3. Apple acquired Intrinsity and continued to hire engineering talent from IBM's Cell and XCPU design teams, and hired Johny Srouji from IBM who worked on the POWER7 line to direct the effort.

    This divergence from standard ARM designs was continued by Apple who continued to nurture and build their Silicon Design Team (capitalized out of respect) for a decade, ignoring standard ARM designs building their own architecture, improving and optimizing it year by year for the last decade.

    Whereas other ARM processor makers like Qualcomm and Samsung pretty much now use standard ARM designed cores - Apple has their own designs and architecture and has greatly expanded their own processor acumen to the point where the Firestorm cores in the A14 and M1 are the most sophisticated processors in the world with an eight wide processor design with a 690 instruction execution queue with a massive reorder buffer and the arithmetic units to back it up - which means its out-of-order execution unit can execute up to eight instructions _simultaneously._

    x86 processor makers are hampered by the CISC design and a variable instruction length. This means that at most they can produce a three wide design and even for that the decoder would have to be fiendishly clever, as it would have to guess where one instruction ended and the next began.

    There's a problem shared with x86-64 processor makers and Windows - they never met an instruction or feature they didn't like. What happens then is you get a build-up of crud that no one uses, but it still consumes energy and engineering time to keep working.

    AMD can get better single core speed by pushing up clocks (and dealing with the exponentially increased heat though chiplets are probably much harder to cool), and Intel by reducing the number of cores (the top of the 10 core 20 thread 10900K actually had to be shaved to achieve enough surface area to cool the chip so it at 14nm had reached the limits of physics). Both run so hot they are soon in danger of running into Moore's Wall.

    Apple OTOH ruthlessly pares underused or unoptimizable features.

    When Apple determined that ARMv7 (32 bit ARM) was unoptimizable, they wrote it out of iOS, and removed those logic blocks from their CPUs in two years, repurposing the silicon real estate for more productive things. Intel,  AMD, and yes even Qualcomm couldn't do that in a decade.

    Apple continues that with everything - not enough people using Force Touch - deprecate it, remove it from the hardware, and replace it with Haptic Touch. Gone.

    Here's another secret of efficiency - make it a goal. Last year on the A13 Bionic used in the iPhone 11s, the Apple Silicon Team introduced hundreds of voltage domains so they could turn off parts of the chip not in use. Following their annual cadence, they increased the speed of the Lightning high performance and the Thunder high efficiency cores by 20% despite no change in the 7nm mask size. As an aside, they increased the speed of matrix multiplication and division by six times (used in machine learning).

    This year they increased the speed of the Firestorm high performance and Icestorm high efficiency cores by another 20% while dropping the mask size from 7nm to 5nm. That's a hell of a compounding rate and explains how they got to where they are. Rumor has it they've bought all the 3nm capacity from TSMC for the A16 (and probably M2) next year.

    Wintel fans would deny the efficacy of the A series processors and say they were mobile chips, as if they used slower silicon with wheels on the bottom or more sluggish electrons.

    What they were were high efficiency chips which were passively cooled and living in a glass sandwich. Remove them from that environment where they could breathe more easily and boost the clocks a tad and they became a raging beast.

    People say that the other processor makers will catch up in a couple of years, but that's really tough to see. Apple Silicon is the culmination of a decade of intense processor design financed by a company with very deep pockets - who is fully cognizant of the competitive advantage Apple Silicon affords. Here's an article in Anandtech comparing the Firestorm cores to the competing ARM and x86 cores. It's very readable for an article of its ilk:


    Of course these are the Firestorm cores used in the A14, and are not as performant as the cores in the M1 due to the M1's higher 3.2 ghz clock speed.

    edited April 2021 tmayjdb8167mobirdAlex_Vtenthousandthingswatto_cobrasphericlibertyforall
  • Reply 24 of 74
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,311member
    cloudguy said:
    Wait what? I thought Apple was an ARM Holdings co-founder, had a permanent architectural license and their own custom design for PCs that was radically different from - and better than - the small core design for embedded systems that the ARM pushes for Cortex-A for smartphones and the somewhat better (but still not very good) Marvell and N1 core designs that are used on servers (which again aren't very good as they constitute 3% of the market, forcing Amazon, Microsoft, Google etc. to also make their own core designs and causing Marvell, HP and most other ARM server vendors to drop out of the market leaving Ampere as the only player)? Even Fujitsu, who makes ARM supercomputers, relies on a custom design (a combination of the RISC license based on SPARC that they bought from Sun back in the day and things they licensed from ARM). 

    While the M1 chip has a single core score that rivals Intel Core i7 and i9, the best Cortex Core for PCs and mobile barely surpasses the Intel Pentium. (Qualcomm is hyping up the multicore score, but even there it takes 8 performance cores to merely rival the Geekbench 5 score for the quad core Intel i5). I thought that Apple having their own big core design that ARM Holdings can't come close to was why Nvidia's purchase of ARM Holdings is like "meh" for Apple as their custom CPU and GPU designs are much better - by several times - than Cortex, Mali (the ARM Holdings GPU) and even Nvidia (either their old GPU architecture or their new Ampere one) anyway.
    The best I've seen from ARM is the Cortex-X1 which is used in the Snapdragon 888 which at 5nm ran neck-and-neck with A11's 7nm Lightning cores - Lightning won overall but the X1 won at floating point. The 888 is a triple tier SoC with a single X1 at the top as its single, highest performance core, and I believe it's a five wide design.

    In 2008, Apple acquired PA Semi and worked with cash strapped Intrinsity and Samsung to produce a FastCore Cortex-A8; the frenemies famously split and Apple used their IP and Imagination's PowerVR to create the A4 and Samsung took their tech to produce the Exynos 3. Apple acquired Intrinsity and continued to hire engineering talent from IBM's Cell and XCPU design teams, and hired Johny Srouji from IBM who worked on the POWER7 line to direct the effort.

    This divergence from standard ARM designs was continued by Apple who continued to nurture and build their Silicon Design Team (capitalized out of respect) for a decade, ignoring standard ARM designs building their own architecture, improving and optimizing it year by year for the last decade.

    Whereas other ARM processor makers like Qualcomm and Samsung pretty much now use standard ARM designed cores - Apple has their own designs and architecture and has greatly expanded their own processor acumen to the point where the Firestorm cores in the A14 and M1 are the most sophisticated processors in the world with an eight wide processor design with a 690 instruction execution queue with a massive reorder buffer and the arithmetic units to back it up - which means its out-of-order execution unit can execute up to eight instructions _simultaneously._

    x86 processor makers are hampered by the CISC design and a variable instruction length. This means that at most they can produce a three wide design and even for that the decoder would have to be fiendishly clever, as it would have to guess where one instruction ended and the next began.

    There's a problem shared with x86-64 processor makers and Windows - they never met an instruction or feature they didn't like. What happens then is you get a build-up of crud that no one uses, but it still consumes energy and engineering time to keep working.

    AMD can get better single core speed by pushing up clocks (and dealing with the exponentially increased heat though chiplets are probably much harder to cool), and Intel by reducing the number of cores (the top of the 10 core 20 thread 10900K actually had to be shaved to achieve enough surface area to cool the chip so it at 14nm had reached the limits of physics). Both run so hot they are soon in danger of running into Moore's Wall.

    Apple OTOH ruthlessly pares underused or unoptimizable features.

    When Apple determined that ARMv7 (32 bit ARM) was unoptimizable, they wrote it out of iOS, and removed those logic blocks from their CPUs in two years, repurposing the silicon real estate for more productive things. Intel,  AMD, and yes even Qualcomm couldn't do that in a decade.

    Apple continues that with everything - not enough people using Force Touch - deprecate it, remove it from the hardware, and replace it with Haptic Touch. Gone.

    Here's another secret of efficiency - make it a goal. Last year on the A13 Bionic used in the iPhone 11s, the Apple Silicon Team introduced hundreds of voltage domains so they could turn off parts of the chip not in use. Following their annual cadence, they increased the speed of the Lightning high performance and the Thunder high efficiency cores by 20% despite no change in the 7nm mask size. As an aside, they increased the speed of matrix multiplication and division by six times (used in machine learning).

    This year they increased the speed of the Firestorm high performance and Icestorm high efficiency cores by another 20% while dropping the mask size from 7nm to 5nm. That's a hell of a compounding rate and explains how they got to where they are. Rumor has it they've bought all the 3nm capacity from TSMC for the A16 (and probably M2) next year.

    Wintel fans would deny the efficacy of the A series processors and say they were mobile chips, as if they used slower silicon with wheels on the bottom or more sluggish electrons.

    What they were were high efficiency chips which were passively cooled and living in a glass sandwich. Remove them from that environment where they could breathe more easily and boost the clocks a tad and they became a raging beast.

    People say that the other processor makers will catch up in a couple of years, but that's really tough to see. Apple Silicon is the culmination of a decade of intense processor design financed by a company with very deep pockets - who is fully cognizant of the competitive advantage Apple Silicon affords. Here's an article in Anandtech comparing the Firestorm cores to the competing ARM and x86 cores. It's very readable for an article of its ilk:


    Of course these are the Firestorm cores used in the A14, and are not as performant as the cores in the M1 due to the M1's higher 3.2 ghz clock speed.

    Excellent post, Verne.
    Alex_Vwatto_cobralibertyforall
  • Reply 25 of 74
    jdb8167jdb8167 Posts: 626member
    tmay said:
    elijahg said:
    cloudguy said:
    dk49 said:
    If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 
    See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
    The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
    A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.

    Apple also has the ability to smoothly pivot to another architecture, such as Risk V, if it desires.
    While I agree that Apple could pivot to Risc-V if they needed/wanted to, I can't envision any scenario in the next decade where that would be something they would do. I guess the rumors could be wrong and there may be more architecture limitations in their license than supposed but I've heard nothing like that. Apple could stay on Aarch64v8 forever and add their own extensions as needed to keep up with x86, Aarch64, and Risc-V. Since they have good development access to LLVM and other toolchain software, that won't be a limitation either.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 26 of 74
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,624member
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    elijahg said:
    cloudguy said:
    dk49 said:
    If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 
    See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
    The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
    A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
    Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios. 

    Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.

    It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.

    It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course. 

    In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc. 

    Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.

    It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too. 
    You would be accurate in stating that Huawei is on a possible path to that, but factually, Huawei is not anywhere close to where Apple is in SOC development, and that takes into account the short term advantage that Huawei has with integration of 5G into its smartphone SOC. I also take exception to their Android fork being very developed, though of course, you have disagreed with that in the past, against published evidence that it is mostly a vanilla copy.

    Samsung has attempted to, but has never been able to replicate Apple's success and continue to trail in SOC performance, and density, and Qualcomm develops a range of SOC's for its many customers.

    As I have stated before; every year, Apple ships about 70% of its units based on its single, current (A14), A series processor, and this year, it appears that Apple will approach 250m iPhone units, which is in the neighborhood of 175 million A14's, not including iPad's. Not in anyone's universe will Qualcomm come close to those numbers for the Snapdragon 888, nor Samsung for the Exynos 2100, nor Huawei for the Kirin 9000. 

    What's interesting is how much of an advantage Apple continues to carry over its competitors, and the M series is yet another instance.
    Huawei is right up there with Apple on SoC development. On process node and even besting Apple on transistor density. On timing. On getting their modems on SoC, on ISP and DSP development, on secure enclave etc.

    The amount of processors Apple ships is totally irrevelant. What does that have to do with the advantages of owning the whole stack? And you are making some utterly wild projections anyway. Why not try to run with something that is more realistic, like what they shipped last year? Either way, quantity would still mean nothing but if that is what you want, Mediatek reportedly shipped over 350 million processors last year.

    As for the advantage Apple continues to have over competitors, are you claiming that not being able to ship a latest generation 5G modem on SoC is an advantage?

    And as for 'the Android fork' (eh?) not being very developed, it already contained more APIs than Google GMS Android, and two days ago, Beta 3 was released, adding 1,000 more APIs. Considering no one outside China has even seen the system, you are jumping to A LOT of uninformed conclusions. Especially as the system already has a release date for handsets: 24 April.

    I think we should just wait and see on that one. 
    Huawei/HiSilicon is dead in the water without access to a leading node fab, so what you state is factually untrue. Rumors of a Kirin 9010 at 3 nm are pure fantasy, as there are no fabs in the PRC that are capable of less 14 nm. There were very few Kirin 9000 produced, perhaps 8 million total, and the Kirin 9000 was trailing A14 and Qualcomm 888 in performance.

    Apple owning its own stack is why Apple has the M1, and will follow up with more performant M Series. Apple owning its own stack is why Apple doesn't have to be concerned with SOC cost, and hasn't created mid, and low range, variants of the current A Series, other than AX which powers iPad.

    I misstated that Apple doesn't have 5G integrated on the SOC, That should be restated as Apple does not have 5G integrated on the A14 die. Of course, in the future, Apple will integrate 5G on die, but in the meantime, consumers aren't concerned about how Apple implements 4G, and units sold in proof of that.

    Yeah, we should "wait", but it should be noted that you have no specific knowledge of Huawei's Harmony OS as it pertains to smartphones either; you're merely parroting Huawei Marketing.
    Anyone (Apple included) has a problem if they have a product design that cannot be manufactured. 

    Not long ago, the entire industry was affected by a very similar problem but that wasn't politics, it was COVID-19.

    A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy' . Logic should tell you that if it weren't for politics TSMC would actually be testing  that processor with Huawei right now. Each Kirin chip is basically on a five year design window.

    But none of that has even the slightest to do with what I was replying to: the advantages of own the 'whole stack'.

    Ah yes, Apple and the M1. You did slip that in there but then Huawei has MindSpore, DaVinci, Ascend (which goes from earbuds up to AI clusters with 1024 cores), solutions for Airport and Port control, robotics, Power solutions and a very long list of etc. 

    The whole stack you say? Why not. It makes sense for some companies but not necessarily for others. 

    This is 'old' now but I still haven't seen an Apple equivalent. Have you? 

    https://e.huawei.com/en/products/cloud-computing-dc/atlas/atlas-900-ai?utm_medium=psm&utm_source=corp_facebook&utm_campaign=HC2019&source=psm_corp_facebook

    As for HarmonyOS, I am definitely not 'parroting' Huawei Marketing.

    The information I provide is publicly available and comes from the head of HarmonyOS software development (not marketing) . Your claims, and this is ironic btw, do seem like the product of pure fantasy.

    If I say it's best to wait and see what is released, it is because there is nothing official yet. That's reasonable on my part but you seem to be able to reach conclusions that are based on... what exactly? Definitely not anything Huawei have actually said.

    Oh right, the ARS article! Is that it though? Nothing else? 

    Did you bother to contextualise that article? To see how those conclusions fit in with what Huawei is actually claiming? Did you question anything? 

    Where are those 16,000 APIs hiding for example? Being a multikernel system with a kernel abstraction layer, how many kernels were looked at?

