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Comment by Taniwha | Hacker News Reader

RISC-V is all about not bowing down to one company, or one country - cheaper better chips from China are just as good as cheaper better chips from the USA or Europe - and competition, that great capitalist American institution, is a good thing here - we don't need any archaic old cold warriors messing with our markets

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> cheaper better chips from China are just as good as cheaper better chips from the USA or Europe

This may be a bit naive. How do you make sure that there are no intentional security issues / backdoors in Chips from a vendor?

An interesting clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfXxgb9N_qI .

Most of the chips I've seen China clone are the cheap microcontrollers that couldn't really run malware if it tried. STM32s and down have been cloned sans-licensing for over a decade now, while something like RISC-V would enable vendors worldwide to compete with Chinese knock-offs legally. Bringing the barrier of IP down benefits everyone except the tax-collectors for the current IP.

You can't, in the same way as with x86 and ARMs widely used today. Frankly, most people simply do not care. They gladly accept shit like Intel ME, so it's a lost battle.

At least, with RISC-V there is a chance we will get full stack open hardware implementations. They likely will be far from the cutting edge, but sufficient for many applications.

> This may be a bit naive. How do you make sure that there are no intentional security issues / backdoors in Chips from a vendor?

Seems like you're confusing designs (that is to say, speech) and actual manufactured chips, the two are not the same

You need to find ways that work - Chinese (and American, or Russian or North Korean) vendors can publish their masks, their RTL, if they want to be trusted.

Oh please, what is Intel Management Engine and AMD Platform Security Processor? that is the most obvious and blatant backdoor in every Intel/AMD chip there is.

I am tired as someone from a third country to get "national security" be used as an excuse to fight a trade war. Every single electronic is way more expensive as a result, damaging peoples livelihoods because we want to maintain our ridiculous huge profit margin per sale.

Just look at the new Iphone, it has $35 of titanium.

Watching that clip, it is hilarious how Zuckerberg has pivoted over the years.

In 2015, when Zuckerberg still had hope that Facebook would be allowed to operate in China, Zuckerberg asked Xi Jinping to name his baby.[0] Xi, probably taken aback by the sheer level of sycophancy, turned Zuckerberg down: "Too much responsibility."

Now, Zuckerberg has gone entirely the opposite direction, denouncing the Chinese government, pushing for a TikTok ban, and so on.

0. https://youtu.be/S20BoxH8W9g?si=X1hAG12pquY-Y_i7

On the bright side, at least he didn't get his arm twisted by the PRC in the long-run. A lot of tech companies (cough Apple, Tesla cough) are going to have to pay the piper soon. It's gonna get ugly before it gets better.

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