China’s demand that the public sector step up use of domestic semiconductors can best be seen within Huawei’s Qingyun L540 laptop.
The “safe and reliable” device features a self-designed processor and a Chinese-made operating system, having stripped out foreign-made components and software as much as possible.
The computer, which is being snapped up by governments and state groups across the country, has become the signature model of China’s localization campaign known as Xinchuang, or “IT application innovation.”
None of the high end chips were made in Chinese fabs, and the device barely qualifies as a “laptop” besides the form factor. For some bizarre reason they used a USB5744 USB 3.2 5Gb/s hub chip, which tells me the following:
- Their CPU doesn’t even have multiple USB3 interfaces
- Their CPU doesn’t even have a single 10GB/s USB interface, which has been standard for may years
- They don’t really care about using local parts only, because they have alternative products like the GL3590
Unless We get better close up tear down photos, this devices primary purpose is propaganda
Yeah that was my reaction…chip design is the “easy” part of the creation of a new chip, and the fact that it the CPU was of course fabbed in Taiwan is a sign of just how much ground Chinese fabs still have to cover. And relying entirely on SK Hynix NAND and memory says a lot.
Tech Self sufficiency? On the hardware level, it will take a while. In the software level, I don’t think it will ever happen. Yes, the desktop and software suite they use, and the distro they’re packaged in are Chinese, But…
the Linux Kernel, the GNU stuff, the systemd stuff, the Freedesktop specifications, Xorg if they still use it, wayland protocols and wlroots, are all developed by people from The West, so if they really want independence, I want to see them replicating all that work from millions of people across the last 30-40 years.
This is not only irrelevant but it erases the nature of global contributions to free and open source software.
How many Russians, alone, contributed to these?
On the hardware level, it will take a while. In the software level, I don’t think it will ever happen.
I’m no computer engineer, but this seems like a silly take. Hardware requires supply chains and some of the most closely guarded technology in the world. Software requires programmers and time.
the Linux Kernel, the GNU stuff, the systemd stuff, the Freedesktop specifications, Xorg if they still use it, wayland protocols and wlroots, are all developed by people from The West,
Literally anyone can download those things and fork them. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s already chinese contributors. And if China really wanted, they could even ignore the GPL and not publish their changes to the source code 😲
Not everyone can download extreme UV lithography.
Huawei contribute quite a bit to the linux kernel, it’s a pretty international effort.
Just the first statistics I could find showed they contributed more changesets than any other organisation https://lwn.net/Articles/915435/
Oh shit. Nobody tell congress or else they’re gonna ban linux
Yeah, I like how they call their Debian based distro a “Chinese-made operating system”.
Or they just fork and stop sharing source code. Self-sufficiency would just mean not having to depend on any future contributions. Nobody can stop them from having access to all the old stuff.
I’m no lawyer. I don’t know if GNU/Linux is subject to the U.S export regulations.
IANAL, but current case law indicates source code is considered protected speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States
I assumed that Linux was not really under the control of the US, but I guess the Foundation is incoporated in the US as a 501©(6) and the kernel org itself is a 501©(3), so that does give Congress more levers on the kernel than I expected.
Not to mention that most (all?) of the major corporate funders of the kernel are US-based…
I really hope the kernel doesnt get (geo)politicized.
Edit: based on @RobotToaster’s link, yeah it looks like every major “employer” contributor to the kernel other than Huawei, Linaro, Arm, and Suse are American. Arm is probably working mostly on support for its architecture, so I guess it’s Linaro (UK) and Suse(DE).
That’s not to downplay the role of independent contributors, but it seems like a good indicator of the “power of the purse strings”.
Edit 2: here’s a more recent set of development statistics from LWN. Looks like the ordering has changed quite a bit since 2022, or it varies a lot with each kernel version
They have a looooong way ahead.