    How is it possible that one of the world's largest home appliance brands (not handsets) has already confirmed support for Harmony OS on a whole suite of products?

    https://www.gizchina.com/2020/11/11/midea-launches-its-first-batch-of-products-running-on-harmony-os/

    Of course HarmonyOS is already out there either in version 1 form (TVs, cars and smartscreens), or parts of it working 'undercover' in watches and routers etc and doing things that Android simply cannot do. 
  • Reply 27 of 74
    mobirdmobird Posts: 752member
    @verne arase
    Thanks for a peek. Enjoyed this very much.
    edited April 2021 watto_cobra
  • Reply 28 of 74
    mcdavemcdave Posts: 1,927member
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    elijahg said:
    cloudguy said:
    dk49 said:
    If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 
    See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
    The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
    A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
    Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There are advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios. 

    Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.

    It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.

    It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course. 

    In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc. 

    Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.

    It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too. 
    Your argument lost all credibility when you said Android is open source. Whilst it’s foundations may be, the Android as used in smartphones has long broken any open source licensing agreement (typically the data harvest requirements for Google) to the point where it’s totally proprietary. Even with Harmony & proprietary silicon, Huawei are still bound to Google.
    Alex_Vwatto_cobra
  • Reply 29 of 74
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    Late 2021: Whitechapel v9 ARM? Not Apple-grade of course. 
  • Reply 30 of 74
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,624member
    mcdave said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    elijahg said:
    cloudguy said:
    dk49 said:
    If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 
    See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
    The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
    A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
    Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There are advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios. 

    Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.

    It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.

    It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course. 

    In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc. 

    Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.

    It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too. 
    Your argument lost all credibility when you said Android is open source. Whilst it’s foundations may be, the Android as used in smartphones has long broken any open source licensing agreement (typically the data harvest requirements for Google) to the point where it’s totally proprietary. Even with Harmony & proprietary silicon, Huawei are still bound to Google.
    What does the 'A' in AOSP stand for?

    If an Android vendor were to keep Android but build the whole stack what Android would it use? 

    Clearly not GMS Android nor any Android that wasn't open source.

    Wasn't that painfully clear?

    Yes, I'm talking about AOSP. 
  • Reply 31 of 74
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,311member
    gatorguy said:
    Late 2021: Whitechapel v9 ARM? Not Apple-grade of course. 
    ...a comment that I came across...

    "Idk but I hope they named it after the metal band"
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 32 of 74
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,311member

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    elijahg said:
    cloudguy said:
    dk49 said:
    If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 
    See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
    The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
    A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
    Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios. 

    Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.

    It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.

    It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course. 

    In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc. 

    Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.

    It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too. 
    You would be accurate in stating that Huawei is on a possible path to that, but factually, Huawei is not anywhere close to where Apple is in SOC development, and that takes into account the short term advantage that Huawei has with integration of 5G into its smartphone SOC. I also take exception to their Android fork being very developed, though of course, you have disagreed with that in the past, against published evidence that it is mostly a vanilla copy.

    Samsung has attempted to, but has never been able to replicate Apple's success and continue to trail in SOC performance, and density, and Qualcomm develops a range of SOC's for its many customers.

    As I have stated before; every year, Apple ships about 70% of its units based on its single, current (A14), A series processor, and this year, it appears that Apple will approach 250m iPhone units, which is in the neighborhood of 175 million A14's, not including iPad's. Not in anyone's universe will Qualcomm come close to those numbers for the Snapdragon 888, nor Samsung for the Exynos 2100, nor Huawei for the Kirin 9000. 

    What's interesting is how much of an advantage Apple continues to carry over its competitors, and the M series is yet another instance.
    Huawei is right up there with Apple on SoC development. On process node and even besting Apple on transistor density. On timing. On getting their modems on SoC, on ISP and DSP development, on secure enclave etc.

    The amount of processors Apple ships is totally irrevelant. What does that have to do with the advantages of owning the whole stack? And you are making some utterly wild projections anyway. Why not try to run with something that is more realistic, like what they shipped last year? Either way, quantity would still mean nothing but if that is what you want, Mediatek reportedly shipped over 350 million processors last year.

    As for the advantage Apple continues to have over competitors, are you claiming that not being able to ship a latest generation 5G modem on SoC is an advantage?

    And as for 'the Android fork' (eh?) not being very developed, it already contained more APIs than Google GMS Android, and two days ago, Beta 3 was released, adding 1,000 more APIs. Considering no one outside China has even seen the system, you are jumping to A LOT of uninformed conclusions. Especially as the system already has a release date for handsets: 24 April.

    I think we should just wait and see on that one. 
    Huawei/HiSilicon is dead in the water without access to a leading node fab, so what you state is factually untrue. Rumors of a Kirin 9010 at 3 nm are pure fantasy, as there are no fabs in the PRC that are capable of less 14 nm. There were very few Kirin 9000 produced, perhaps 8 million total, and the Kirin 9000 was trailing A14 and Qualcomm 888 in performance.

    Apple owning its own stack is why Apple has the M1, and will follow up with more performant M Series. Apple owning its own stack is why Apple doesn't have to be concerned with SOC cost, and hasn't created mid, and low range, variants of the current A Series, other than AX which powers iPad.

    I misstated that Apple doesn't have 5G integrated on the SOC, That should be restated as Apple does not have 5G integrated on the A14 die. Of course, in the future, Apple will integrate 5G on die, but in the meantime, consumers aren't concerned about how Apple implements 4G, and units sold in proof of that.

    Yeah, we should "wait", but it should be noted that you have no specific knowledge of Huawei's Harmony OS as it pertains to smartphones either; you're merely parroting Huawei Marketing.
    Anyone (Apple included) has a problem if they have a product design that cannot be manufactured. 

    Not long ago, the entire industry was affected by a very similar problem but that wasn't politics, it was COVID-19.

    A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy' . Logic should tell you that if it weren't for politics TSMC would actually be testing  that processor with Huawei right now. Each Kirin chip is basically on a five year design window.

    But none of that has even the slightest to do with what I was replying to: the advantages of own the 'whole stack'.

    Ah yes, Apple and the M1. You did slip that in there but then Huawei has MindSpore, DaVinci, Ascend (which goes from earbuds up to AI clusters with 1024 cores), solutions for Airport and Port control, robotics, Power solutions and a very long list of etc. 

    The whole stack you say? Why not. It makes sense for some companies but not necessarily for others. 

    This is 'old' now but I still haven't seen an Apple equivalent. Have you? 

    https://e.huawei.com/en/products/cloud-computing-dc/atlas/atlas-900-ai?utm_medium=psm&utm_source=corp_facebook&utm_campaign=HC2019&source=psm_corp_facebook

    As for HarmonyOS, I am definitely not 'parroting' Huawei Marketing.

    The information I provide is publicly available and comes from the head of HarmonyOS software development (not marketing) . Your claims, and this is ironic btw, do seem like the product of pure fantasy.

    If I say it's best to wait and see what is released, it is because there is nothing official yet. That's reasonable on my part but you seem to be able to reach conclusions that are based on... what exactly? Definitely not anything Huawei have actually said.

    Oh right, the ARS article! Is that it though? Nothing else? 

    Did you bother to contextualise that article? To see how those conclusions fit in with what Huawei is actually claiming? Did you question anything? 

    Where are those 16,000 APIs hiding for example? Being a multikernel system with a kernel abstraction layer, how many kernels were looked at?

    How is it possible that one of the world's largest home appliance brands (not handsets) has already confirmed support for Harmony OS on a whole suite of products?

    https://www.gizchina.com/2020/11/11/midea-launches-its-first-batch-of-products-running-on-harmony-os/

    Of course HarmonyOS is already out there either in version 1 form (TVs, cars and smartscreens), or parts of it working 'undercover' in watches and routers etc and doing things that Android simply cannot do. 
    Xiaomi is able to purchase the full line of Qualcomm, so that avenue may be available to Huawei, but I doubt it. 

    "A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy", but logic tells me that it will never exist, so perhaps it is you that needs to stop fantasizing, and since Huawei isn't going to get even a semi-custom processor anytime soon, then Huawei absolutely lacks the "full stack" for its smartphones. I don't think that Samsung will be able to save them either.

    Thanks for playing.

    Looking forward to Google's White Chapel SOC, so they can take advantage of the "full stack" as well, because of course there are other options besides Apple in the world.

    https://jamestown.org/program/semiconductor-scandal-a-concerning-backdrop-to-xis-pursuit-of-core-technologies/

    https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Khan-Flynn—Maintaining-Chinas-Dependence-on-Democracies.pdf
    edited April 2021 watto_cobra
  • Reply 33 of 74
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,624member
    tmay said:

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    elijahg said:
    cloudguy said:
    dk49 said:
    If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 
    See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
    The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
    A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
    Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios. 

    Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.

    It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.

    It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course. 

    In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc. 

    Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.

    It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too. 
    You would be accurate in stating that Huawei is on a possible path to that, but factually, Huawei is not anywhere close to where Apple is in SOC development, and that takes into account the short term advantage that Huawei has with integration of 5G into its smartphone SOC. I also take exception to their Android fork being very developed, though of course, you have disagreed with that in the past, against published evidence that it is mostly a vanilla copy.

    Samsung has attempted to, but has never been able to replicate Apple's success and continue to trail in SOC performance, and density, and Qualcomm develops a range of SOC's for its many customers.

    As I have stated before; every year, Apple ships about 70% of its units based on its single, current (A14), A series processor, and this year, it appears that Apple will approach 250m iPhone units, which is in the neighborhood of 175 million A14's, not including iPad's. Not in anyone's universe will Qualcomm come close to those numbers for the Snapdragon 888, nor Samsung for the Exynos 2100, nor Huawei for the Kirin 9000. 

    What's interesting is how much of an advantage Apple continues to carry over its competitors, and the M series is yet another instance.
    Huawei is right up there with Apple on SoC development. On process node and even besting Apple on transistor density. On timing. On getting their modems on SoC, on ISP and DSP development, on secure enclave etc.

    The amount of processors Apple ships is totally irrevelant. What does that have to do with the advantages of owning the whole stack? And you are making some utterly wild projections anyway. Why not try to run with something that is more realistic, like what they shipped last year? Either way, quantity would still mean nothing but if that is what you want, Mediatek reportedly shipped over 350 million processors last year.

    As for the advantage Apple continues to have over competitors, are you claiming that not being able to ship a latest generation 5G modem on SoC is an advantage?

    And as for 'the Android fork' (eh?) not being very developed, it already contained more APIs than Google GMS Android, and two days ago, Beta 3 was released, adding 1,000 more APIs. Considering no one outside China has even seen the system, you are jumping to A LOT of uninformed conclusions. Especially as the system already has a release date for handsets: 24 April.

    I think we should just wait and see on that one. 
    Huawei/HiSilicon is dead in the water without access to a leading node fab, so what you state is factually untrue. Rumors of a Kirin 9010 at 3 nm are pure fantasy, as there are no fabs in the PRC that are capable of less 14 nm. There were very few Kirin 9000 produced, perhaps 8 million total, and the Kirin 9000 was trailing A14 and Qualcomm 888 in performance.

    Apple owning its own stack is why Apple has the M1, and will follow up with more performant M Series. Apple owning its own stack is why Apple doesn't have to be concerned with SOC cost, and hasn't created mid, and low range, variants of the current A Series, other than AX which powers iPad.

    I misstated that Apple doesn't have 5G integrated on the SOC, That should be restated as Apple does not have 5G integrated on the A14 die. Of course, in the future, Apple will integrate 5G on die, but in the meantime, consumers aren't concerned about how Apple implements 4G, and units sold in proof of that.

    Yeah, we should "wait", but it should be noted that you have no specific knowledge of Huawei's Harmony OS as it pertains to smartphones either; you're merely parroting Huawei Marketing.
    Anyone (Apple included) has a problem if they have a product design that cannot be manufactured. 

    Not long ago, the entire industry was affected by a very similar problem but that wasn't politics, it was COVID-19.

    A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy' . Logic should tell you that if it weren't for politics TSMC would actually be testing  that processor with Huawei right now. Each Kirin chip is basically on a five year design window.

    But none of that has even the slightest to do with what I was replying to: the advantages of own the 'whole stack'.

    Ah yes, Apple and the M1. You did slip that in there but then Huawei has MindSpore, DaVinci, Ascend (which goes from earbuds up to AI clusters with 1024 cores), solutions for Airport and Port control, robotics, Power solutions and a very long list of etc. 

    The whole stack you say? Why not. It makes sense for some companies but not necessarily for others. 

    This is 'old' now but I still haven't seen an Apple equivalent. Have you? 

    https://e.huawei.com/en/products/cloud-computing-dc/atlas/atlas-900-ai?utm_medium=psm&utm_source=corp_facebook&utm_campaign=HC2019&source=psm_corp_facebook

    As for HarmonyOS, I am definitely not 'parroting' Huawei Marketing.

    The information I provide is publicly available and comes from the head of HarmonyOS software development (not marketing) . Your claims, and this is ironic btw, do seem like the product of pure fantasy.

    If I say it's best to wait and see what is released, it is because there is nothing official yet. That's reasonable on my part but you seem to be able to reach conclusions that are based on... what exactly? Definitely not anything Huawei have actually said.

    Oh right, the ARS article! Is that it though? Nothing else? 

    Did you bother to contextualise that article? To see how those conclusions fit in with what Huawei is actually claiming? Did you question anything? 

    Where are those 16,000 APIs hiding for example? Being a multikernel system with a kernel abstraction layer, how many kernels were looked at?

    How is it possible that one of the world's largest home appliance brands (not handsets) has already confirmed support for Harmony OS on a whole suite of products?

    https://www.gizchina.com/2020/11/11/midea-launches-its-first-batch-of-products-running-on-harmony-os/

    Of course HarmonyOS is already out there either in version 1 form (TVs, cars and smartscreens), or parts of it working 'undercover' in watches and routers etc and doing things that Android simply cannot do. 
    Xiaomi is able to purchase the full line of Qualcomm, so that avenue may be available to Huawei, but I doubt it. 

    "A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy", but logic tells me that it will never exist, so perhaps it is you that needs to stop fantasizing, and since Huawei isn't going to get even a semi-custom processor anytime soon, then Huawei absolutely lacks the "full stack" for its smartphones. I don't think that Samsung will be able to save them either.

    Thanks for playing.

    Looking forward to Google's White Chapel SOC, so they can take advantage of the "full stack" as well, because of course there are other options besides Apple in the world.

    https://jamestown.org/program/semiconductor-scandal-a-concerning-backdrop-to-xis-pursuit-of-core-technologies/

    https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Khan-Flynn—Maintaining-Chinas-Dependence-on-Democracies.pdf
    You have managed to tie yourself up in knots again.

    Yes, Xiaomi has has access to the full range of Qualcomm products but what does that have to do with anything?

    Huawei does not have the same access. You don't have to 'doubt' that because it is crystal clear and the result of a last minute change by Trump.

    Samsung is a different story but there are only rumours at this point.

    You have skirted mostly everything I challenged you with by either running up some new alley or outright ignoring it but for good measure you throw China into the soup.

