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China Cellphones Government United States Hardware Technology

Huawei Manages To Make Smartphones Without American Chips (arstechnica.com) 123

Posted by BeauHD from the international-supply-chain dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Huawei's latest phone, which it unveiled in September -- the Mate 30 with a curved display and wide-angle cameras that competes with Apple's iPhone 11 -- contained no U.S. parts, according to an analysis by UBS and Fomalhaut Techno Solutions, a Japanese technology lab that took the device apart to inspect its insides. In May, the Trump administration banned U.S. shipments to Huawei as trade tensions with Beijing escalated. That move stopped companies like Qualcomm Inc. and Intel Corp. from exporting chips to the company, though some shipments of parts resumed over the summer after companies determined they weren't affected by the ban.

While Huawei hasn't stopped using American chips entirely, it has reduced its reliance on U.S. suppliers or eliminated U.S. chips in phones launched since May (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), including the company's Y9 Prime and Mate smartphones, according to Fomalhaut's teardown analysis. Similar inspections by iFixit and Tech Insights Inc., two other firms that take apart phones to inspect components, have come to similar conclusions. With the Mate 30, audio chips supplied in older versions came from Cirrus Logic. In the newer Mate 30 models, chips were provided by NXP Semiconductors NV, a Dutch chip maker, according to Fomalhaut. Power amplifiers provided by Qorvo or Skyworks were replaced with chips from HiSilicon, Huawei's in-house chip design firm, the teardown analysis showed. A Huawei spokesman said it is the company's "clear preference to continue to integrate and buy components from U.S. supply partners. If that proves impossible because of the decisions of the U.S. government, we will have no choice but to find alternative supply from non-U.S. sources."
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Huawei Manages To Make Smartphones Without American Chips More

Huawei Manages To Make Smartphones Without American Chips

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  • Dupe (Score:4, Informative)

    by guacamole ( 24270 ) on Tuesday December 03, 2019 @10:33PM (#59482944)

    Do we need a repeat of this only after one day?

  • Rather than "sticking it to the foreign company", Trump's actions have resulted in *less* use/revenue for US companies. Not sure how this leads to MAGA?

    • Re:Trump has reduced the use of US tech (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SirAstral ( 1349985 ) on Tuesday December 03, 2019 @10:56PM (#59483008)

      So, you are okay with doing business with Nazi Chine for some economic value?

      If the world does not stop China now... with economic sanctions they are going to have to stop them with the blood of their and YOUR children. Think about that one. Hong Kong is just now figuring this one out. HK protestors are definitely going to lose because despite what all the humanitarians say... they don't actually care about oppression and abuse, but lets see how it all shakes out shall we?

      How many nations are willing to risk a war with China to save Hong Kong?

      I got a number for you... it's definitely less than 1.

      • You do realize that Hong Kong is part of China, right?

        • You are dumb. He never said it wasn't.

          • He suggested that countries should go to war to prevent some parts of China from becoming more like other parts of China. I'm trying to understand the logic behind that.

            • Are you stupid or just pretending? Are you not aware of what is going on in HK? Yeah, I think we should go to war to prevent HK from "becoming more like other parts of China". In fact, we should be opposing mainland China as much as possible. They aren't your friend.

              • It's some tough luck for HK, but going to war over it makes as much sense as warring with USA over Puerto Rico.

                • So China is nearing a repeat of the Holocaust for Uyghur Muslims. Sure it might not be on the same scale but it is happening.

                  You are walking proof of my claim that people actually do not give a flipping shit about human or the abuse of humans. I appreciate you being so bold to be honest enough to say it.

                  In honor of your disposition, should I ever witness police beating your ass down, shooting you dead, or just in general trouncing all over your rights... I will go on about my business and respect your wis

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Cyberax ( 705495 )

                    So China is nearing a repeat of the Holocaust for Uyghur Muslims. Sure it might not be on the same scale but it is happening.

                    No, China is not exterminating Uighur Muslims. Don't exaggerate.

                    • Let's see... we have concentration camps with millions of people, organ harvesting, "re-education". Yup, sounds like the first stages of genocide. Should we wait until they fire up the ovens and start pumping the Zyklon B before calling it what it is? Yeah let's wait until after 6 million are dead then we can gnash our teeth but at least we got phones for cheap so it's all ok! Right?

