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Comment by Havoc | Hacker News Reader

That’s a pretty big deal if that 100% is genuinely deep/all the way.

Don’t think any other country can do end to end in house?

If cpu x90, then process smic n+2, probably still ASML DUVs... if not implication profound. Even if domestic tooling, can't imagine this full end to end, they're aggressively indigenizing and validating all the semi inputs, i.e. gases, chemicals last few years but seems too early to have all parts covered. When they do (unlikely now) in which case, yeah probably PRC only country with entire closed loop indigenous semi chain -> hardware -> software stack. On the other hand I wouldn't put past that some very low volume 100% domestic trial line exist.

The CPU is based on ARM and English company that designs CPUs, and the OS is a fork of Android which is American.

no, they just use ARM instructions set, the core design such as CPU, GPU, NPU, etc is all their own, like Apple. OS is not fork of Android, there is no Android code in HarmonyOS. HarmonyOS uses Linux kernel but has its own user space systems.

The instruction set is the value.

Writing a new ISA with a completely different instruction set is a far larger task than designing the silicon. This is also why the horrible ISA that is x86 is still alive and running today.

is it? Creating an ISA is not hard right? Trade off and design choices on multiple simple or complex instructions, or what types of instructions to have, and special instructions for vectors, encryption, virtualization, etc. Still relatively simple if you are just talking about the ISA itself. The hard part is ecosystem adoption, drivers, compilers, existing low-level code written for the ISA. And the hard part is the high-performance CPU core. I have no doubt Huawei can create a different ISA if they want to. They use ARM ISA now because HarmonyOS can still run Android Apps if there is an android app the user uses but has no native HarmonyOS version, and Android apps with NDK are compiled to ARM

> is it? Creating an ISA is not hard right?

Its hard, but the value of the software is a massive effort, that cannot be translated or reproduced under a new ISA.

I think we both agree that in x86 should have been retired a long time ago, but its only alive because of the legacy that accompanies it.

> The hard part is ecosystem adoption, drivers, compilers, existing low-level code written for the ISA.

Exactly. There are so many parts and probably many more. The volume of effort to complete that for a new platform will probably not be done. Apple is a different case because they control the MAC platform in full.

> I have no doubt Huawei can create a different ISA if they want to.

Ive also played tennis with people who said they can win Wimbledon, and until THEY win, i dont believe them.

The only way to know for sure is to have a new ISA, but H have yet to try.

fwiw harmonyos hasnt used android/linux for a few years. they still support apks via an aosp container, though

Except now both Kirin X90 and HarmonyOS are their own thing. Just like Android itself is based off Linux, but is its own thing now too. What matters is that the chips and the OS are developed domestically in China without reliance on British or American companies.

I guess it all depends on whether K and H want to pay ARM in the future for their leading (after Apple) designs...

What do you think will happen tomorrow ? What else is the safe bet ?

  >Don’t think any other country can do end to end in house?

Russia can, France could if they wanted to

If you count Russia then US obviously can as well. If you lower the bar even slightly further to 80s/90s tech even more countries would qualify.

I assumed the US was included as a given, what with Intel here

The US can. There are domestic packaging people and board houses. I think the EU can but I'm not sure and that's not a country.

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