Qualcomm To Manufacture Custom Chips For Chinese Market (thestack.com) 50
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Stack: Qualcomm president Derek Aberle has suggested that the semiconductor giant is preparing to produce its own custom chips for the Chinese market. [A Wall Street Journal interview with] Aberle revealed that the American company had entered into a joint venture with the local government in Guizhou province to manufacture custom chips starting in the second half of 2016. According to Aberle, the Guizhou government owns 55% of the venture, while Qualcomm owns the remaining 45%. Aberle told the Wall Street Journal that he expects China's server demand to dwarf that of the U.S.. He said of the government-backed venture: "This is really going to be the primary vehicle from which we build our data center business in China. We are actually trying to create the company that is going to be able to win the market here as opposed to just licensing old technology."
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
China has several fabs, and their current to fab can fab 28nm chips
China also has an army of fabless companies, some high end fabless joints such as hilink (from Huawei) are qualifying 10nm tape-outs with TSMC in Taiwan
In other words, China's fab ecosystem is very robust and healthy
Qualcomm has agreements with both Chinese fabless operation and the Chinese fabs because they want to establish and strengthen their beach front in China
Intel also wanted to get into China but they came into China too little too
I predict (Score:5, Interesting)
This will turn out like the North Korean business partnerships where once everything is rolling smoothly the foreign investors suddenly find themselves being shut of things, and then one day the joint venture (and all its assets in the country) get seized for some reason. Then it just becomes a wholly state-owned company with start-up costs and IP essentially donated by the former partner.
It just wont be done so blatantly in China.
I believe China is in for the long run (Score:5, Interesting)
I have been involved in the Chinese market for a long time and they are in the middle of transiting from the low-tech OEM assembling field to ODM to now going totally high tech
China has made some bold high tech investment and have done some very costly mistakes (Lenovo's purchase of Motorola a perfect example) but they are determined to forge ahead
You view of Chinese = Koreans are not totally without base, but for one who has been involved for over a decade, I can sense this time China is in for real. Doing what you said will only mean the Chinese shooting off their own toes
From space science to bio-tech to electronic chip and fab, their plan is, for 2016-2020, to further grow and groom their home grown talents, allowing them to gain more experience, and from 2021-2025, to start competing in the international (mainly 3rd world) market, and from 2026-2030, start going head to head against Korea and Europe and from 2031-2035, to start going head to head against USA / Japan
At least that is according to their plan, and there might be some slip-ups. So it won't be any surprise if the plan slips 1 or 2 stages, meaning, what they want to attain by 2035 might take them 10 more years (2045), but they are throwing a lot of resources on it
Their universities are recruiting very high quality teachers, and their students are very serious in learning. Tsinghua recently made it to the top 20 in the world ranking, and Peking U is not far behind
They churn out researchers and engineers by the hundreds of thosuands every single year and they do not have affirmative action nor any of the 'race based quota' in their university enrollment - meaning, the competition between students are genuine and fierce and their U graduates are super sharp
Re: (Score:1)
I would claim it is very much an open question whether competitiveness (especially for university places) leads to good graduates or merely good cheaters (with at best a grain of good learning-to-the-test).
Even if the former, competition can lead to mindset that is a problem when working in a sector relies on trust and cooperation.
I'd be very weary about a competitive education landscape ending in total disaster.
Quantity has a quality all of its own (Score:3)
What you say about their education system may well be true. But if they're churning out an order of magnitude more grads than you, then among them there'll be a fair few that are very good and some that are excellent.
P.S. You probably meant wary, not weary.
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China doesn't just rely on their own education system. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese are educated at American universities, and since America has an idiotic policy of denying them work visas when they graduate, they then go back to China and create companies that kick America's butt and destroy American jobs.
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Well, when most of the work ends up being done by A.I. or $2/hr engineers in Timbuktu, then MBA fluff is where the money and jobs still are. That is until somebody figures out an A.I. PHB.
"Synergy synergy, Will Robinson, Synergy synergy!"
need to work on environment and cut back on the (Score:2)
need to work on environment and start building stuff without cheapening out so much.
custom chips == government backdoors (Score:5, Insightful)
China already gets powerful multi-core ARM chips at dirt cheap prices, so this isn't a matter of saving money. The only logical reason they would be making custom chips (and so soon) is they are modifying an existing chip and adding a hardware backdoor. With hardware backdoors in every server in china, they can control information much easier and identify dissidents.
Re: custom chips == government backdoors (Score:1)
If China wanted back doors and a US company said no, you fuckers would be saying that's the US forcing their will on other countries. Fuck off.
Re:custom chips == government backdoors (Score:5, Insightful)
The way things are going, it's quite possible they're removing them for the Chinese market.
Re: (Score:2)
Adding a backdoor, or redirecting it ?
Nobody should be so naive to think that the Chinese government are more advanced at spying than other countries,
or where the snowden revelations just a nightmare a dreamed...
Re:custom chips == government backdoors (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. You might not know it, but the Chinese regulations specify a lot of standards that you must support, only in China. For example, WiFi encryption - WEP and WPA are banned in China - if you want to have WiFI encryptoin, you must use WAPI (WLAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure).
WAPI is only used in China and very limited entities have access to the entire standard. And no, WAPI is not part of any standard we recognize - IEEE, ISO, etc.
There are probably dozens of other things that are Chinese only, so if you want to sell your chip in China, you need to support it.
And yes.you can bet there are backdoors.
Re: (Score:2)
WAPI by name, wappy [definithing.com] by nature.
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Complete with government back doors? (Score:1)
the definition of insanity... (Score:2)
Qualcomm seems to not be able to learn its lesson(s) when dealing with the Chinese market. They're been shafted at least twice but apparently enjoyed it and want some more.
Or, they're growing desperate despite still being the leader in a few aspects of the mobile chipset, ET for instance.
It is hiding in the plain view (Score:1)
Pay attention to the ownership structure of the business. Article says Qualcomm entered into the partnership with the Chinese government.
Partnerships in the rest of the world are voluntary. In China you do not have a choice, you have to have government as a partner to do business. This is a way to avoid US money laundering laws, and doing business in a different way is not possible. In these type of partnerships, also, only the western partner provides the capital. In Qualcomm/China partnership, where Qualc
Re: (Score:2)
Qualcomm is touting this as some kind of big win, but it's a pyrrhic victory. Not too long ago, Chinese regulators sued Qualcomm for antitrust violations and got a judgment for nearly $1 billion. At the same time, Qualcomm spent several quarters explaining to its shareholders why the revenues it forecast weren't coming in because Chinese companies were using its technology without paying for it. I guess China decided it was time to say, "Hey, Qualcomm -- let's make a deal!"
Ha ha, hello backdoor! (Score:2)
No way these chips would ever have some kind of backdoor or undocumented functions built in to them, that would just never happen. Never.
Short-term profits over supporting our nation (Score:1)