                    • Comparing anything to the holocaust is silly at best or an excellent way to derail a discourse.

                      The Chinese may actually be killing people to harvest their organs. Or it may be propaganda.

                      If we actually were working against organ harvesting, all western countries would have a central register for the DNA for transplanted organs, before implantation and maybe after explantation / death of the recipient, with generous read access.
                      One could extend this to make illegal organ transplants that are not listed.
                      Techn

                    • I think they really are waiting for 6 million to die to use that spike on the side of China as a lever, like they do with Germany.

                    • Re: (Score:3)

                      by AK Marc ( 707885 )
                      There is no organ harvesting. That was an old complaint that gets renewed as a "they can't prove it didn't happen, so we'll keep claiming it did, without proof or evidence of any kind." The concentration camps are smaller (per capita) than US concentration camps, so what's the problem? Close the US concentration camps first, if you have a problem with it.

                      Like the constant complaints by the US that China uses slave labor from inmates, when the US is one of the few places that also uses slave labor from in
                  • Obviously the Uyghur situation is a lot worse than the Hong Kong situation, you should have led with that. That said, countries do not generally go to war with nuclear powers because they're unhappy about some of their policies toward their own citizens. It's the kind of thing best left to sanctions and UN resolutions.

                    Also you don't need to go to China to find people who are in need of asylum, and I think you know what I'm talking about.

                    • For you Hong Kong may not be enough, but for others it is.

                      I have hated the US Relationship with China since the Clinton's.

                      "Also you don't need to go to China to find people who are in need of asylum, and I think you know what I'm talking about."

                      That is an entirely different situation. Asylum is a different issue. those are usually per person, per small group events. If you have a large number of people requesting asylum then clearly military intervention is necessary, otherwise your "human rights" card g

                    • The people of Hong Kong are not really in a dire situation. They know what's coming and they've known about it for 22 years. Any one of them can be in Singapore in a few hours. You should worry about your own problems. I hear police are killing black men in your country, maybe focus on that.

                    • I hear police are killing black men in your country, maybe focus on that.

                      People prefer to focus on injustice on the other side of the world. That way all they have to do is preach and posture.

                      But facing up to injustice in our own neighborhoods would require us to actually do something.

                    • True but I think it also speaks to a larger issue of US media ramping up anti-China sentiment. Outside of USA and China, there is probably more anti-US sentiment than anti-China sentiment, but you can't see the big picture from inside that bubble. OP says his sinophobia started with the Clintons (1990s?) but I suspect that if you went back that far you wouldn't see it in his posts.

                    • Re: (Score:1)

                      by Ddalex ( 647089 )
                      If you think military intervention is necessary, why don't you pick up the guns and go fight? i.e. organize an army of voluteers, collect donations, buy supplies, etc... Oh, you mean, military intervention with OTHER PEOPLE's blood....
                    • If you looked it up instead of watch American news you'd know the rate of cops killing whites per capita is higher in white areas and the rate of cops killing blacks is higher per capita in black areas. Go figure, eh?
                    • Think of it as a story we tell ourselves. China is killing muslims, USA is killing black men, Russia is killing gays. These are stories that we choose to believe because partly because they're true and partly because we want to. There's always more to the story and there will always be something that we do not know.

                    • Any one of them can be in Singapore in a few hours.

                      Actually, most of them are already in Vancouver.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Xarius ( 691264 )

                      Your police shouldn't be killing anyone, what a fucked up country.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by AK Marc ( 707885 )
                      Not when you look at Australia. The first country to "ban" Huawei was Australia. Based on no evidence or facts. "We fear the Chinese, so Huawei is banned, so that the Chinese can't spy on us." Also, Australia passed anti-investment laws to target foreign investment by Chinese, and NZ followed suit. US investment must follow the same regulations (so it's not strictly racist on paper), but the denials are mainly against Chinese (so it is strictly racist in practice).

                  • Re: (Score:1)

                    by Anonymous Coward
                    Please fix the mess you did in the middle east and the million of dead people that directly resulted of your action before opening your mouth. It will really help to maintain some credibility for US outrage.
              • The US military should be defensive, not offensive. If weâ(TM)re not physically attacked, we should mind our own business.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kenja ( 541830 )

          You do realize that Hong Kong is part of China, right?

          Only since 1997. It could be argued, that if China is violating the '97 agreement that Hong Kong reverts to being part of Britain?