    I'm not surprised.

    And 'logic' cannot tell you a 3nm Kirin will never exist when, at this junction in time, the only restriction in place is 100% political. There's a field where you should never say 'never'.

    As for 'owning the full stack', perhaps you see things more clearly now than from your Apple centred earlier posts. Yes, the world includes more than Apple and clearly there are stacks, and there are stacks, LOL.

    And in the spirit of Jaws...

    "You're gonna need a bigger stack!". ;-) 
    edited April 2021
  • Reply 34 of 74
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,311member
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    elijahg said:
    cloudguy said:
    dk49 said:
    If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 
    See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
    The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
    A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
    Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios. 

    Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.

    It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.

    It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course. 

    In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc. 

    Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.

    It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too. 
    You would be accurate in stating that Huawei is on a possible path to that, but factually, Huawei is not anywhere close to where Apple is in SOC development, and that takes into account the short term advantage that Huawei has with integration of 5G into its smartphone SOC. I also take exception to their Android fork being very developed, though of course, you have disagreed with that in the past, against published evidence that it is mostly a vanilla copy.

    Samsung has attempted to, but has never been able to replicate Apple's success and continue to trail in SOC performance, and density, and Qualcomm develops a range of SOC's for its many customers.

    As I have stated before; every year, Apple ships about 70% of its units based on its single, current (A14), A series processor, and this year, it appears that Apple will approach 250m iPhone units, which is in the neighborhood of 175 million A14's, not including iPad's. Not in anyone's universe will Qualcomm come close to those numbers for the Snapdragon 888, nor Samsung for the Exynos 2100, nor Huawei for the Kirin 9000. 

    What's interesting is how much of an advantage Apple continues to carry over its competitors, and the M series is yet another instance.
    Huawei is right up there with Apple on SoC development. On process node and even besting Apple on transistor density. On timing. On getting their modems on SoC, on ISP and DSP development, on secure enclave etc.

    The amount of processors Apple ships is totally irrevelant. What does that have to do with the advantages of owning the whole stack? And you are making some utterly wild projections anyway. Why not try to run with something that is more realistic, like what they shipped last year? Either way, quantity would still mean nothing but if that is what you want, Mediatek reportedly shipped over 350 million processors last year.

    As for the advantage Apple continues to have over competitors, are you claiming that not being able to ship a latest generation 5G modem on SoC is an advantage?

    And as for 'the Android fork' (eh?) not being very developed, it already contained more APIs than Google GMS Android, and two days ago, Beta 3 was released, adding 1,000 more APIs. Considering no one outside China has even seen the system, you are jumping to A LOT of uninformed conclusions. Especially as the system already has a release date for handsets: 24 April.

    I think we should just wait and see on that one. 
    Huawei/HiSilicon is dead in the water without access to a leading node fab, so what you state is factually untrue. Rumors of a Kirin 9010 at 3 nm are pure fantasy, as there are no fabs in the PRC that are capable of less 14 nm. There were very few Kirin 9000 produced, perhaps 8 million total, and the Kirin 9000 was trailing A14 and Qualcomm 888 in performance.

    Apple owning its own stack is why Apple has the M1, and will follow up with more performant M Series. Apple owning its own stack is why Apple doesn't have to be concerned with SOC cost, and hasn't created mid, and low range, variants of the current A Series, other than AX which powers iPad.

    I misstated that Apple doesn't have 5G integrated on the SOC, That should be restated as Apple does not have 5G integrated on the A14 die. Of course, in the future, Apple will integrate 5G on die, but in the meantime, consumers aren't concerned about how Apple implements 4G, and units sold in proof of that.

    Yeah, we should "wait", but it should be noted that you have no specific knowledge of Huawei's Harmony OS as it pertains to smartphones either; you're merely parroting Huawei Marketing.
    Anyone (Apple included) has a problem if they have a product design that cannot be manufactured. 

    Not long ago, the entire industry was affected by a very similar problem but that wasn't politics, it was COVID-19.

    A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy' . Logic should tell you that if it weren't for politics TSMC would actually be testing  that processor with Huawei right now. Each Kirin chip is basically on a five year design window.

    But none of that has even the slightest to do with what I was replying to: the advantages of own the 'whole stack'.

    Ah yes, Apple and the M1. You did slip that in there but then Huawei has MindSpore, DaVinci, Ascend (which goes from earbuds up to AI clusters with 1024 cores), solutions for Airport and Port control, robotics, Power solutions and a very long list of etc. 

    The whole stack you say? Why not. It makes sense for some companies but not necessarily for others. 

    This is 'old' now but I still haven't seen an Apple equivalent. Have you? 

    https://e.huawei.com/en/products/cloud-computing-dc/atlas/atlas-900-ai?utm_medium=psm&utm_source=corp_facebook&utm_campaign=HC2019&source=psm_corp_facebook

    As for HarmonyOS, I am definitely not 'parroting' Huawei Marketing.

    The information I provide is publicly available and comes from the head of HarmonyOS software development (not marketing) . Your claims, and this is ironic btw, do seem like the product of pure fantasy.

    If I say it's best to wait and see what is released, it is because there is nothing official yet. That's reasonable on my part but you seem to be able to reach conclusions that are based on... what exactly? Definitely not anything Huawei have actually said.

    Oh right, the ARS article! Is that it though? Nothing else? 

    Did you bother to contextualise that article? To see how those conclusions fit in with what Huawei is actually claiming? Did you question anything? 

    Where are those 16,000 APIs hiding for example? Being a multikernel system with a kernel abstraction layer, how many kernels were looked at?

    How is it possible that one of the world's largest home appliance brands (not handsets) has already confirmed support for Harmony OS on a whole suite of products?

    https://www.gizchina.com/2020/11/11/midea-launches-its-first-batch-of-products-running-on-harmony-os/

    Of course HarmonyOS is already out there either in version 1 form (TVs, cars and smartscreens), or parts of it working 'undercover' in watches and routers etc and doing things that Android simply cannot do. 
    Xiaomi is able to purchase the full line of Qualcomm, so that avenue may be available to Huawei, but I doubt it. 

    "A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy", but logic tells me that it will never exist, so perhaps it is you that needs to stop fantasizing, and since Huawei isn't going to get even a semi-custom processor anytime soon, then Huawei absolutely lacks the "full stack" for its smartphones. I don't think that Samsung will be able to save them either.

    Thanks for playing.

    Looking forward to Google's White Chapel SOC, so they can take advantage of the "full stack" as well, because of course there are other options besides Apple in the world.

    https://jamestown.org/program/semiconductor-scandal-a-concerning-backdrop-to-xis-pursuit-of-core-technologies/

    https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Khan-Flynn—Maintaining-Chinas-Dependence-on-Democracies.pdf
    You have managed to tie yourself up in knots again.

    Yes, Xiaomi has has access to the full range of Qualcomm products but what does that have to do with anything?

    Huawei does not have the same access. You don't have to 'doubt' that because it is crystal clear and the result of a last minute change by Trump.

    Samsung is a different story but there are only rumours at this point.

    You have skirted mostly everything I challenged you with by either running up some new alley or outright ignoring it but for good measure you throw China into the soup.

    I'm not surprised.

    And 'logic' cannot tell you a 3nm Kirin will never exist when, at this junction in time, the only restriction in place is 100% political. There's a field where you should never say 'never'.

    As for 'owning the full stack', perhaps you see things more clearly now than from your Apple centred earlier posts. Yes, the world includes more than Apple and clearly there are stacks, and there are stacks, LOL.

    And in the spirit of Jaws...

    "You're gonna need a bigger stack!". ;-) 
    The point is, that there is very little indigenous silicon production in China, and the best node available is 14nm. You, and the PRC, keep pointing out that China is going to be self sufficient in silicon, but that's just not true in the near term, given the fact that only the U.S., Taiwan, and South Korea, have leading edge nodes, and only the U.S., Japan, and the Netherlands, build leading edge semiconductor equipment. 

    That means, that China will have to acquire IP, which will likely involve theft, will have to hire away TSMC employees, which they have been, and would still have to replace the design software, which is almost entirely U.S. origin.

    Throwing all that together, China really isn't a player in leading edge silicon. 

    https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Khan-Flynn—Maintaining-Chinas-Dependence-on-Democracies.pdf

    "EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

    The Chinese government is investing tens of billions of dollars in its computer chip factories and may eventually achieve global state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities. However, China can succeed only if the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands continue to sell it the manufacturing equipment necessary to operate its chip factories. If these states deny access to this specialized equipment, China would find it nearly impossible to develop or maintain advanced chip factories for the foreseeable future. Countering the Chinese government’s market-distorting subsidies with such export controls would shift chip factory capacity to democracies, especially the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. As a result, the firms making specialized manufacturing equipment for chips would experience little to no long-term revenue loss from such export controls, and may even benefit from working with more reliable partners in these democracies.

    It is in the security interests of democratic states, including the United States, for China to remain reliant on democracies for state-of-the-art chips. Advanced weapons systems and many emerging technologies for surveillance and oppression depend on state-of-the-art chips — currently produced only by firms in the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. Maintaining exclusive control of these chips will allow democracies to implement targeted end-use and end-user export controls on them, largely preempting China’s development and use of many dangerous or destabilizing technologies."

    https://jamestown.org/program/semiconductor-scandal-a-concerning-backdrop-to-xis-pursuit-of-core-technologies/

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-02/china-revs-up-grand-chip-ambitions-to-counter-u-s-blacklistings

    Bottom line, China has no indigenous capacity to manufacture silicon suitable for flagship smartphones; not now, not anytime soon. The West is at no economic disadvantage by restricting the technology for leading edge silicon manufacturing.

    Huawei has no current source for SOC's suitable for flagship smartphones, and has no near term potential for obtaining those from indigenous China production. No silicon, no full stack. 

    The funniest comment that I'd seen recently was by GeorgeBmac, to the effect that China had the capability of taking out a U.S. aircraft carrier with a "ship killing" ballistic missile, not realizing that "ship killing" ballistic missiles, among other things, are the reason that the U.S. and its allies aren't keen on supplying leading edge silicon to the PRC.

    edited April 2021 watto_cobralibertyforall
  • Reply 35 of 74
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,624member
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    elijahg said:
    cloudguy said:
    dk49 said:
    If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 
    See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
    The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
    A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
    Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios. 

    Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.

    It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.

    It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course. 

    In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc. 

    Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.

    It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too. 
    You would be accurate in stating that Huawei is on a possible path to that, but factually, Huawei is not anywhere close to where Apple is in SOC development, and that takes into account the short term advantage that Huawei has with integration of 5G into its smartphone SOC. I also take exception to their Android fork being very developed, though of course, you have disagreed with that in the past, against published evidence that it is mostly a vanilla copy.

    Samsung has attempted to, but has never been able to replicate Apple's success and continue to trail in SOC performance, and density, and Qualcomm develops a range of SOC's for its many customers.

    As I have stated before; every year, Apple ships about 70% of its units based on its single, current (A14), A series processor, and this year, it appears that Apple will approach 250m iPhone units, which is in the neighborhood of 175 million A14's, not including iPad's. Not in anyone's universe will Qualcomm come close to those numbers for the Snapdragon 888, nor Samsung for the Exynos 2100, nor Huawei for the Kirin 9000. 

    What's interesting is how much of an advantage Apple continues to carry over its competitors, and the M series is yet another instance.
    Huawei is right up there with Apple on SoC development. On process node and even besting Apple on transistor density. On timing. On getting their modems on SoC, on ISP and DSP development, on secure enclave etc.

    The amount of processors Apple ships is totally irrevelant. What does that have to do with the advantages of owning the whole stack? And you are making some utterly wild projections anyway. Why not try to run with something that is more realistic, like what they shipped last year? Either way, quantity would still mean nothing but if that is what you want, Mediatek reportedly shipped over 350 million processors last year.

    As for the advantage Apple continues to have over competitors, are you claiming that not being able to ship a latest generation 5G modem on SoC is an advantage?

    And as for 'the Android fork' (eh?) not being very developed, it already contained more APIs than Google GMS Android, and two days ago, Beta 3 was released, adding 1,000 more APIs. Considering no one outside China has even seen the system, you are jumping to A LOT of uninformed conclusions. Especially as the system already has a release date for handsets: 24 April.

    I think we should just wait and see on that one. 
    Huawei/HiSilicon is dead in the water without access to a leading node fab, so what you state is factually untrue. Rumors of a Kirin 9010 at 3 nm are pure fantasy, as there are no fabs in the PRC that are capable of less 14 nm. There were very few Kirin 9000 produced, perhaps 8 million total, and the Kirin 9000 was trailing A14 and Qualcomm 888 in performance.

    Apple owning its own stack is why Apple has the M1, and will follow up with more performant M Series. Apple owning its own stack is why Apple doesn't have to be concerned with SOC cost, and hasn't created mid, and low range, variants of the current A Series, other than AX which powers iPad.

    I misstated that Apple doesn't have 5G integrated on the SOC, That should be restated as Apple does not have 5G integrated on the A14 die. Of course, in the future, Apple will integrate 5G on die, but in the meantime, consumers aren't concerned about how Apple implements 4G, and units sold in proof of that.

    Yeah, we should "wait", but it should be noted that you have no specific knowledge of Huawei's Harmony OS as it pertains to smartphones either; you're merely parroting Huawei Marketing.
    Anyone (Apple included) has a problem if they have a product design that cannot be manufactured. 

    Not long ago, the entire industry was affected by a very similar problem but that wasn't politics, it was COVID-19.

    A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy' . Logic should tell you that if it weren't for politics TSMC would actually be testing  that processor with Huawei right now. Each Kirin chip is basically on a five year design window.

    But none of that has even the slightest to do with what I was replying to: the advantages of own the 'whole stack'.

    Ah yes, Apple and the M1. You did slip that in there but then Huawei has MindSpore, DaVinci, Ascend (which goes from earbuds up to AI clusters with 1024 cores), solutions for Airport and Port control, robotics, Power solutions and a very long list of etc. 

    The whole stack you say? Why not. It makes sense for some companies but not necessarily for others. 

    This is 'old' now but I still haven't seen an Apple equivalent. Have you? 

    https://e.huawei.com/en/products/cloud-computing-dc/atlas/atlas-900-ai?utm_medium=psm&utm_source=corp_facebook&utm_campaign=HC2019&source=psm_corp_facebook

    As for HarmonyOS, I am definitely not 'parroting' Huawei Marketing.

    The information I provide is publicly available and comes from the head of HarmonyOS software development (not marketing) . Your claims, and this is ironic btw, do seem like the product of pure fantasy.

    If I say it's best to wait and see what is released, it is because there is nothing official yet. That's reasonable on my part but you seem to be able to reach conclusions that are based on... what exactly? Definitely not anything Huawei have actually said.

    Oh right, the ARS article! Is that it though? Nothing else? 

    Did you bother to contextualise that article? To see how those conclusions fit in with what Huawei is actually claiming? Did you question anything? 

    Where are those 16,000 APIs hiding for example? Being a multikernel system with a kernel abstraction layer, how many kernels were looked at?

