Huawei's latest flagship smartphone contains no world-shaking silicon surprises
theregister.com
theregister.com
This needs a lot more context. My understanding is that at this time HarmonyOS is still fully compatible with Android and you can just install apk files like you would do on any other Android device. They are doing their own stuff at low level, and it is reported that "HarmonyOS Next" will be incompatible with Android (no idea what that will look like), but to say HarmonyOS 4.2 is "not-Android" means as much as saying Amazon's Fire tablets are not using Android.
And I am skeptical about the HarmonyOS Next thing and can't see how its fate could be different from Windows Phone if Android apps are out of the question. While it is true that China itself is a huge market, and there are enough users and developers to demand an "in-house" OS, there are a few obvious, big hurdles -- app ecosystem, browser etc. Of course Huawei can throw money at the problem and get developers on board, but one needs to be aware that (1) there are only about 3 big browser vendors in the world, and even Firefox and Safari are lagging in features and bug fixes (2) even in China Huawei needs to compete with other phone makers who are using Android, and developers need to support Android, iOS and Harmony OS. I am not optimistic about this.
This largely matches my understanding. NEXT is supposed to be 5.x, until then it still has APK compatibility and AOSP compatibility (no Play services of course).
> And I am skeptical about the HarmonyOS Next thing and can't see how its fate could be different from Windows Phone if Android apps are out of the question...
Their approach is a little different than throwing something new at the wall and hoping it sticks and I actually see it working. E.g. HarmonyOS 4.x can and does already run non-APK Harmony apps, it just also runs APKs. This is why the article notes the growth of native Harmony apps prior to Harmony NEXT even launching - the transition already started. This also means Huawei has had time to do things like have the existing nweb (Chromium based browser) port while working on ArkWeb (in house browser) to replace the outside dependency wholesale. The browsers are great examples of the progressive strategy - slowly build more independent options over the years at the same time you slowly replace the backend OS over years and now you've done all of these "impossible" things without ever having the "big moment" replacement people can easily reject.
Such a system would be, at a fundamental level, better than Android and IOS.
Are you forgetting WeChat? Because that's all they likely care about.
The 'world-shaking silicon surprises' would be if SMIC can hit 5nm at some point with or without EUV (since they are not able to buy ASML's machines).
However by all analysis, the chip is a derivative of TSMC technology. If TSMC and SMIC are not collaborating, then Occam's Razor leads us to the tech/process being stolen.
This fact should fucking terrify all Americans, and indeed the west at large.
Clearly superior.
Intel barely has Intel 4 (7nm) stumbling out the door on a wheelchair with square wheels if Meteor Lake has been anything to go by, their foundry business is bleeding out red ink, and they're even dependent on TSMC now: They aren't self sufficient anymore.
You tell me which is superior, because if you ask me it's not the blue guy whose name starts with I, and by extension it's not the guy in red/white/blue whose name starts with U.
And in China, frankly, we have so much needs internally, it's more to power our own crap than to send weapons, or overpower foreign markets. We barely speak English and the americans don't take much Yuans, so their stuff is expensive :(
Be less terrified, and maybe contribute more than just patent rents? It's ok to compete, we're not gonna be at war. Or if we are, we are so corrupt that we put water in the fuel tanks of our missiles: you have nothing to fear.
I for one overall enjoy(ed?) the Pax Americana state of affairs, but Pax Americana exists on the premise of absolute economical and technological superiority against would-be challengers.
We are well on our way to lose our economical superiority this century, and we already lost our technological superiority; our military superiority will also vanish once we lose both of the aforementioned, too.
Pax Sino will be nowhere as comfortable or prosperous an era (for westerners!) to live in. That is why this is terrifying.
Pax-Americana existed because of two qualities that America has, but China does not.
1) America has a very unique interest in the foreign affairs of others. So much so that America is "hated" for it, and America has built a global navy to enforce its interests. China, both historically and currently, is hands off to the affairs of others if they do not represent a direct Chinese interest.
2) Foreign entities joined in on Pax-Americanan economic system (capitalism) because it made them rich as well, just not as rich as America. China themselves joined in and benefited. However, there is no part of the Chinese economic system that is interested in making others rich. They take an opposing approach, they give others the tools to keep power (through surveillance). (America gives countries the power to keep power as well through military sales, but the major factor is economic, not military).
China has a population the size of the US and EU combined, and are every bit as capable intellectually. One would expect them to catch up technologically, all else being equal. I don't think that requires any false presumptions.
Also, ime, the west has only ever presumed political superiority, not intellectual. Not unless you're talking about fringe people, in which case I'd point out that every nation has a minority of rabid ethnocentrists, and the west generally denounces theirs to a greater degree than China itself does.
Your original post took umbrage with the "downplaying" of the the intellectual/creative capacity of China compared to the West. You also implied that that has led to the current state of affairs. No one said that China was less than the West. It is however fact China has benefited from the stealing of secrets from the West (nuclear technology, stealth tech from the F-117, stealth tech from Boeing, and in this case, chip designs from TSMC). This is not a trope, it is fact.
> Initial images suggest it is a close copy of TSMC 7nm process technology. -TechInsights Product Brief
It would have been legally impressive if Intel similarly closely copied TSMC’s 7nm process without getting sued. And copying within six years isn’t technically impressive.
Still seriously behind Qualcomm and the likes, roughly the level of an 888. Interestingly 9010's IPC (~25% gen-on-gen) is roughly SNPD 2 (last years QC flagship) but it clocks to a max of 2.3 GHz. Curious what the performance would've been had Huawei still been allowed on TSMC nodes.
What about the Japanese manufacturers, you might ask? Well apparently there's so much Sony Xperia smartphone stock that NTT DOCOMO is selling them for just 10 yen each with the purchase of a new contract.
I'd say the only reason we don't see Huawei in English-West is because we were more preemptive in kicking them out of our markets.
Specifically, he says US lawmakers "told" him that they are "worried" about being punished by intel agencies if they oppose reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
"People don't say that because they're worried about being punished. They’re worried about someone putting kiddie porn on their computer. Members of Congress are terrified of the intel agencies. I'm not guessing at that. They've told me that — including people on the intel committee, including people who run the intel committee," Carlson said.