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by AK Marc ( 707885 )
            It has always been part of China. China leased it to England after Britain invaded China. The Hong Kong agreement wasn't done in '97. It was done long before, and at gunpoint. After WW2, China could have ended it, and the world would have sided with them, over the UK holding China to a treaty signed literally at gunpoint years before.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Can we please stop to have US outrage about what China is doing when the US is responsible for the death of over 1 million person in Iraq (at least in Chine they are not dead yet)? This double standard in outrage is a fucking joke, and I can tell you that I'm not Chinese and despise China behavior.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Trading with China is pushing them towards democracy. They have some of the highest literacy rates in the world, excel at maths and science. They have world class universities too. Education is fundamental to democracy and an educated population always demands it eventually.

        Trading creating demand for education is the best tool we have to improve China. If we cut them off, as well as destroying our own economies, it will just make them more insular and work harder to create new markets in their own image, i

        • Re:Trump has reduced the use of US tech (Score:5, Insightful)

          by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @09:08AM (#59483774)
          Trading with China didn't push them any closer to democracy over the course of the several decades we've been doing it. It pushed them toward capitalism, sure, but they're no closer to democracy than they were 30 years ago.

          I'm not saying this was the right response. I don't know what the right response was. But the status quo wasn't working.
          • Maybe democracy isn't such a wonderful thing. After all, Adolph Hitler and Donald Trump were both elected by democracies.
        • I think it's a mistake in general to believe that China should become more like USA. China has strong leadership, a healthy respect for science, and an awareness of important issues like climate change, whereas USA has that only half of the time.

        • Are you certain it's we pushing them toward what we want and not them pushing us toward what they want?

          Is this the future [twitter.com] when you post something on social media? A few decades ago I would have never guessed any western country that pretends to have free speech would stoop so low as to waste police time following up on ill favored social media posts. Now? I half expect the EU to be in the market for a new interrogation chair.

          I don't think China is anywhere close to becoming what you dream of. I think we are

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            I'm sure there is influence in both directions. Not the spying on social media stuff, that was mostly from the over-reaction to 9/11 and terrorist incidents in Europe, and from corporations trying to collect as much data as possible so the state can simply request access to it.

            • The difference between now and 911 is the culture. Then the culture fought against the government push and we saw some fights won against the government. Now, the censorious culture is embraced and accelerated by China through private enterprise. Whether that be the NBA or tech companies.

              I don't see them embracing anything you are suggesting. More transparent? Do you think Luhua from that video cares that more people know how he was treated? Or do you think that is going to have a silencing effect? More acc

      • It would be great If we could address all of the various things that China has done (and is doing) with economic sanctions. Instead, we shot our load with these stupid tariffs in order to "get a better deal," and now we have no clout. As this story indicates, China is reducing it's reliance on fickle trade partners like the United States, and thus reducing any influence that we might have been able to exert over their social policies.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AK Marc ( 707885 )
          The world should sanction the US for the human rights violations against non-whites. Pulling out of the Paris Agreement. Or being one of the last countries in the world who refuses to sign the anti-landmine treaty.
          • The anti-landmine treaty maybe, for the other things... every country has issues with race or class discrimination and the current problems in the US are less egregious than most. It usually comes down to whether or not discrimination is officially sanctioned, and it's not in the United States.

            Or maybe you were taking about the internment camps. In which case okay, but that's less about race than it is about immigration.

            The Paris agreement was always non-binding, pulling out of it isn't sanctionable.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AK Marc ( 707885 )
              Internment camps are about race, not immigration. Legal asylum seekers are being jailed illegally. Children are illegally being denied legal representation.

              Melania is a deportable illegal immigrant. But being white, she wasn't jailed and expelled, she was made citizen. It's explicitly about race. Most illegal immigration comes on planes, not over the southern border. But the target is specifically and solely the southern border.

              Because of race.
              • You need to be more careful about ascribing motivations, it's seldom a good idea to assume that you know why someone does something. The target has been the southern border ever since 1976, when General Chapman launched his fear campaign against illegal immigration over the southern border. There's no reason to believe that he did this out of racism, rather than out of a notion that strong borders were vital to national security. I have heard speculation that this was motivated by his time in Vietnam, where

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by AK Marc ( 707885 )

                  You need to be more careful about ascribing motivations, it's seldom a good idea to assume that you know why someone does something.