    How is it possible that one of the world's largest home appliance brands (not handsets) has already confirmed support for Harmony OS on a whole suite of products?

    https://www.gizchina.com/2020/11/11/midea-launches-its-first-batch-of-products-running-on-harmony-os/

    Of course HarmonyOS is already out there either in version 1 form (TVs, cars and smartscreens), or parts of it working 'undercover' in watches and routers etc and doing things that Android simply cannot do. 
    Xiaomi is able to purchase the full line of Qualcomm, so that avenue may be available to Huawei, but I doubt it. 

    "A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy", but logic tells me that it will never exist, so perhaps it is you that needs to stop fantasizing, and since Huawei isn't going to get even a semi-custom processor anytime soon, then Huawei absolutely lacks the "full stack" for its smartphones. I don't think that Samsung will be able to save them either.

    Thanks for playing.

    Looking forward to Google's White Chapel SOC, so they can take advantage of the "full stack" as well, because of course there are other options besides Apple in the world.

    https://jamestown.org/program/semiconductor-scandal-a-concerning-backdrop-to-xis-pursuit-of-core-technologies/

    https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Khan-Flynn—Maintaining-Chinas-Dependence-on-Democracies.pdf
    You have managed to tie yourself up in knots again.

    Yes, Xiaomi has has access to the full range of Qualcomm products but what does that have to do with anything?

    Huawei does not have the same access. You don't have to 'doubt' that because it is crystal clear and the result of a last minute change by Trump.

    Samsung is a different story but there are only rumours at this point.

    You have skirted mostly everything I challenged you with by either running up some new alley or outright ignoring it but for good measure you throw China into the soup.

    I'm not surprised.

    And 'logic' cannot tell you a 3nm Kirin will never exist when, at this junction in time, the only restriction in place is 100% political. There's a field where you should never say 'never'.

    As for 'owning the full stack', perhaps you see things more clearly now than from your Apple centred earlier posts. Yes, the world includes more than Apple and clearly there are stacks, and there are stacks, LOL.

    And in the spirit of Jaws...

    "You're gonna need a bigger stack!". ;-) 
    The point is, that there is very little indigenous silicon production in China, and the best node available is 14nm. You, and the PRC, keep pointing out that China is going to be self sufficient in silicon, but that's just not true in the near term, given the fact that only the U.S., Taiwan, and South Korea, have leading edge nodes, and only the U.S., Japan, and the Netherlands, build leading edge semiconductor equipment. 

    That means, that China will have to acquire IP, which will likely involve theft, will have to hire away TSMC employees, which they have been, and would still have to replace the design software, which is almost entirely U.S. origin.

    Throwing all that together, China really isn't a player in leading edge silicon. 

    https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Khan-Flynn—Maintaining-Chinas-Dependence-on-Democracies.pdf

    "EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

    The Chinese government is investing tens of billions of dollars in its computer chip factories and may eventually achieve global state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities. However, China can succeed only if the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands continue to sell it the manufacturing equipment necessary to operate its chip factories. If these states deny access to this specialized equipment, China would find it nearly impossible to develop or maintain advanced chip factories for the foreseeable future. Countering the Chinese government’s market-distorting subsidies with such export controls would shift chip factory capacity to democracies, especially the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. As a result, the firms making specialized manufacturing equipment for chips would experience little to no long-term revenue loss from such export controls, and may even benefit from working with more reliable partners in these democracies.

    It is in the security interests of democratic states, including the United States, for China to remain reliant on democracies for state-of-the-art chips. Advanced weapons systems and many emerging technologies for surveillance and oppression depend on state-of-the-art chips — currently produced only by firms in the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. Maintaining exclusive control of these chips will allow democracies to implement targeted end-use and end-user export controls on them, largely preempting China’s development and use of many dangerous or destabilizing technologies."

    https://jamestown.org/program/semiconductor-scandal-a-concerning-backdrop-to-xis-pursuit-of-core-technologies/

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-02/china-revs-up-grand-chip-ambitions-to-counter-u-s-blacklistings

    Bottom line, China has no indigenous capacity to manufacture silicon suitable for flagship smartphones; not now, not anytime soon. The West is at no economic disadvantage by restricting the technology for leading edge silicon manufacturing.

    Huawei has no current source for SOC's suitable for flagship smartphones, and has no near term potential for obtaining those from indigenous China production. No silicon, no full stack. 

    The funniest comment that I'd seen recently was by GeorgeBmac, to the effect that China had the capability of taking out a U.S. aircraft carrier with a "ship killing" ballistic missile, not realizing that "ship killing" ballistic missiles, among other things, are the reason that the U.S. and its allies aren't keen on supplying leading edge silicon to the PRC.

    And there you have it...

    The full blown anti-China, off topic, obsessive, politically rooted rant.

    Come on! You brought the 'advantages of owning the full stack' into this and I challenged that notion point for point. That's it. You either accept what I pointed out or you challenge it - but with something relevant!

    Yeah, Huawei can't satisfy its chip requirements without external fabrication.

    Wow! Is that news?

    Here's something for you to chew on - neither can Apple!

    Trump couldn't handle seeing the global supply chain working against his interests so he attempted (and failed, btw) to wreck it.

    He threw a stick (at best!) into the spokes and blew the collective US semiconductor's head off in the process.

    Why do you think US companies are basically pleading for 'licences' to do business with Huawei - with Google not letting up for a second in lobbying in the two years that this has been going on?

    Google wants Huawei with it, not against it. Huawei would love to continue doing business with Google.

    Now Google has a MAJOR problem. Under scrutiny along with others at home and abroad and with Huawei about to ship HarmonyOS on handsets and hoping to plunk it onto 300 million devices this year alone. Yikes! 

    Petal search has morphed into a full blown independent search engine, Petal Maps is live, Petal Mail is in beta. Every single Google Service is being relentlessly targeted and substitutes released onto the world. Yes, that of course includes advertising revenue through HMS. 

    Pandora's Box has been opened and at best all Google can hope for is getting GMS apps onto HMS but of course, Huawei will be pulling the strings there and it will cost Google a pretty penny to get Google Search onto a Huawei device.

    It's disheartening for both Huawei and Google because nether of them were seeking this situation. It was forced on them by ill thought out policy at government level.

    And to top Google's nightmare scenario off, HarmonyOS/HMS will only get better and it will sit there waiting to jump, should the US think about targeting any other Chinese brands which currently use GMS. Do you think Google isn't losing sleep over the potential of the entire Chinese handset sector switching away from GMS to HMS? 

    In fact, there is already talk of Meizu having agreed to do just that.

    That stack is only going to get bigger. 
    edited April 2021
  • Reply 36 of 74
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,311member
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    elijahg said:
    cloudguy said:
    dk49 said:
    If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 
    See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
    The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
    A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
    Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios. 

    Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.

    It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.

    It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course. 

    In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc. 

    Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.

    It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too. 
    You would be accurate in stating that Huawei is on a possible path to that, but factually, Huawei is not anywhere close to where Apple is in SOC development, and that takes into account the short term advantage that Huawei has with integration of 5G into its smartphone SOC. I also take exception to their Android fork being very developed, though of course, you have disagreed with that in the past, against published evidence that it is mostly a vanilla copy.

    Samsung has attempted to, but has never been able to replicate Apple's success and continue to trail in SOC performance, and density, and Qualcomm develops a range of SOC's for its many customers.

    As I have stated before; every year, Apple ships about 70% of its units based on its single, current (A14), A series processor, and this year, it appears that Apple will approach 250m iPhone units, which is in the neighborhood of 175 million A14's, not including iPad's. Not in anyone's universe will Qualcomm come close to those numbers for the Snapdragon 888, nor Samsung for the Exynos 2100, nor Huawei for the Kirin 9000. 

    What's interesting is how much of an advantage Apple continues to carry over its competitors, and the M series is yet another instance.
    Huawei is right up there with Apple on SoC development. On process node and even besting Apple on transistor density. On timing. On getting their modems on SoC, on ISP and DSP development, on secure enclave etc.

    The amount of processors Apple ships is totally irrevelant. What does that have to do with the advantages of owning the whole stack? And you are making some utterly wild projections anyway. Why not try to run with something that is more realistic, like what they shipped last year? Either way, quantity would still mean nothing but if that is what you want, Mediatek reportedly shipped over 350 million processors last year.

    As for the advantage Apple continues to have over competitors, are you claiming that not being able to ship a latest generation 5G modem on SoC is an advantage?

    And as for 'the Android fork' (eh?) not being very developed, it already contained more APIs than Google GMS Android, and two days ago, Beta 3 was released, adding 1,000 more APIs. Considering no one outside China has even seen the system, you are jumping to A LOT of uninformed conclusions. Especially as the system already has a release date for handsets: 24 April.

    I think we should just wait and see on that one. 
    Huawei/HiSilicon is dead in the water without access to a leading node fab, so what you state is factually untrue. Rumors of a Kirin 9010 at 3 nm are pure fantasy, as there are no fabs in the PRC that are capable of less 14 nm. There were very few Kirin 9000 produced, perhaps 8 million total, and the Kirin 9000 was trailing A14 and Qualcomm 888 in performance.

    Apple owning its own stack is why Apple has the M1, and will follow up with more performant M Series. Apple owning its own stack is why Apple doesn't have to be concerned with SOC cost, and hasn't created mid, and low range, variants of the current A Series, other than AX which powers iPad.

    I misstated that Apple doesn't have 5G integrated on the SOC, That should be restated as Apple does not have 5G integrated on the A14 die. Of course, in the future, Apple will integrate 5G on die, but in the meantime, consumers aren't concerned about how Apple implements 4G, and units sold in proof of that.

    Yeah, we should "wait", but it should be noted that you have no specific knowledge of Huawei's Harmony OS as it pertains to smartphones either; you're merely parroting Huawei Marketing.
    Anyone (Apple included) has a problem if they have a product design that cannot be manufactured. 

    Not long ago, the entire industry was affected by a very similar problem but that wasn't politics, it was COVID-19.

    A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy' . Logic should tell you that if it weren't for politics TSMC would actually be testing  that processor with Huawei right now. Each Kirin chip is basically on a five year design window.

    But none of that has even the slightest to do with what I was replying to: the advantages of own the 'whole stack'.

    Ah yes, Apple and the M1. You did slip that in there but then Huawei has MindSpore, DaVinci, Ascend (which goes from earbuds up to AI clusters with 1024 cores), solutions for Airport and Port control, robotics, Power solutions and a very long list of etc. 

    The whole stack you say? Why not. It makes sense for some companies but not necessarily for others. 

    This is 'old' now but I still haven't seen an Apple equivalent. Have you? 

    https://e.huawei.com/en/products/cloud-computing-dc/atlas/atlas-900-ai?utm_medium=psm&utm_source=corp_facebook&utm_campaign=HC2019&source=psm_corp_facebook

    As for HarmonyOS, I am definitely not 'parroting' Huawei Marketing.

    The information I provide is publicly available and comes from the head of HarmonyOS software development (not marketing) . Your claims, and this is ironic btw, do seem like the product of pure fantasy.

    If I say it's best to wait and see what is released, it is because there is nothing official yet. That's reasonable on my part but you seem to be able to reach conclusions that are based on... what exactly? Definitely not anything Huawei have actually said.

    Oh right, the ARS article! Is that it though? Nothing else? 

    Did you bother to contextualise that article? To see how those conclusions fit in with what Huawei is actually claiming? Did you question anything? 

    Where are those 16,000 APIs hiding for example? Being a multikernel system with a kernel abstraction layer, how many kernels were looked at?

    How is it possible that one of the world's largest home appliance brands (not handsets) has already confirmed support for Harmony OS on a whole suite of products?

    https://www.gizchina.com/2020/11/11/midea-launches-its-first-batch-of-products-running-on-harmony-os/

    Of course HarmonyOS is already out there either in version 1 form (TVs, cars and smartscreens), or parts of it working 'undercover' in watches and routers etc and doing things that Android simply cannot do. 
    Xiaomi is able to purchase the full line of Qualcomm, so that avenue may be available to Huawei, but I doubt it. 

    "A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy", but logic tells me that it will never exist, so perhaps it is you that needs to stop fantasizing, and since Huawei isn't going to get even a semi-custom processor anytime soon, then Huawei absolutely lacks the "full stack" for its smartphones. I don't think that Samsung will be able to save them either.

    Thanks for playing.

    Looking forward to Google's White Chapel SOC, so they can take advantage of the "full stack" as well, because of course there are other options besides Apple in the world.

    https://jamestown.org/program/semiconductor-scandal-a-concerning-backdrop-to-xis-pursuit-of-core-technologies/

    https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Khan-Flynn—Maintaining-Chinas-Dependence-on-Democracies.pdf
    You have managed to tie yourself up in knots again.

    Yes, Xiaomi has has access to the full range of Qualcomm products but what does that have to do with anything?

    Huawei does not have the same access. You don't have to 'doubt' that because it is crystal clear and the result of a last minute change by Trump.

    Samsung is a different story but there are only rumours at this point.

    You have skirted mostly everything I challenged you with by either running up some new alley or outright ignoring it but for good measure you throw China into the soup.

    I'm not surprised.

    And 'logic' cannot tell you a 3nm Kirin will never exist when, at this junction in time, the only restriction in place is 100% political. There's a field where you should never say 'never'.

    As for 'owning the full stack', perhaps you see things more clearly now than from your Apple centred earlier posts. Yes, the world includes more than Apple and clearly there are stacks, and there are stacks, LOL.

    And in the spirit of Jaws...

    "You're gonna need a bigger stack!". ;-) 
    The point is, that there is very little indigenous silicon production in China, and the best node available is 14nm. You, and the PRC, keep pointing out that China is going to be self sufficient in silicon, but that's just not true in the near term, given the fact that only the U.S., Taiwan, and South Korea, have leading edge nodes, and only the U.S., Japan, and the Netherlands, build leading edge semiconductor equipment. 

    That means, that China will have to acquire IP, which will likely involve theft, will have to hire away TSMC employees, which they have been, and would still have to replace the design software, which is almost entirely U.S. origin.

    Throwing all that together, China really isn't a player in leading edge silicon. 

    https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Khan-Flynn—Maintaining-Chinas-Dependence-on-Democracies.pdf

    "EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

    The Chinese government is investing tens of billions of dollars in its computer chip factories and may eventually achieve global state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities. However, China can succeed only if the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands continue to sell it the manufacturing equipment necessary to operate its chip factories. If these states deny access to this specialized equipment, China would find it nearly impossible to develop or maintain advanced chip factories for the foreseeable future. Countering the Chinese government’s market-distorting subsidies with such export controls would shift chip factory capacity to democracies, especially the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. As a result, the firms making specialized manufacturing equipment for chips would experience little to no long-term revenue loss from such export controls, and may even benefit from working with more reliable partners in these democracies.

