Hacker News Reader

Comment by conradev | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know if sanctions are the reason, but moving away from foreign-controlled IP is certainly a thing. Chinese companies make STM32 clones (even fixing the errata in the original):

https://hackaday.com/2020/10/22/stm32-clones-the-good-the-ba...

View on HN

I think it's more about a potential future usage of ARM in a sanctions package. Somewhat similar to how Hauwai was was hit with a list of narrow prohibitions like access to the android store.

Having an openly implementable ISA is just one less thing to worry about

I doubt that matters considering China stole a complete copy of ARM (the company) and has already released new IP under their rebranded name.

The stolen architectures cannot be legitimately sold outside of China, due to patents held by ARM ltd. RISC-V avoids these headaches.

Indeed, but conversely, China will have access to ARM no matter what. This also means that we can sanction all we want, they locally have the fabs and IP to create ARM, RISC-V, MIPS and even x86 CPUs (and they are already doing all of that). Granted, their fabs can't do top-of-the-line lithography (yet?) but since they have already created 64-core ARM server CPUs and some custom AI silicon they can get horizontally scaled performance regardless. This is of course their focus: make sure they can make computers and related equipment domestically no matter what.

They do have access to ARM, sure. But they also have access to RISC-V, which is technically superior and free of the troubles associated with ARM.

What is superior about RISC V technically?

Code density is a good one.

L1$ is always starved, thus it is always good to fit more code in it.

China wants to sell chips and gadgets with chips inside. Legally questionable access to ARM will not help with that. RISC-V solves the problem.

Aren't the countries that would care about the legalities and patents the same countries that would be sanctioning them? I don't know who will adopt risc-v for high performance. Nvidia maybe? Intel-lattice-altera-intelgpu. Amd-ati-xilinx. Nvidia wanted to be nvidia-arm but as that didn't work, maybe risc-v? No big fpga players for them to pick up though.

FWIW it most likely doesn't matter if they can't be sold outside of China. the domestic market is large enough.

Does anyone outside of China want Chinese spy chips regardless of architecture?

Why do you call them "spy" chips? Have they been found to generally have backdoors?

In an embedded context, a lot of that doesn't matter either way - your dumb coffee maker doesn't have a lot of opportunity to spy on you anyway. Smart devices are a very different story. However, Chinese embedded chips are often very cheap for the capabilities.

And all Intel and AMD processors have "spy" capabilities too with the built-in black-box Intel Management Engine and AMD Platform Security Processor. And it's only becoming more powerful and commonplace with remote attestation and Microsoft Pluton. In a few years PCs might become just like mobile phones - the bootloader locked down requiring signed images from Microsoft, etc.

Given all of that, China seems like a great option if they produce RISC-V processors.

In a few years PCs might become just like mobile phones - the bootloader locked down requiring signed images from Microsoft, etc.

The number of Windows-exclusive programs are rapidly dwindling. In a few years, it may not be such a big deal to simply avoid that with Linux (or FreeBSD).

If they produce "spy" risc-v processors, no.

State sponsored extortion is still a thing.

Tons of hobbyists buy PINE hardware. All of their SoCs are Chinese (Rockchip, Allwinner). Hardkernel/Odroid stuff is a mix of Amlogic, Intel, and Rockchip.

Outside the hobbyist space people do seem to be shunning Chinese SoCs AFAICT. Maybe no name TV boxes have rockchips, but other than that not much.

What non-Chinese options do hobbyist boards have? NXP chips seems almost impossible to get for the hobbyist market. I’m not sure why. Broadcom for the RPI’s we’re probably only possible because the creators had worked at Broadcom.

Amlogic and NXP mostly. Some mediatek boards are popping up, although they tend to be pricier.

Arm China majority shareholders announce the company’s corporate governance issue has been resolved

https://www.arm.com/company/news/2022/04/arm-china-majority-...

Unless they actually get the company seal and remove the armed guards and gain control of the building, it's all just PR. On top of that, even then there is nothing to prevent this from happening again, and anything that already has been copied or 'exported' really isn't going back into the box of company secrets.

Yes, that resolution has occurred in favor of the CCP. ARM Ltd folded. The person who controls the corporate seals is a CCP apparatchik.

Remember this is a joint venture with 51% Chinese ownership. Meaning of course the Chinese have the final word.

...but my fiduciary duty compels me to maximize short-term profits for my shareholders </s>

This one I am really torn on. On one hand I really like that RISC-V is open. However, on the other hand I do not like the idea of it being used to avoid sanctions. The problem is an ISA that can be sanctioned is not truly open.

The two desires are definitely at odds with each other. Like the RISC-V foundation moved to Switzerland to avoid the possibility in 2019. So the foundation is definitely trying to keep things more open.

At the end of the day it's just ISA and not a micro-architecture design or set of cell libraries and fab processes. So it's not a complete bypass of all possible sanctions. ARM for instance does provide designs and not just an ISA.

The main problem is that a chip made in a sanctioned country with RISC-V can still would have value outside the sanctioned entity unlike some organically developed or a chip made without legally licensing some-other ISA. So sanctioned entity could easily make the chips and then make them look like they are made elsewhere or by someone else and still have something to sell the wider world.

Speaking a common language is a good thing. This is no more difficult than a sanction on something already common like food crops.

Gigadevices GD32 has a successor in GD32V, which is the same but RISC-V based.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com