                  So American citizens being rounded up and put in concentration camps if they were ethnically Japanese, but not if they were ethnically German was not based on "race" because we can't know their explicitly racist policy was racist, except that they specifically said it was race-based?

                  No. When things are obviously racist, they can be called such before they are proven such.

                  they view it as a border with the outside world rather than a border with Mexico specifically.

                  Yet, I know more than one illegal immigrant who walked across the border into WA, and nobody is calling for a massive border wall with C

                  • I say that it's seldom a good idea to assume motivations, and you respond, "Well I can think of one specific case in which motivations were pretty clear, therefore assuming motivations must be a good idea." That is not a counter argument.

                    As for:

                    Yet, I know more than one illegal immigrant who walked across the border into WA, and nobody is calling for a massive border wall with Canada.

                    I did lay out a potential explanation for why this could be the case up above. If your question is: "Why did General Champman focus on the southern border and not on the northern border?" The answer is: the southern border had many times more immigrants than the n

      • What are we doing in Yemen? Why is Saudi Arabia a welcome trade partner? Hell we're also doing business with the Russians, when they invaded Ukraine (Crimea) and Georgia in the last 15 years!

        Should we stop trade with any country that we disagree politically with? That commits some kind of human rights violation? If you say yes, I'm fine with that, but let's do it wholesale. Right now it reeks of hypocrisy, as we focus hate and propaganda on individual countries to fit the political agenda of the day. Chin

      • China's doing just fine. Me? I'm learning Mandarin.

      • You go right ahead and volunteer for the US Army. I'll sit this one out.

      • newsflash: everyone else is doing business with China just fine.

        the only thing to come of Trumps isolationist economic policy is isolation, from everyone else.

    • Good point, because short term profits is everything in life. Derp.

  • I don't understand why this is newsworthy (Score:3)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday December 03, 2019 @10:50PM (#59482992)
    virtually no electronics are manufactured in the US. I think Intel might have a chip foundry but they've hardly got a monopoly. We gave up manufacturing supremacy in exchange for cheap labor and cheap electronics.

    • Re:I don't understand why this is newsworthy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stabiesoft ( 733417 ) on Tuesday December 03, 2019 @11:14PM (#59483028) Homepage
      Almost all Intel fabs are in the US. I think Israel and Ireland has one each. As much as /. hates Intel, I still wish them success at 7nm. If Intel fails, US fab excellence is done. That will be a sad day as the US dominated fab in the early history of chip/transistor fabrication.

      • As much as /. hates Intel, I still wish them success at 7nm.

        Weren't they supposed to have that process up and running before now?

        If Intel fails, US fab excellence is done.

        At this rate, China will get it working before Intel will.

      • Texas Instruments has a large number of US fabs as well. They're not as big as Chipzilla but hardly small fry.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        There might be a case for declaring having at least one state of the art domestic fab a national security issue.

        • China is basically doing this. They are spending tens of billions on fabs so they have a domestic supply. Chips are that important now. Personally, I think Taiwan (and TSMC with it) are going the way of HK. It will probably take another decade. The west by then will not go to war with China over it. Heck, what did we do about Crimea? What are we doing about Ukraine? What did we do to the Kurds? Donald may well end up destroying NATO, which will leave a fragmented west cementing Taiwan's fate.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AK Marc ( 707885 )
            "Taiwan is an SAR of China" is the official US policy. Taiwan isn't a country. At least, no more than HK, Macau, or Tibet are, to the USA.

        • The Trusted Supplier Program was supposed to establish suppliers that meet security criteria. The most advanced CMOS technology in the program is the GlobalFoundries Fab8 14nm line which is a category 2 trusted foundry. The old IBM lines at Fab 9 and 10 are category 1A but for CMOS they cap out at 32nm. The program has been in an uproar since GF cancelled 7nm development. Defense products don't necessarily need the bleeding edge technology in these secure products, but the technology need some lead time to

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AK Marc ( 707885 )
            Defense doesn't want cutting edge. They use old generation in everything. Take a '70s chip. Make it with modern materials. It's mostly resistant to EMP. A new chip is very susceptible to EMP. The smaller processes allow electrons to jump ship more easily. EMP hardened is either old chips, with wider tracks resisting problems, or a new chip, encased in solid metal to shield from the EMP, and opto couplers so that the only metal in/out is power. And that's super expensive and heavy. So printing old c
      • in the mobile market. They make desktop & server processors.