    It is in the security interests of democratic states, including the United States, for China to remain reliant on democracies for state-of-the-art chips. Advanced weapons systems and many emerging technologies for surveillance and oppression depend on state-of-the-art chips — currently produced only by firms in the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. Maintaining exclusive control of these chips will allow democracies to implement targeted end-use and end-user export controls on them, largely preempting China’s development and use of many dangerous or destabilizing technologies."

    https://jamestown.org/program/semiconductor-scandal-a-concerning-backdrop-to-xis-pursuit-of-core-technologies/

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-02/china-revs-up-grand-chip-ambitions-to-counter-u-s-blacklistings

    Bottom line, China has no indigenous capacity to manufacture silicon suitable for flagship smartphones; not now, not anytime soon. The West is at no economic disadvantage by restricting the technology for leading edge silicon manufacturing.

    Huawei has no current source for SOC's suitable for flagship smartphones, and has no near term potential for obtaining those from indigenous China production. No silicon, no full stack. 

    The funniest comment that I'd seen recently was by GeorgeBmac, to the effect that China had the capability of taking out a U.S. aircraft carrier with a "ship killing" ballistic missile, not realizing that "ship killing" ballistic missiles, among other things, are the reason that the U.S. and its allies aren't keen on supplying leading edge silicon to the PRC.

    And there you have it...

    The full blown anti-China, off topic, obsessive, politically rooted rant.

    Come on! You brought the 'advantages of owning the full stack' into this and I challenged that notion point for point. That's it. You either accept what I pointed out or you challenge it - but with something relevant!

    Yeah, Huawei can't satisfy its chip requirements without external fabrication.

    Wow! Is that news?

    Here's something for you to chew on - neither can Apple!

    Trump couldn't handle seeing the global supply chain working against his interests so he attempted (and failed, btw) to wreck it.

    He threw a stick (at best!) into the spokes and blew the collective US semiconductor's head off in the process.

    Why do you think US companies are basically pleading for 'licences' to do business with Huawei - with Google not letting up for a second in lobbying in the two years that this has been going on?

    Google wants Huawei with it, not against it. Huawei would love to continue doing business with Google.

    Now Google has a MAJOR problem. Under scrutiny along with others at home and abroad and with Huawei about to ship HarmonyOS on handsets and hoping to plunk it onto 300 million devices this year alone. Yikes! 

    Petal search has morphed into a full blown independent search engine, Petal Maps is live, Petal Mail is in beta. Every single Google Service is being relentlessly targeted and substitutes released onto the world. Yes, that of course includes advertising revenue through HMS. 

    Pandora's Box has been opened and at best all Google can hope for is getting GMS apps onto HMS but of course, Huawei will be pulling the strings there and it will cost Google a pretty penny to get Google Search onto a Huawei device.

    It's disheartening for both Huawei and Google because nether of them were seeking this situation. It was forced on them by ill thought out policy at government level.

    And to top Google's nightmare scenario off, HarmonyOS/HMS will only get better and it will sit there waiting to jump, should the US think about targeting any other Chinese brands which currently use GMS. Do you think Google isn't losing sleep over the potential of the entire Chinese handset sector switching away from GMS to HMS? 

    In fact, there is already talk of Meizu having agreed to do just that.

    That stack is only going to get bigger. 
    You've gone off the deep end.

    Apple and Google will still be able to design and fab leading edge SoC's; Huawei/HiSilicon will not. 

    That's a harsh reality. More to the point Google services essentially don't exist in China, so, what exactly is Google losing, given that side loading apps is prevalent in China as well?

    "The block is indiscriminate as all Google services in all countries, encrypted or not, are now blocked in China. This blockage includes Google search, images, Gmail and almost all other products. In addition, the block covers Google Hong Kong, google.com, and all other country specific versions, e.g., Google Japan

    FFS, there is no Honor subbrand, and Huawei smartphone sales have crashed. Move on, for god's sake.
    edited April 2021 watto_cobra
  • Reply 37 of 74
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,624member
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    elijahg said:
    cloudguy said:
    dk49 said:
    If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 
    See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
    The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
    A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
    Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios. 

    Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.

    It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.

    It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course. 

    In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc. 

    Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.

    It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too. 
    You would be accurate in stating that Huawei is on a possible path to that, but factually, Huawei is not anywhere close to where Apple is in SOC development, and that takes into account the short term advantage that Huawei has with integration of 5G into its smartphone SOC. I also take exception to their Android fork being very developed, though of course, you have disagreed with that in the past, against published evidence that it is mostly a vanilla copy.

    Samsung has attempted to, but has never been able to replicate Apple's success and continue to trail in SOC performance, and density, and Qualcomm develops a range of SOC's for its many customers.

    As I have stated before; every year, Apple ships about 70% of its units based on its single, current (A14), A series processor, and this year, it appears that Apple will approach 250m iPhone units, which is in the neighborhood of 175 million A14's, not including iPad's. Not in anyone's universe will Qualcomm come close to those numbers for the Snapdragon 888, nor Samsung for the Exynos 2100, nor Huawei for the Kirin 9000. 

    What's interesting is how much of an advantage Apple continues to carry over its competitors, and the M series is yet another instance.
    Huawei is right up there with Apple on SoC development. On process node and even besting Apple on transistor density. On timing. On getting their modems on SoC, on ISP and DSP development, on secure enclave etc.

    The amount of processors Apple ships is totally irrevelant. What does that have to do with the advantages of owning the whole stack? And you are making some utterly wild projections anyway. Why not try to run with something that is more realistic, like what they shipped last year? Either way, quantity would still mean nothing but if that is what you want, Mediatek reportedly shipped over 350 million processors last year.

    As for the advantage Apple continues to have over competitors, are you claiming that not being able to ship a latest generation 5G modem on SoC is an advantage?

    And as for 'the Android fork' (eh?) not being very developed, it already contained more APIs than Google GMS Android, and two days ago, Beta 3 was released, adding 1,000 more APIs. Considering no one outside China has even seen the system, you are jumping to A LOT of uninformed conclusions. Especially as the system already has a release date for handsets: 24 April.

    I think we should just wait and see on that one. 
    Huawei/HiSilicon is dead in the water without access to a leading node fab, so what you state is factually untrue. Rumors of a Kirin 9010 at 3 nm are pure fantasy, as there are no fabs in the PRC that are capable of less 14 nm. There were very few Kirin 9000 produced, perhaps 8 million total, and the Kirin 9000 was trailing A14 and Qualcomm 888 in performance.

    Apple owning its own stack is why Apple has the M1, and will follow up with more performant M Series. Apple owning its own stack is why Apple doesn't have to be concerned with SOC cost, and hasn't created mid, and low range, variants of the current A Series, other than AX which powers iPad.

    I misstated that Apple doesn't have 5G integrated on the SOC, That should be restated as Apple does not have 5G integrated on the A14 die. Of course, in the future, Apple will integrate 5G on die, but in the meantime, consumers aren't concerned about how Apple implements 4G, and units sold in proof of that.

    Yeah, we should "wait", but it should be noted that you have no specific knowledge of Huawei's Harmony OS as it pertains to smartphones either; you're merely parroting Huawei Marketing.
    Anyone (Apple included) has a problem if they have a product design that cannot be manufactured. 

    Not long ago, the entire industry was affected by a very similar problem but that wasn't politics, it was COVID-19.

    A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy' . Logic should tell you that if it weren't for politics TSMC would actually be testing  that processor with Huawei right now. Each Kirin chip is basically on a five year design window.

    But none of that has even the slightest to do with what I was replying to: the advantages of own the 'whole stack'.

    Ah yes, Apple and the M1. You did slip that in there but then Huawei has MindSpore, DaVinci, Ascend (which goes from earbuds up to AI clusters with 1024 cores), solutions for Airport and Port control, robotics, Power solutions and a very long list of etc. 

    The whole stack you say? Why not. It makes sense for some companies but not necessarily for others. 

    This is 'old' now but I still haven't seen an Apple equivalent. Have you? 

    https://e.huawei.com/en/products/cloud-computing-dc/atlas/atlas-900-ai?utm_medium=psm&utm_source=corp_facebook&utm_campaign=HC2019&source=psm_corp_facebook

    As for HarmonyOS, I am definitely not 'parroting' Huawei Marketing.

    The information I provide is publicly available and comes from the head of HarmonyOS software development (not marketing) . Your claims, and this is ironic btw, do seem like the product of pure fantasy.

    If I say it's best to wait and see what is released, it is because there is nothing official yet. That's reasonable on my part but you seem to be able to reach conclusions that are based on... what exactly? Definitely not anything Huawei have actually said.

    Oh right, the ARS article! Is that it though? Nothing else? 

    Did you bother to contextualise that article? To see how those conclusions fit in with what Huawei is actually claiming? Did you question anything? 

    Where are those 16,000 APIs hiding for example? Being a multikernel system with a kernel abstraction layer, how many kernels were looked at?

    How is it possible that one of the world's largest home appliance brands (not handsets) has already confirmed support for Harmony OS on a whole suite of products?

    https://www.gizchina.com/2020/11/11/midea-launches-its-first-batch-of-products-running-on-harmony-os/

    Of course HarmonyOS is already out there either in version 1 form (TVs, cars and smartscreens), or parts of it working 'undercover' in watches and routers etc and doing things that Android simply cannot do. 
    Xiaomi is able to purchase the full line of Qualcomm, so that avenue may be available to Huawei, but I doubt it. 

    "A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy", but logic tells me that it will never exist, so perhaps it is you that needs to stop fantasizing, and since Huawei isn't going to get even a semi-custom processor anytime soon, then Huawei absolutely lacks the "full stack" for its smartphones. I don't think that Samsung will be able to save them either.

    Thanks for playing.

    Looking forward to Google's White Chapel SOC, so they can take advantage of the "full stack" as well, because of course there are other options besides Apple in the world.

    https://jamestown.org/program/semiconductor-scandal-a-concerning-backdrop-to-xis-pursuit-of-core-technologies/

    https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Khan-Flynn—Maintaining-Chinas-Dependence-on-Democracies.pdf
    You have managed to tie yourself up in knots again.

    Yes, Xiaomi has has access to the full range of Qualcomm products but what does that have to do with anything?

    Huawei does not have the same access. You don't have to 'doubt' that because it is crystal clear and the result of a last minute change by Trump.

    Samsung is a different story but there are only rumours at this point.

    You have skirted mostly everything I challenged you with by either running up some new alley or outright ignoring it but for good measure you throw China into the soup.

    I'm not surprised.

    And 'logic' cannot tell you a 3nm Kirin will never exist when, at this junction in time, the only restriction in place is 100% political. There's a field where you should never say 'never'.

    As for 'owning the full stack', perhaps you see things more clearly now than from your Apple centred earlier posts. Yes, the world includes more than Apple and clearly there are stacks, and there are stacks, LOL.

    And in the spirit of Jaws...

    "You're gonna need a bigger stack!". ;-) 
    The point is, that there is very little indigenous silicon production in China, and the best node available is 14nm. You, and the PRC, keep pointing out that China is going to be self sufficient in silicon, but that's just not true in the near term, given the fact that only the U.S., Taiwan, and South Korea, have leading edge nodes, and only the U.S., Japan, and the Netherlands, build leading edge semiconductor equipment. 

    That means, that China will have to acquire IP, which will likely involve theft, will have to hire away TSMC employees, which they have been, and would still have to replace the design software, which is almost entirely U.S. origin.

    Throwing all that together, China really isn't a player in leading edge silicon. 

    https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Khan-Flynn—Maintaining-Chinas-Dependence-on-Democracies.pdf

    "EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

    The Chinese government is investing tens of billions of dollars in its computer chip factories and may eventually achieve global state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities. However, China can succeed only if the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands continue to sell it the manufacturing equipment necessary to operate its chip factories. If these states deny access to this specialized equipment, China would find it nearly impossible to develop or maintain advanced chip factories for the foreseeable future. Countering the Chinese government’s market-distorting subsidies with such export controls would shift chip factory capacity to democracies, especially the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. As a result, the firms making specialized manufacturing equipment for chips would experience little to no long-term revenue loss from such export controls, and may even benefit from working with more reliable partners in these democracies.

    It is in the security interests of democratic states, including the United States, for China to remain reliant on democracies for state-of-the-art chips. Advanced weapons systems and many emerging technologies for surveillance and oppression depend on state-of-the-art chips — currently produced only by firms in the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. Maintaining exclusive control of these chips will allow democracies to implement targeted end-use and end-user export controls on them, largely preempting China’s development and use of many dangerous or destabilizing technologies."

    https://jamestown.org/program/semiconductor-scandal-a-concerning-backdrop-to-xis-pursuit-of-core-technologies/

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-02/china-revs-up-grand-chip-ambitions-to-counter-u-s-blacklistings

    Bottom line, China has no indigenous capacity to manufacture silicon suitable for flagship smartphones; not now, not anytime soon. The West is at no economic disadvantage by restricting the technology for leading edge silicon manufacturing.

    Huawei has no current source for SOC's suitable for flagship smartphones, and has no near term potential for obtaining those from indigenous China production. No silicon, no full stack. 

    The funniest comment that I'd seen recently was by GeorgeBmac, to the effect that China had the capability of taking out a U.S. aircraft carrier with a "ship killing" ballistic missile, not realizing that "ship killing" ballistic missiles, among other things, are the reason that the U.S. and its allies aren't keen on supplying leading edge silicon to the PRC.

    And there you have it...

    The full blown anti-China, off topic, obsessive, politically rooted rant.

    Come on! You brought the 'advantages of owning the full stack' into this and I challenged that notion point for point. That's it. You either accept what I pointed out or you challenge it - but with something relevant!

    Yeah, Huawei can't satisfy its chip requirements without external fabrication.

    Wow! Is that news?

    Here's something for you to chew on - neither can Apple!

    Trump couldn't handle seeing the global supply chain working against his interests so he attempted (and failed, btw) to wreck it.

    He threw a stick (at best!) into the spokes and blew the collective US semiconductor's head off in the process.

    Why do you think US companies are basically pleading for 'licences' to do business with Huawei - with Google not letting up for a second in lobbying in the two years that this has been going on?

    Google wants Huawei with it, not against it. Huawei would love to continue doing business with Google.

    Now Google has a MAJOR problem. Under scrutiny along with others at home and abroad and with Huawei about to ship HarmonyOS on handsets and hoping to plunk it onto 300 million devices this year alone. Yikes! 

    Petal search has morphed into a full blown independent search engine, Petal Maps is live, Petal Mail is in beta. Every single Google Service is being relentlessly targeted and substitutes released onto the world. Yes, that of course includes advertising revenue through HMS. 

    Pandora's Box has been opened and at best all Google can hope for is getting GMS apps onto HMS but of course, Huawei will be pulling the strings there and it will cost Google a pretty penny to get Google Search onto a Huawei device.

    It's disheartening for both Huawei and Google because nether of them were seeking this situation. It was forced on them by ill thought out policy at government level.

    And to top Google's nightmare scenario off, HarmonyOS/HMS will only get better and it will sit there waiting to jump, should the US think about targeting any other Chinese brands which currently use GMS. Do you think Google isn't losing sleep over the potential of the entire Chinese handset sector switching away from GMS to HMS? 

