Wonder if this is due to US gov pressure, with the aim to slow the growth of chip making in China?
They're mainly invested in the ARM ecosystem, companies such as Allwinner, HiSilicon, Rockchip and UNISOC are very successful in this market. They also make x86 CPUs (Zhaoxin) and have developed their own domestic MIPS-derived architecture (LoongArch).
China are doing the shotgun approach, of shooting wide and hoping something hits the target. aka putting money into everything in the hope something will work to make them independent of western (chip making related) sanctions
So, while China is doing a lot with ARM... they're also doing a lot with RISC-V. And RISC-V (at least until recent US government concerns) has had a very high uptake internationally + corresponding growth trajectory.
ARM is still "western" tech, whereas RISC-V is more international now.
For reference:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-china-tech-war-risc-v-...
Note the specific mention of Google, Android and RISC-V in that?
So there is clearly a change of "something" internally at Google to be backtracking just a few months later, though it could indeed be just a co-incidence.
It'll be interesting if we see other (western) companies change their RISC-V plans too. ;)
Especially given their slash-and-burn management culture, I wouldn’t read anything more into it than nobody at Google thinking that they’re going to be promoted for working on that. I am curious whether we’ll see Qualcomm or someone else step up to do the work.
So... I mean... yeah. The comment is a perfect example a conspiracy theory. Both in literal textbook definition and the broader cultural understanding of the term.
Government pressure isn't some big deal, it happens all the time.
For the broader cultural understanding, it needs to be something where making it public wouldn't be extremely boring.
I hate when people jump to conspiracy theories with a passion, but I'm also beginning to hate when people overly dismiss reasonable theories as "conspiracy theories." It's important that we don't expand the definition of conspiracy theory to a meaningless height. This is what happened with the "Lab Leak" theory of Covid, which only served to "prove" the conspiracy theorists right and was and has been a major setback for people who want to call out conspiracy theories for what they are. If we expand the definition to include theories that are reasonable, then "conspiracy theory" ceases to be meaningful and we now lack a word that we really need, considering humans are prone to conspiracy thinking and it needs to be called out when it happens.
This is not the place to relitigate the lab leak mess but I will note that the conspiracy theorists were continually in a state of wrongness. They contributed nothing but noise because they were starting with the conclusion and confabulating as needed to support it. You can and should expect people to back claims up with logic and evidence.
Have you missed the whole "China developing RISC-V as an alternative path forward" thing then?
China is currently using x86, ARM, MIPS (Loong arch) at scale. If RISC-V makes sense for them, they can use it with Linux now. Now, think about what happens if the hypothetical men in black manage to keep Google from supporting it. China has an enormous tech sector, so if it’s economically viable to use RISC-V for phones or tablets they can pay a couple of developers to support RISC-V in an Android fork, which is going to be popular if RISC-V is working for anyone else in the world, and their domestic market alone is large enough to support it. If that doesn’t make sense, they’ll continue using the same ARM devices they’re currently using because the men in black can’t tell anyone to stop using that platform.
Given how many US companies are looking into RISC-V, it’s also hard to see a ban being sustainable. If RISC-V starts to become competitive, American companies are not going to tolerate being shut out. If it doesn’t, being shut out won’t harm China.
Also, you saying that China could reimplement RISC-V support in Android is a completely different discussion. That's a discussion about how effective the US government actions would be, not whether they were doing anything (which you want to call a conspiracy theory despite there being plenty of evidence that this is happening). You might find this article[3] and this discussion of it [4] interesting, or you might just think the entire thread is full of conspiracy theorists.
At a certain point though, the person calling people "conspiracy theorists" actually becomes the conspiracy theorist. It's not about rhetorical tricks like saying "men in black", it's about evidence.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-china-tech-war-risc-v-...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-lawmakers-press-biden-...
[3] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2023/regarding-proposed-u...
If you read those links, notice how this is all happening officially in public? That’s why I referred to the conspiracy theory as such because we are left to believe that there’s some well-concealed shadow operation duplicating those efforts despite it being a poor return on their investment.
Similarly, reading your latter two links would help you understand why it wouldn’t be effective. Andrew makes the case well that even the official measures being discussed would not impede China, and the conspiracy theory would be even weaker.
The US has already enacted GPU bans and investigated and killed technology transfer deals. The US Commerce Department just this month is "working to review potential risks and assess whether there are appropriate actions under Commerce authorities that could effectively address any potential concerns" with regards to RISC_V. [1] That's the same department that pressured AMD to lower performance on China products before refusing to gran them an export license.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/24/us_commerce_china_ris...
Your reference to other actions undercuts your argument: when the US government has acted in the past, it has generally done so officially – not the CIA subverting Crypto-AG, but Commerce using market pressure openly. I wouldn’t say it’s impossible that they could act behind the scenes but if they were competent enough to do that so quietly I’d expect them to pick a higher impact target.