        And don't worry about Intel, they were just sitting on their laurels thinking nobody would ever catch up. Now that AMD's lit a fire under their rears they'll take some of that enormous cash pile and finally invest it.
  • Note that this still uses an ARM derived CPU, and as we found out last time the ARM is subject to US export controls. Simply having no US manufactured components (which frankly isn't surprising, how many ICs are built in the US?) won't avoid future disruption.

    • Re:ARM CPU (Score:5, Insightful)

      by quenda ( 644621 ) on Tuesday December 03, 2019 @11:35PM (#59483072)

      Note that this still uses an ARM derived CPU, and as we found out last time the ARM is subject to US export controls.

      ARM is in the UK, and owned by the Japanese.
      The US tries to extend its laws over the entire world, but with mixed success.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luthair ( 847766 )
        We all know that, but if paying attention ARM apparently felt that the trade restriction applied to them and had cut off Huawei earlier this year.
        • And then once there was clarity on the details of the trade restrictions (less than 25% US content is OK) they reinstated business with Huawei.

      • Re:ARM CPU (Score:5, Interesting)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @06:42AM (#59483544) Homepage Journal

        Also ARM has decided that it isn't subject to US export controls. It has an office in the US but was careful to limit the amount of technology developed there, so managed to avoid getting caught up in this. Most of the work is done in the UK.

    • Re:ARM CPU (Score:4, Informative)

      by 4wdloop ( 1031398 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @01:36AM (#59483210)

      ARM Holding is a licensing firm. AFAIK they do not make any chips. They sell designs that get incorporated into chips to likes of Apple, Qualcomm and scores of others. Needless to say after license and the design is sold, there is nothing to withhold, although I am not sure how this export control would apply to pending contracts.

      • The complication is that ARM is multinational with a good bit of design work done in the US. My understanding is that while UK ARM does a lot of the foundational work with a few finished designs, their US branch is quite involved with the majority of finished designs like their Coretex lines. However, an architectural license may bypass any of those trade restrictions.

    • Note that this still uses an ARM derived CPU

      They are talking about switching to RISC-V, but so far it is just talking.

  • Thanks Obama.

  • What irony; who makes phones with American chips? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Huawei Manages To Make Smartphones Without American Chips

    Their capability to actually make phones (and other tech) is enviable; if only we could "manage" to make phones in America too. Sadly, at best we can assemble them, because much of the technology depends on rare earths, and having lost our domestic rare earth industry, we are forced to manufacture in China.

    The true value of our Imaginary Property will become increasingly apparent. Wealth is produced by factories and infrastructure, with material resources and energy, not intellectual monopoly money.

  • There will be no going back (Score:4, Insightful)

    by uksv29 ( 167362 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @05:22AM (#59483454) Homepage

    When the dust on sanctions settles there will be no way that Huawei will ever use US components again in their products unless they absolutely have to. The USA has lost the purchases from the world's largest telecommunications manufacturer forever. I'm absolutely sure many other manufacturers are making the same decisions to protect themselves.

    They also have given the Chinese semiconductor manufacturers the best boost they could ever get which will forever reduce the dependence of foreign tech companies on US based suppliers.

    The US may have "won" the battle but are well on the way to losing the entire war.

    A Pyrrhic victory indeed.

  • "Manages to make?" Yeah, right. (Score:3)

    by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @05:54AM (#59483494)

    People who still think that China just copies foreign tech are once again amazed that a high-tech economy cannot crank up its own semiconductor industry. This is another area in which China is about to breeze past us as though we were standing still, just like the nationwide network of high-speed trains that it built while California vainly struggled to finish just one line.

    We don't do science or large scale engineering any more. Move the Thirty Meter Telescope project to the Tibetan Plateau, assuring that it will be built in an astronomically appropriate place, on time with no fucks given to any bands of Stone Age hippie mom protesters.

    • EDIT: “...can crank up its own’

  • Bet their snack machines for the workers are stocked with potato chips. Potatoes well, from Idaho, etc. etc.

  • Perhaps the dupe was to highlight the real news. There are American (made) chips?
    The arrangement is to give the PRC access to US IP in exchange for cheap, exploitable labor and access to the CCPs heavily subsidized markets while getting a tax break for manufacturing abroad from the US?

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