    In fact, there is already talk of Meizu having agreed to do just that.

    That stack is only going to get bigger. 
    You've gone off the deep end.

    Apple and Google will still be able to design and fab leading edge SoC's; Huawei/HiSilicon will not. 

    That's a harsh reality. More to the point Google services essentially don't exist in China, so, what exactly is Google losing, given that side loading apps is prevalent in China as well?

    "The block is indiscriminate as all Google services in all countries, encrypted or not, are now blocked in China. This blockage includes Google search, images, Gmail and almost all other products. In addition, the block covers Google Hong Kong, google.com, and all other country specific versions, e.g., Google Japan

    FFS, there is no Honor subbrand, and Huawei smartphone sales have crashed. Move on, for god's sake.
    Ah! Now you put 'FFS' at the end of the post!

    Sneaky bounder! 

    It still means the same though - you have nothing left to shoot back with, and you were shooting blanks from the start anyway .

    Where to begin....?

    Ah! Something you got right, although it's a case of stating the obvious!

    Yes, Huawei,' currently cannot fab 5nm chips.

    We are all perfectly aware of that and as I said further up, that will change (possibly mid term or short term depending on technology advances, politics or both).

    Next up. Chinese brands and GMS. You have not been paying attention. Huawei was the first major Chinese handset manufacturer to make an impact with international sales. Over the last two years the other major brands (Oppo, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Honor) have been sweeping into non-Chinese markets at breathtaking speed (Honor was already there of course). 

    They are even present in the US.

    As HarmonyOS matures, the lure of switching (if the US tries another Huawei style stunt) will simply be more attractive.

    More and more reviewers are beginning to come around to the idea that not having GMS may not be such an issue if HMS keeps moving at its current pace. 

    Honor was spun off to keep the inertia going. Do you seriously believe it can't be re-absorbed at a later date?

    And you are asking me to get real? 
  • Reply 38 of 74
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,311member
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    elijahg said:
    cloudguy said:
    dk49 said:
    If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 
    See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
    The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
    A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
    Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios. 

    Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.

    It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.

    It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course. 

    In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc. 

    Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.

    It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too. 
    You would be accurate in stating that Huawei is on a possible path to that, but factually, Huawei is not anywhere close to where Apple is in SOC development, and that takes into account the short term advantage that Huawei has with integration of 5G into its smartphone SOC. I also take exception to their Android fork being very developed, though of course, you have disagreed with that in the past, against published evidence that it is mostly a vanilla copy.

    Samsung has attempted to, but has never been able to replicate Apple's success and continue to trail in SOC performance, and density, and Qualcomm develops a range of SOC's for its many customers.

    As I have stated before; every year, Apple ships about 70% of its units based on its single, current (A14), A series processor, and this year, it appears that Apple will approach 250m iPhone units, which is in the neighborhood of 175 million A14's, not including iPad's. Not in anyone's universe will Qualcomm come close to those numbers for the Snapdragon 888, nor Samsung for the Exynos 2100, nor Huawei for the Kirin 9000. 

    What's interesting is how much of an advantage Apple continues to carry over its competitors, and the M series is yet another instance.
    Huawei is right up there with Apple on SoC development. On process node and even besting Apple on transistor density. On timing. On getting their modems on SoC, on ISP and DSP development, on secure enclave etc.

    The amount of processors Apple ships is totally irrevelant. What does that have to do with the advantages of owning the whole stack? And you are making some utterly wild projections anyway. Why not try to run with something that is more realistic, like what they shipped last year? Either way, quantity would still mean nothing but if that is what you want, Mediatek reportedly shipped over 350 million processors last year.

    As for the advantage Apple continues to have over competitors, are you claiming that not being able to ship a latest generation 5G modem on SoC is an advantage?

    And as for 'the Android fork' (eh?) not being very developed, it already contained more APIs than Google GMS Android, and two days ago, Beta 3 was released, adding 1,000 more APIs. Considering no one outside China has even seen the system, you are jumping to A LOT of uninformed conclusions. Especially as the system already has a release date for handsets: 24 April.

    I think we should just wait and see on that one. 
    Huawei/HiSilicon is dead in the water without access to a leading node fab, so what you state is factually untrue. Rumors of a Kirin 9010 at 3 nm are pure fantasy, as there are no fabs in the PRC that are capable of less 14 nm. There were very few Kirin 9000 produced, perhaps 8 million total, and the Kirin 9000 was trailing A14 and Qualcomm 888 in performance.

    Apple owning its own stack is why Apple has the M1, and will follow up with more performant M Series. Apple owning its own stack is why Apple doesn't have to be concerned with SOC cost, and hasn't created mid, and low range, variants of the current A Series, other than AX which powers iPad.

    I misstated that Apple doesn't have 5G integrated on the SOC, That should be restated as Apple does not have 5G integrated on the A14 die. Of course, in the future, Apple will integrate 5G on die, but in the meantime, consumers aren't concerned about how Apple implements 4G, and units sold in proof of that.

    Yeah, we should "wait", but it should be noted that you have no specific knowledge of Huawei's Harmony OS as it pertains to smartphones either; you're merely parroting Huawei Marketing.
    Anyone (Apple included) has a problem if they have a product design that cannot be manufactured. 

    Not long ago, the entire industry was affected by a very similar problem but that wasn't politics, it was COVID-19.

    A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy' . Logic should tell you that if it weren't for politics TSMC would actually be testing  that processor with Huawei right now. Each Kirin chip is basically on a five year design window.

    But none of that has even the slightest to do with what I was replying to: the advantages of own the 'whole stack'.

    Ah yes, Apple and the M1. You did slip that in there but then Huawei has MindSpore, DaVinci, Ascend (which goes from earbuds up to AI clusters with 1024 cores), solutions for Airport and Port control, robotics, Power solutions and a very long list of etc. 

    The whole stack you say? Why not. It makes sense for some companies but not necessarily for others. 

    This is 'old' now but I still haven't seen an Apple equivalent. Have you? 

    https://e.huawei.com/en/products/cloud-computing-dc/atlas/atlas-900-ai?utm_medium=psm&utm_source=corp_facebook&utm_campaign=HC2019&source=psm_corp_facebook

    As for HarmonyOS, I am definitely not 'parroting' Huawei Marketing.

    The information I provide is publicly available and comes from the head of HarmonyOS software development (not marketing) . Your claims, and this is ironic btw, do seem like the product of pure fantasy.

    If I say it's best to wait and see what is released, it is because there is nothing official yet. That's reasonable on my part but you seem to be able to reach conclusions that are based on... what exactly? Definitely not anything Huawei have actually said.

    Oh right, the ARS article! Is that it though? Nothing else? 

    Did you bother to contextualise that article? To see how those conclusions fit in with what Huawei is actually claiming? Did you question anything? 

    Where are those 16,000 APIs hiding for example? Being a multikernel system with a kernel abstraction layer, how many kernels were looked at?

    How is it possible that one of the world's largest home appliance brands (not handsets) has already confirmed support for Harmony OS on a whole suite of products?

    https://www.gizchina.com/2020/11/11/midea-launches-its-first-batch-of-products-running-on-harmony-os/

    Of course HarmonyOS is already out there either in version 1 form (TVs, cars and smartscreens), or parts of it working 'undercover' in watches and routers etc and doing things that Android simply cannot do. 
    Xiaomi is able to purchase the full line of Qualcomm, so that avenue may be available to Huawei, but I doubt it. 

    "A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy", but logic tells me that it will never exist, so perhaps it is you that needs to stop fantasizing, and since Huawei isn't going to get even a semi-custom processor anytime soon, then Huawei absolutely lacks the "full stack" for its smartphones. I don't think that Samsung will be able to save them either.

    Thanks for playing.

    Looking forward to Google's White Chapel SOC, so they can take advantage of the "full stack" as well, because of course there are other options besides Apple in the world.

    https://jamestown.org/program/semiconductor-scandal-a-concerning-backdrop-to-xis-pursuit-of-core-technologies/

    https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Khan-Flynn—Maintaining-Chinas-Dependence-on-Democracies.pdf
    You have managed to tie yourself up in knots again.

    Yes, Xiaomi has has access to the full range of Qualcomm products but what does that have to do with anything?

    Huawei does not have the same access. You don't have to 'doubt' that because it is crystal clear and the result of a last minute change by Trump.

    Samsung is a different story but there are only rumours at this point.

    You have skirted mostly everything I challenged you with by either running up some new alley or outright ignoring it but for good measure you throw China into the soup.

    I'm not surprised.

    And 'logic' cannot tell you a 3nm Kirin will never exist when, at this junction in time, the only restriction in place is 100% political. There's a field where you should never say 'never'.

    As for 'owning the full stack', perhaps you see things more clearly now than from your Apple centred earlier posts. Yes, the world includes more than Apple and clearly there are stacks, and there are stacks, LOL.

    And in the spirit of Jaws...

    "You're gonna need a bigger stack!". ;-) 
    The point is, that there is very little indigenous silicon production in China, and the best node available is 14nm. You, and the PRC, keep pointing out that China is going to be self sufficient in silicon, but that's just not true in the near term, given the fact that only the U.S., Taiwan, and South Korea, have leading edge nodes, and only the U.S., Japan, and the Netherlands, build leading edge semiconductor equipment. 

    That means, that China will have to acquire IP, which will likely involve theft, will have to hire away TSMC employees, which they have been, and would still have to replace the design software, which is almost entirely U.S. origin.

    Throwing all that together, China really isn't a player in leading edge silicon. 

    https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Khan-Flynn—Maintaining-Chinas-Dependence-on-Democracies.pdf

    "EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

    The Chinese government is investing tens of billions of dollars in its computer chip factories and may eventually achieve global state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities. However, China can succeed only if the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands continue to sell it the manufacturing equipment necessary to operate its chip factories. If these states deny access to this specialized equipment, China would find it nearly impossible to develop or maintain advanced chip factories for the foreseeable future. Countering the Chinese government’s market-distorting subsidies with such export controls would shift chip factory capacity to democracies, especially the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. As a result, the firms making specialized manufacturing equipment for chips would experience little to no long-term revenue loss from such export controls, and may even benefit from working with more reliable partners in these democracies.

    It is in the security interests of democratic states, including the United States, for China to remain reliant on democracies for state-of-the-art chips. Advanced weapons systems and many emerging technologies for surveillance and oppression depend on state-of-the-art chips — currently produced only by firms in the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. Maintaining exclusive control of these chips will allow democracies to implement targeted end-use and end-user export controls on them, largely preempting China’s development and use of many dangerous or destabilizing technologies."

    https://jamestown.org/program/semiconductor-scandal-a-concerning-backdrop-to-xis-pursuit-of-core-technologies/

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-02/china-revs-up-grand-chip-ambitions-to-counter-u-s-blacklistings

    Bottom line, China has no indigenous capacity to manufacture silicon suitable for flagship smartphones; not now, not anytime soon. The West is at no economic disadvantage by restricting the technology for leading edge silicon manufacturing.

    Huawei has no current source for SOC's suitable for flagship smartphones, and has no near term potential for obtaining those from indigenous China production. No silicon, no full stack. 

    The funniest comment that I'd seen recently was by GeorgeBmac, to the effect that China had the capability of taking out a U.S. aircraft carrier with a "ship killing" ballistic missile, not realizing that "ship killing" ballistic missiles, among other things, are the reason that the U.S. and its allies aren't keen on supplying leading edge silicon to the PRC.

    And there you have it...

    The full blown anti-China, off topic, obsessive, politically rooted rant.

    Come on! You brought the 'advantages of owning the full stack' into this and I challenged that notion point for point. That's it. You either accept what I pointed out or you challenge it - but with something relevant!

    Yeah, Huawei can't satisfy its chip requirements without external fabrication.

    Wow! Is that news?

    Here's something for you to chew on - neither can Apple!

    Trump couldn't handle seeing the global supply chain working against his interests so he attempted (and failed, btw) to wreck it.

    He threw a stick (at best!) into the spokes and blew the collective US semiconductor's head off in the process.

    Why do you think US companies are basically pleading for 'licences' to do business with Huawei - with Google not letting up for a second in lobbying in the two years that this has been going on?

    Google wants Huawei with it, not against it. Huawei would love to continue doing business with Google.

    Now Google has a MAJOR problem. Under scrutiny along with others at home and abroad and with Huawei about to ship HarmonyOS on handsets and hoping to plunk it onto 300 million devices this year alone. Yikes! 

    Petal search has morphed into a full blown independent search engine, Petal Maps is live, Petal Mail is in beta. Every single Google Service is being relentlessly targeted and substitutes released onto the world. Yes, that of course includes advertising revenue through HMS. 

    Pandora's Box has been opened and at best all Google can hope for is getting GMS apps onto HMS but of course, Huawei will be pulling the strings there and it will cost Google a pretty penny to get Google Search onto a Huawei device.

    It's disheartening for both Huawei and Google because nether of them were seeking this situation. It was forced on them by ill thought out policy at government level.

    And to top Google's nightmare scenario off, HarmonyOS/HMS will only get better and it will sit there waiting to jump, should the US think about targeting any other Chinese brands which currently use GMS. Do you think Google isn't losing sleep over the potential of the entire Chinese handset sector switching away from GMS to HMS? 

    In fact, there is already talk of Meizu having agreed to do just that.

    That stack is only going to get bigger. 
    You've gone off the deep end.

    Apple and Google will still be able to design and fab leading edge SoC's; Huawei/HiSilicon will not. 

    That's a harsh reality. More to the point Google services essentially don't exist in China, so, what exactly is Google losing, given that side loading apps is prevalent in China as well?

    "The block is indiscriminate as all Google services in all countries, encrypted or not, are now blocked in China. This blockage includes Google search, images, Gmail and almost all other products. In addition, the block covers Google Hong Kong, google.com, and all other country specific versions, e.g., Google Japan

    FFS, there is no Honor subbrand, and Huawei smartphone sales have crashed. Move on, for god's sake.
    Ah! Now you put 'FFS' at the end of the post!

    Sneaky bounder! 

    It still means the same though - you have nothing left to shoot back with, and you were shooting blanks from the start anyway .

    Where to begin....?

    Ah! Something you got right, although it's a case of stating the obvious!

    Yes, Huawei,' currently cannot fab 5nm chips.

    We are all perfectly aware of that and as I said further up, that will change (possibly mid term or short term depending on technology advances, politics or both).

    Next up. Chinese brands and GMS. You have not been paying attention. Huawei was the first major Chinese handset manufacturer to make an impact with international sales. Over the last two years the other major brands (Oppo, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Honor) have been sweeping into non-Chinese markets at breathtaking speed (Honor was already there of course). 

    They are even present in the US.

    As HarmonyOS matures, the lure of switching (if the US tries another Huawei style stunt) will simply be more attractive.

    More and more reviewers are beginning to come around to the idea that not having GMS may not be such an issue if HMS keeps moving at its current pace. 

    Honor was spun off to keep the inertia going. Do you seriously believe it can't be re-absorbed at a later date?

    And you are asking me to get real? 
    Of the three previous top brands, Samsung, Huawei, and Apple, it appears that it is now Samsung, Apple, followed by Chinese brands. The only change is that Huawei's foreign share has been consumed by other Chinese brands, and Huawei has no access to leading edge fabs or SoC's.

    Other than that, Huawei is doing just fine, well, except for also losing foreign telecom share. 

    Details, details. Sure Huawei may eventually get access to competitive SoC's, but it certainly isn't today, or tomorrow. Meanwhile, those sales just keep diving.
    edited April 2021 watto_cobra
  • Reply 39 of 74
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,624member
    tmay said:
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    elijahg said:
    cloudguy said:
    dk49 said:
    If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 
    See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
    The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
    A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
    Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios. 

    Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.

    It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.

    It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course. 

    In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc. 

    Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.

    It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too. 
    You would be accurate in stating that Huawei is on a possible path to that, but factually, Huawei is not anywhere close to where Apple is in SOC development, and that takes into account the short term advantage that Huawei has with integration of 5G into its smartphone SOC. I also take exception to their Android fork being very developed, though of course, you have disagreed with that in the past, against published evidence that it is mostly a vanilla copy.

    Samsung has attempted to, but has never been able to replicate Apple's success and continue to trail in SOC performance, and density, and Qualcomm develops a range of SOC's for its many customers.

    As I have stated before; every year, Apple ships about 70% of its units based on its single, current (A14), A series processor, and this year, it appears that Apple will approach 250m iPhone units, which is in the neighborhood of 175 million A14's, not including iPad's. Not in anyone's universe will Qualcomm come close to those numbers for the Snapdragon 888, nor Samsung for the Exynos 2100, nor Huawei for the Kirin 9000. 

    What's interesting is how much of an advantage Apple continues to carry over its competitors, and the M series is yet another instance.
    Huawei is right up there with Apple on SoC development. On process node and even besting Apple on transistor density. On timing. On getting their modems on SoC, on ISP and DSP development, on secure enclave etc.

    The amount of processors Apple ships is totally irrevelant. What does that have to do with the advantages of owning the whole stack? And you are making some utterly wild projections anyway. Why not try to run with something that is more realistic, like what they shipped last year? Either way, quantity would still mean nothing but if that is what you want, Mediatek reportedly shipped over 350 million processors last year.

    As for the advantage Apple continues to have over competitors, are you claiming that not being able to ship a latest generation 5G modem on SoC is an advantage?

    And as for 'the Android fork' (eh?) not being very developed, it already contained more APIs than Google GMS Android, and two days ago, Beta 3 was released, adding 1,000 more APIs. Considering no one outside China has even seen the system, you are jumping to A LOT of uninformed conclusions. Especially as the system already has a release date for handsets: 24 April.

    I think we should just wait and see on that one. 
    Huawei/HiSilicon is dead in the water without access to a leading node fab, so what you state is factually untrue. Rumors of a Kirin 9010 at 3 nm are pure fantasy, as there are no fabs in the PRC that are capable of less 14 nm. There were very few Kirin 9000 produced, perhaps 8 million total, and the Kirin 9000 was trailing A14 and Qualcomm 888 in performance.

    Apple owning its own stack is why Apple has the M1, and will follow up with more performant M Series. Apple owning its own stack is why Apple doesn't have to be concerned with SOC cost, and hasn't created mid, and low range, variants of the current A Series, other than AX which powers iPad.

    I misstated that Apple doesn't have 5G integrated on the SOC, That should be restated as Apple does not have 5G integrated on the A14 die. Of course, in the future, Apple will integrate 5G on die, but in the meantime, consumers aren't concerned about how Apple implements 4G, and units sold in proof of that.

    Yeah, we should "wait", but it should be noted that you have no specific knowledge of Huawei's Harmony OS as it pertains to smartphones either; you're merely parroting Huawei Marketing.
    Anyone (Apple included) has a problem if they have a product design that cannot be manufactured. 

    Not long ago, the entire industry was affected by a very similar problem but that wasn't politics, it was COVID-19.

    A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy' . Logic should tell you that if it weren't for politics TSMC would actually be testing  that processor with Huawei right now. Each Kirin chip is basically on a five year design window.

    But none of that has even the slightest to do with what I was replying to: the advantages of own the 'whole stack'.

    Ah yes, Apple and the M1. You did slip that in there but then Huawei has MindSpore, DaVinci, Ascend (which goes from earbuds up to AI clusters with 1024 cores), solutions for Airport and Port control, robotics, Power solutions and a very long list of etc. 

    The whole stack you say? Why not. It makes sense for some companies but not necessarily for others. 

    This is 'old' now but I still haven't seen an Apple equivalent. Have you? 

    https://e.huawei.com/en/products/cloud-computing-dc/atlas/atlas-900-ai?utm_medium=psm&utm_source=corp_facebook&utm_campaign=HC2019&source=psm_corp_facebook

    As for HarmonyOS, I am definitely not 'parroting' Huawei Marketing.

    The information I provide is publicly available and comes from the head of HarmonyOS software development (not marketing) . Your claims, and this is ironic btw, do seem like the product of pure fantasy.

    If I say it's best to wait and see what is released, it is because there is nothing official yet. That's reasonable on my part but you seem to be able to reach conclusions that are based on... what exactly? Definitely not anything Huawei have actually said.

    Oh right, the ARS article! Is that it though? Nothing else? 

    Did you bother to contextualise that article? To see how those conclusions fit in with what Huawei is actually claiming? Did you question anything? 

    Where are those 16,000 APIs hiding for example? Being a multikernel system with a kernel abstraction layer, how many kernels were looked at?

    How is it possible that one of the world's largest home appliance brands (not handsets) has already confirmed support for Harmony OS on a whole suite of products?

    https://www.gizchina.com/2020/11/11/midea-launches-its-first-batch-of-products-running-on-harmony-os/

    Of course HarmonyOS is already out there either in version 1 form (TVs, cars and smartscreens), or parts of it working 'undercover' in watches and routers etc and doing things that Android simply cannot do. 
    Xiaomi is able to purchase the full line of Qualcomm, so that avenue may be available to Huawei, but I doubt it. 

    "A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy", but logic tells me that it will never exist, so perhaps it is you that needs to stop fantasizing, and since Huawei isn't going to get even a semi-custom processor anytime soon, then Huawei absolutely lacks the "full stack" for its smartphones. I don't think that Samsung will be able to save them either.

    Thanks for playing.

    Looking forward to Google's White Chapel SOC, so they can take advantage of the "full stack" as well, because of course there are other options besides Apple in the world.

    https://jamestown.org/program/semiconductor-scandal-a-concerning-backdrop-to-xis-pursuit-of-core-technologies/

    https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Khan-Flynn—Maintaining-Chinas-Dependence-on-Democracies.pdf
    You have managed to tie yourself up in knots again.

    Yes, Xiaomi has has access to the full range of Qualcomm products but what does that have to do with anything?

    Huawei does not have the same access. You don't have to 'doubt' that because it is crystal clear and the result of a last minute change by Trump.

    Samsung is a different story but there are only rumours at this point.

    You have skirted mostly everything I challenged you with by either running up some new alley or outright ignoring it but for good measure you throw China into the soup.

    I'm not surprised.

    And 'logic' cannot tell you a 3nm Kirin will never exist when, at this junction in time, the only restriction in place is 100% political. There's a field where you should never say 'never'.

    As for 'owning the full stack', perhaps you see things more clearly now than from your Apple centred earlier posts. Yes, the world includes more than Apple and clearly there are stacks, and there are stacks, LOL.

    And in the spirit of Jaws...

    "You're gonna need a bigger stack!". ;-) 
    The point is, that there is very little indigenous silicon production in China, and the best node available is 14nm. You, and the PRC, keep pointing out that China is going to be self sufficient in silicon, but that's just not true in the near term, given the fact that only the U.S., Taiwan, and South Korea, have leading edge nodes, and only the U.S., Japan, and the Netherlands, build leading edge semiconductor equipment. 

    That means, that China will have to acquire IP, which will likely involve theft, will have to hire away TSMC employees, which they have been, and would still have to replace the design software, which is almost entirely U.S. origin.

    Throwing all that together, China really isn't a player in leading edge silicon. 

    https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Khan-Flynn—Maintaining-Chinas-Dependence-on-Democracies.pdf

    "EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

    The Chinese government is investing tens of billions of dollars in its computer chip factories and may eventually achieve global state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities. However, China can succeed only if the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands continue to sell it the manufacturing equipment necessary to operate its chip factories. If these states deny access to this specialized equipment, China would find it nearly impossible to develop or maintain advanced chip factories for the foreseeable future. Countering the Chinese government’s market-distorting subsidies with such export controls would shift chip factory capacity to democracies, especially the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. As a result, the firms making specialized manufacturing equipment for chips would experience little to no long-term revenue loss from such export controls, and may even benefit from working with more reliable partners in these democracies.

    It is in the security interests of democratic states, including the United States, for China to remain reliant on democracies for state-of-the-art chips. Advanced weapons systems and many emerging technologies for surveillance and oppression depend on state-of-the-art chips — currently produced only by firms in the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. Maintaining exclusive control of these chips will allow democracies to implement targeted end-use and end-user export controls on them, largely preempting China’s development and use of many dangerous or destabilizing technologies."

    https://jamestown.org/program/semiconductor-scandal-a-concerning-backdrop-to-xis-pursuit-of-core-technologies/

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-02/china-revs-up-grand-chip-ambitions-to-counter-u-s-blacklistings

    Bottom line, China has no indigenous capacity to manufacture silicon suitable for flagship smartphones; not now, not anytime soon. The West is at no economic disadvantage by restricting the technology for leading edge silicon manufacturing.

    Huawei has no current source for SOC's suitable for flagship smartphones, and has no near term potential for obtaining those from indigenous China production. No silicon, no full stack. 

    The funniest comment that I'd seen recently was by GeorgeBmac, to the effect that China had the capability of taking out a U.S. aircraft carrier with a "ship killing" ballistic missile, not realizing that "ship killing" ballistic missiles, among other things, are the reason that the U.S. and its allies aren't keen on supplying leading edge silicon to the PRC.

    And there you have it...

    The full blown anti-China, off topic, obsessive, politically rooted rant.

    Come on! You brought the 'advantages of owning the full stack' into this and I challenged that notion point for point. That's it. You either accept what I pointed out or you challenge it - but with something relevant!

    Yeah, Huawei can't satisfy its chip requirements without external fabrication.

    Wow! Is that news?

    Here's something for you to chew on - neither can Apple!

    Trump couldn't handle seeing the global supply chain working against his interests so he attempted (and failed, btw) to wreck it.

    He threw a stick (at best!) into the spokes and blew the collective US semiconductor's head off in the process.

    Why do you think US companies are basically pleading for 'licences' to do business with Huawei - with Google not letting up for a second in lobbying in the two years that this has been going on?

    Google wants Huawei with it, not against it. Huawei would love to continue doing business with Google.

    Now Google has a MAJOR problem. Under scrutiny along with others at home and abroad and with Huawei about to ship HarmonyOS on handsets and hoping to plunk it onto 300 million devices this year alone. Yikes! 

    Petal search has morphed into a full blown independent search engine, Petal Maps is live, Petal Mail is in beta. Every single Google Service is being relentlessly targeted and substitutes released onto the world. Yes, that of course includes advertising revenue through HMS. 

    Pandora's Box has been opened and at best all Google can hope for is getting GMS apps onto HMS but of course, Huawei will be pulling the strings there and it will cost Google a pretty penny to get Google Search onto a Huawei device.

    It's disheartening for both Huawei and Google because nether of them were seeking this situation. It was forced on them by ill thought out policy at government level.

    And to top Google's nightmare scenario off, HarmonyOS/HMS will only get better and it will sit there waiting to jump, should the US think about targeting any other Chinese brands which currently use GMS. Do you think Google isn't losing sleep over the potential of the entire Chinese handset sector switching away from GMS to HMS? 

    In fact, there is already talk of Meizu having agreed to do just that.

    That stack is only going to get bigger. 
    You've gone off the deep end.

    Apple and Google will still be able to design and fab leading edge SoC's; Huawei/HiSilicon will not. 

    That's a harsh reality. More to the point Google services essentially don't exist in China, so, what exactly is Google losing, given that side loading apps is prevalent in China as well?

    "The block is indiscriminate as all Google services in all countries, encrypted or not, are now blocked in China. This blockage includes Google search, images, Gmail and almost all other products. In addition, the block covers Google Hong Kong, google.com, and all other country specific versions, e.g., Google Japan

    FFS, there is no Honor subbrand, and Huawei smartphone sales have crashed. Move on, for god's sake.
    Ah! Now you put 'FFS' at the end of the post!

    Sneaky bounder! 

    It still means the same though - you have nothing left to shoot back with, and you were shooting blanks from the start anyway .

    Where to begin....?

    Ah! Something you got right, although it's a case of stating the obvious!

    Yes, Huawei,' currently cannot fab 5nm chips.

    We are all perfectly aware of that and as I said further up, that will change (possibly mid term or short term depending on technology advances, politics or both).

    Next up. Chinese brands and GMS. You have not been paying attention. Huawei was the first major Chinese handset manufacturer to make an impact with international sales. Over the last two years the other major brands (Oppo, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Honor) have been sweeping into non-Chinese markets at breathtaking speed (Honor was already there of course). 

    They are even present in the US.

    As HarmonyOS matures, the lure of switching (if the US tries another Huawei style stunt) will simply be more attractive.

    More and more reviewers are beginning to come around to the idea that not having GMS may not be such an issue if HMS keeps moving at its current pace. 

    Honor was spun off to keep the inertia going. Do you seriously believe it can't be re-absorbed at a later date?

    And you are asking me to get real? 
    Of the three previous top brands, Samsung, Huawei, and Apple, it appears that it is now Samsung, Apple, followed by Chinese brands. The only change is that Huawei's foreign share has been consumed by other Chinese brands, and Huawei has no access to leading edge fabs or SoC's.

    Other than that, Huawei is doing just fine, well, except for also losing foreign telecom share. 

    Details, details. Sure Huawei may eventually get access to competitive SoC's, but it certainly isn't today, or tomorrow. Meanwhile, those sales just keep diving.
    It has access to leading edge SoCs. It designs them itself!

    The current problem is fabbing them, not designing them.

    Huawei's handset share was huge. Even dividing it among Chinese competitors, it remains huge and is growing fast outside China.

    Against all the odds Huawei actually increased revenues and net profit for 2020.

    It has turned its focus to 5G, AI, Cloud and CE for growth options. Last year HiSilicon made an IoT SoC available to third parties. It will try to get HarmonyOS onto as much IoT hardware as possible. Huawei provided an EV solution (hardware/software) to car manufacturers. It provided 5G based services solutions for aviation, mining, ports, farming, health and science etc.

    I'm not even getting into its energy solutions and a raft of other fields.

    R&D spending has been increased yet again. 

    They are not standing still and the fab situation of its ARM strategy is there but they are working to reduce its impact. 

    We will see if they succeed. Nothing is a given. 

    But. if your stack is gigantic, it gives you options and 5G is one of the keys threads that tie things up.

    Take a look for yourself ...


    libertyforall
  • Reply 40 of 74
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,311member
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    dk49 said:
    If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 
    See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.
    The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.
    A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.
    Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios. 

    Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.

    It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.

    It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course. 

    In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc. 

    Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.

    It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too. 
    You would be accurate in stating that Huawei is on a possible path to that, but factually, Huawei is not anywhere close to where Apple is in SOC development, and that takes into account the short term advantage that Huawei has with integration of 5G into its smartphone SOC. I also take exception to their Android fork being very developed, though of course, you have disagreed with that in the past, against published evidence that it is mostly a vanilla copy.

    Samsung has attempted to, but has never been able to replicate Apple's success and continue to trail in SOC performance, and density, and Qualcomm develops a range of SOC's for its many customers.

    As I have stated before; every year, Apple ships about 70% of its units based on its single, current (A14), A series processor, and this year, it appears that Apple will approach 250m iPhone units, which is in the neighborhood of 175 million A14's, not including iPad's. Not in anyone's universe will Qualcomm come close to those numbers for the Snapdragon 888, nor Samsung for the Exynos 2100, nor Huawei for the Kirin 9000. 

    What's interesting is how much of an advantage Apple continues to carry over its competitors, and the M series is yet another instance.
    Huawei is right up there with Apple on SoC development. On process node and even besting Apple on transistor density. On timing. On getting their modems on SoC, on ISP and DSP development, on secure enclave etc.

    The amount of processors Apple ships is totally irrevelant. What does that have to do with the advantages of owning the whole stack? And you are making some utterly wild projections anyway. Why not try to run with something that is more realistic, like what they shipped last year? Either way, quantity would still mean nothing but if that is what you want, Mediatek reportedly shipped over 350 million processors last year.

    As for the advantage Apple continues to have over competitors, are you claiming that not being able to ship a latest generation 5G modem on SoC is an advantage?

    And as for 'the Android fork' (eh?) not being very developed, it already contained more APIs than Google GMS Android, and two days ago, Beta 3 was released, adding 1,000 more APIs. Considering no one outside China has even seen the system, you are jumping to A LOT of uninformed conclusions. Especially as the system already has a release date for handsets: 24 April.

    I think we should just wait and see on that one. 
    Huawei/HiSilicon is dead in the water without access to a leading node fab, so what you state is factually untrue. Rumors of a Kirin 9010 at 3 nm are pure fantasy, as there are no fabs in the PRC that are capable of less 14 nm. There were very few Kirin 9000 produced, perhaps 8 million total, and the Kirin 9000 was trailing A14 and Qualcomm 888 in performance.

    Apple owning its own stack is why Apple has the M1, and will follow up with more performant M Series. Apple owning its own stack is why Apple doesn't have to be concerned with SOC cost, and hasn't created mid, and low range, variants of the current A Series, other than AX which powers iPad.

    I misstated that Apple doesn't have 5G integrated on the SOC, That should be restated as Apple does not have 5G integrated on the A14 die. Of course, in the future, Apple will integrate 5G on die, but in the meantime, consumers aren't concerned about how Apple implements 4G, and units sold in proof of that.

    Yeah, we should "wait", but it should be noted that you have no specific knowledge of Huawei's Harmony OS as it pertains to smartphones either; you're merely parroting Huawei Marketing.
    Anyone (Apple included) has a problem if they have a product design that cannot be manufactured. 

    Not long ago, the entire industry was affected by a very similar problem but that wasn't politics, it was COVID-19.

    A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy' . Logic should tell you that if it weren't for politics TSMC would actually be testing  that processor with Huawei right now. Each Kirin chip is basically on a five year design window.

    But none of that has even the slightest to do with what I was replying to: the advantages of own the 'whole stack'.

    Ah yes, Apple and the M1. You did slip that in there but then Huawei has MindSpore, DaVinci, Ascend (which goes from earbuds up to AI clusters with 1024 cores), solutions for Airport and Port control, robotics, Power solutions and a very long list of etc. 

    The whole stack you say? Why not. It makes sense for some companies but not necessarily for others. 

    This is 'old' now but I still haven't seen an Apple equivalent. Have you? 

    https://e.huawei.com/en/products/cloud-computing-dc/atlas/atlas-900-ai?utm_medium=psm&utm_source=corp_facebook&utm_campaign=HC2019&source=psm_corp_facebook

    As for HarmonyOS, I am definitely not 'parroting' Huawei Marketing.

    The information I provide is publicly available and comes from the head of HarmonyOS software development (not marketing) . Your claims, and this is ironic btw, do seem like the product of pure fantasy.

    If I say it's best to wait and see what is released, it is because there is nothing official yet. That's reasonable on my part but you seem to be able to reach conclusions that are based on... what exactly? Definitely not anything Huawei have actually said.

    Oh right, the ARS article! Is that it though? Nothing else? 

    Did you bother to contextualise that article? To see how those conclusions fit in with what Huawei is actually claiming? Did you question anything? 

    Where are those 16,000 APIs hiding for example? Being a multikernel system with a kernel abstraction layer, how many kernels were looked at?

    How is it possible that one of the world's largest home appliance brands (not handsets) has already confirmed support for Harmony OS on a whole suite of products?

    https://www.gizchina.com/2020/11/11/midea-launches-its-first-batch-of-products-running-on-harmony-os/

    Of course HarmonyOS is already out there either in version 1 form (TVs, cars and smartscreens), or parts of it working 'undercover' in watches and routers etc and doing things that Android simply cannot do. 
    Xiaomi is able to purchase the full line of Qualcomm, so that avenue may be available to Huawei, but I doubt it. 

    "A Kirin SoC on 3nm is anything but 'pure fantasy", but logic tells me that it will never exist, so perhaps it is you that needs to stop fantasizing, and since Huawei isn't going to get even a semi-custom processor anytime soon, then Huawei absolutely lacks the "full stack" for its smartphones. I don't think that Samsung will be able to save them either.

    Thanks for playing.

    Looking forward to Google's White Chapel SOC, so they can take advantage of the "full stack" as well, because of course there are other options besides Apple in the world.

    https://jamestown.org/program/semiconductor-scandal-a-concerning-backdrop-to-xis-pursuit-of-core-technologies/

    https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Khan-Flynn—Maintaining-Chinas-Dependence-on-Democracies.pdf
    You have managed to tie yourself up in knots again.

    Yes, Xiaomi has has access to the full range of Qualcomm products but what does that have to do with anything?

    Huawei does not have the same access. You don't have to 'doubt' that because it is crystal clear and the result of a last minute change by Trump.

    Samsung is a different story but there are only rumours at this point.

    You have skirted mostly everything I challenged you with by either running up some new alley or outright ignoring it but for good measure you throw China into the soup.

    I'm not surprised.

    And 'logic' cannot tell you a 3nm Kirin will never exist when, at this junction in time, the only restriction in place is 100% political. There's a field where you should never say 'never'.

    As for 'owning the full stack', perhaps you see things more clearly now than from your Apple centred earlier posts. Yes, the world includes more than Apple and clearly there are stacks, and there are stacks, LOL.

    And in the spirit of Jaws...

    "You're gonna need a bigger stack!". ;-) 
    The point is, that there is very little indigenous silicon production in China, and the best node available is 14nm. You, and the PRC, keep pointing out that China is going to be self sufficient in silicon, but that's just not true in the near term, given the fact that only the U.S., Taiwan, and South Korea, have leading edge nodes, and only the U.S., Japan, and the Netherlands, build leading edge semiconductor equipment. 

    That means, that China will have to acquire IP, which will likely involve theft, will have to hire away TSMC employees, which they have been, and would still have to replace the design software, which is almost entirely U.S. origin.

    Throwing all that together, China really isn't a player in leading edge silicon. 

    https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Khan-Flynn—Maintaining-Chinas-Dependence-on-Democracies.pdf

    "EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

    The Chinese government is investing tens of billions of dollars in its computer chip factories and may eventually achieve global state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities. However, China can succeed only if the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands continue to sell it the manufacturing equipment necessary to operate its chip factories. If these states deny access to this specialized equipment, China would find it nearly impossible to develop or maintain advanced chip factories for the foreseeable future. Countering the Chinese government’s market-distorting subsidies with such export controls would shift chip factory capacity to democracies, especially the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. As a result, the firms making specialized manufacturing equipment for chips would experience little to no long-term revenue loss from such export controls, and may even benefit from working with more reliable partners in these democracies.

    It is in the security interests of democratic states, including the United States, for China to remain reliant on democracies for state-of-the-art chips. Advanced weapons systems and many emerging technologies for surveillance and oppression depend on state-of-the-art chips — currently produced only by firms in the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. Maintaining exclusive control of these chips will allow democracies to implement targeted end-use and end-user export controls on them, largely preempting China’s development and use of many dangerous or destabilizing technologies."

    https://jamestown.org/program/semiconductor-scandal-a-concerning-backdrop-to-xis-pursuit-of-core-technologies/

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-02/china-revs-up-grand-chip-ambitions-to-counter-u-s-blacklistings

    Bottom line, China has no indigenous capacity to manufacture silicon suitable for flagship smartphones; not now, not anytime soon. The West is at no economic disadvantage by restricting the technology for leading edge silicon manufacturing.

    Huawei has no current source for SOC's suitable for flagship smartphones, and has no near term potential for obtaining those from indigenous China production. No silicon, no full stack. 

    The funniest comment that I'd seen recently was by GeorgeBmac, to the effect that China had the capability of taking out a U.S. aircraft carrier with a "ship killing" ballistic missile, not realizing that "ship killing" ballistic missiles, among other things, are the reason that the U.S. and its allies aren't keen on supplying leading edge silicon to the PRC.

    And there you have it...

    The full blown anti-China, off topic, obsessive, politically rooted rant.

    Come on! You brought the 'advantages of owning the full stack' into this and I challenged that notion point for point. That's it. You either accept what I pointed out or you challenge it - but with something relevant!

    Yeah, Huawei can't satisfy its chip requirements without external fabrication.

    Wow! Is that news?

    Here's something for you to chew on - neither can Apple!

    Trump couldn't handle seeing the global supply chain working against his interests so he attempted (and failed, btw) to wreck it.

    He threw a stick (at best!) into the spokes and blew the collective US semiconductor's head off in the process.

    Why do you think US companies are basically pleading for 'licences' to do business with Huawei - with Google not letting up for a second in lobbying in the two years that this has been going on?

    Google wants Huawei with it, not against it. Huawei would love to continue doing business with Google.

    Now Google has a MAJOR problem. Under scrutiny along with others at home and abroad and with Huawei about to ship HarmonyOS on handsets and hoping to plunk it onto 300 million devices this year alone. Yikes! 

    Petal search has morphed into a full blown independent search engine, Petal Maps is live, Petal Mail is in beta. Every single Google Service is being relentlessly targeted and substitutes released onto the world. Yes, that of course includes advertising revenue through HMS. 

    Pandora's Box has been opened and at best all Google can hope for is getting GMS apps onto HMS but of course, Huawei will be pulling the strings there and it will cost Google a pretty penny to get Google Search onto a Huawei device.

    It's disheartening for both Huawei and Google because nether of them were seeking this situation. It was forced on them by ill thought out policy at government level.

    And to top Google's nightmare scenario off, HarmonyOS/HMS will only get better and it will sit there waiting to jump, should the US think about targeting any other Chinese brands which currently use GMS. Do you think Google isn't losing sleep over the potential of the entire Chinese handset sector switching away from GMS to HMS? 

    In fact, there is already talk of Meizu having agreed to do just that.

    That stack is only going to get bigger. 
    You've gone off the deep end.

    Apple and Google will still be able to design and fab leading edge SoC's; Huawei/HiSilicon will not. 

    That's a harsh reality. More to the point Google services essentially don't exist in China, so, what exactly is Google losing, given that side loading apps is prevalent in China as well?

    "The block is indiscriminate as all Google services in all countries, encrypted or not, are now blocked in China. This blockage includes Google search, images, Gmail and almost all other products. In addition, the block covers Google Hong Kong, google.com, and all other country specific versions, e.g., Google Japan

    FFS, there is no Honor subbrand, and Huawei smartphone sales have crashed. Move on, for god's sake.
    Ah! Now you put 'FFS' at the end of the post!

    Sneaky bounder! 

    It still means the same though - you have nothing left to shoot back with, and you were shooting blanks from the start anyway .

    Where to begin....?

    Ah! Something you got right, although it's a case of stating the obvious!

    Yes, Huawei,' currently cannot fab 5nm chips.

    We are all perfectly aware of that and as I said further up, that will change (possibly mid term or short term depending on technology advances, politics or both).

    Next up. Chinese brands and GMS. You have not been paying attention. Huawei was the first major Chinese handset manufacturer to make an impact with international sales. Over the last two years the other major brands (Oppo, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Honor) have been sweeping into non-Chinese markets at breathtaking speed (Honor was already there of course). 

    They are even present in the US.

    As HarmonyOS matures, the lure of switching (if the US tries another Huawei style stunt) will simply be more attractive.

    More and more reviewers are beginning to come around to the idea that not having GMS may not be such an issue if HMS keeps moving at its current pace. 

    Honor was spun off to keep the inertia going. Do you seriously believe it can't be re-absorbed at a later date?

    And you are asking me to get real? 
    Of the three previous top brands, Samsung, Huawei, and Apple, it appears that it is now Samsung, Apple, followed by Chinese brands. The only change is that Huawei's foreign share has been consumed by other Chinese brands, and Huawei has no access to leading edge fabs or SoC's.

    Other than that, Huawei is doing just fine, well, except for also losing foreign telecom share. 

    Details, details. Sure Huawei may eventually get access to competitive SoC's, but it certainly isn't today, or tomorrow. Meanwhile, those sales just keep diving.
    It has access to leading edge SoCs. It designs them itself!

    The current problem is fabbing them, not designing them.

    Huawei's handset share was huge. Even dividing it among Chinese competitors, it remains huge and is growing fast outside China.

    Against all the odds Huawei actually increased revenues and net profit for 2020.

    It has turned its focus to 5G, AI, Cloud and CE for growth options. Last year HiSilicon made an IoT SoC available to third parties. It will try to get HarmonyOS onto as much IoT hardware as possible. Huawei provided an EV solution (hardware/software) to car manufacturers. It provided 5G based services solutions for aviation, mining, ports, farming, health and science etc.

    I'm not even getting into its energy solutions and a raft of other fields.

    R&D spending has been increased yet again. 

    They are not standing still and the fab situation of its ARM strategy is there but they are working to reduce its impact. 

    We will see if they succeed. Nothing is a given. 

    But. if your stack is gigantic, it gives you options and 5G is one of the keys threads that tie things up.

    Take a look for yourself ...


    Wake me up when Huawei is relevant in the West again...
    watto_cobramelgross
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