Huawei confirms a June 2, 2021 launch for HarmonyOS
Huawei has set a date for the launch of its first-party operating system, HarmonyOS, in its native China. The software may have originally been intended to replace Android on its smartphones, but may also ship with other new products such as the MatePad Pro 2 and Watch 3, which are also now expected to debut on the same day.
Huawei's HiSilicon Develops First RISC-V Design to Overcome Arm Restrictions
In a bid to overcome US restrictions on its Arm designs, Huawei's HiSilicon has turned to the open-source RISC-V architecture and has even released its first RISC-V board for Harmony OS developers. Due to being blacklisted by the U.S. government, Huawei and its chip division HiSilicon do not have access to development and production technologies designed in America. The restrictions include many Arm processor architectures, including those used in various microcontrollers that Huawei uses widely.
[...] The Hi3861 is aimed mostly at the IoT market, whereas HiSilicon's development efforts were historically aimed at high-margin smartphones, tablets, PCs, and embedded systems. But Huawei needs computing platforms to use for its other devices, so the HiSilicon Hi3861 is just what the doctor ordered at this time.
Huawei Expected to Develop a 3nm Kirin SoC but Release May Happen in 2022, Suggests Latest Trademark
According to the latest reports, Huawei Technologies applied for the registration of the Kirin processors trademark on April 22. In the international classification, it belongs to the category '9 scientific instruments'. This suggests that the Chinese tech giant has not lost hope in making a return to the market. Unfortunately, one of the sanctions placed by the U.S. was that Huawei could not do business with TSMC anymore.
Since TSMC leads ahead of the pack with its cutting-edge nodes, it will be difficult for Huawei to release a 3nm chip without the Taiwanese manufacturer's involvement. Since the 3nm process is yet to mature, we believe that mass production will not start before 2022. It is possible that by then, Huawei may improve relations with American authorities. If it succeeds in reaching an agreement, the Kirin SoC will likely be ready for immediate production.
Xiaomi was recently removed from a U.S Defense Department blacklist.
Also at Notebookcheck.
Previously: Huawei Announces HarmonyOS, a Smartphone OS and Android Alternative
Huawei Might Put its IOT OS on Mobile Phones After All
Huawei to Cease Production of Kirin Smartphone SoCs Due to U.S. Sanctions
Huawei's HarmonyOS 2.0 Beta Released
Related Stories
Huawei Unveils Harmony, Its Answer to Android, in Survival Bid
Huawei, the Chinese technology giant, on Friday unveiled its own mobile operating system, Harmony, in an effort to ensure that its fast-growing smartphone business can survive the United States government's clampdown on the firm.
Huawei has been at the mercy of the Trump administration for the past three months, ever since the Commerce Department began requiring that American companies apply for special permission to sell parts and technology to the Chinese firm, which Washington officials accuse of being a potential conduit for cyberspying by Beijing. The move effectively choked off Huawei's access to Google's Android software and American-made microchips and other hardware components, and put a big question mark over Huawei's future.
Although President Trump said in June that he would loosen some of the restrictions to allow American companies to continue working with Huawei, economic ties between the United States and China have grown more tense since then, and the prospect of immediate relief for Huawei seems more distant.
Unveiling Harmony at a Huawei developer conference in the southern city of Dongguan on Friday, Richard Yu, the head of the company's consumer business, said that the new operating system was designed to work not only on mobile phones, but on smart watches and other connected home devices as well. Indeed, the first Huawei products to run on Harmony will not be smartphones, but "smart screens" that the company plans to release later this year. Mr. Yu said that Harmony would gradually be incorporated into the company's other smart devices over the next three years. But there is no immediate plan, he said, to release Harmony-based phones.
Also at Bloomberg, XDA Developers, The Verge, TechCrunch, CNBC, CNN.
See also: Huawei's cross-platform HarmonyOS will ship in China in 2019, globally in 2020
Previously:
Google Pulls Huawei's Android License
The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google's Iron Grip On Android
Google Doesn't Want Huawei Ban Because It Would Result in an Android Competitor
Trump Administration Will Loosen Restrictions Against Huawei
Huawei's Android Alternative Lives on... for IoT
link: https://disruptive.asia/huawei-tests-smartphone-equipped-with-hongmeng-os/
Huawei Technologies Co Ltd is testing a smartphone equipped with Hongmeng, the company's self-developed operating system, which could potentially go on sale by the end of this year, Chinese state-media outlet Global Times reported.
[...] Huawei executives have previously described Hongmeng as an operating system designed for IOT (internet-of-things) products. Last month the company said the first major devices powered by Hongmeng would be its upcoming line of Honor-brand smart TVs.
Huawei to stop making flagship chipsets as U.S. pressure bites, Chinese media say:
Huawei Technologies Co will stop making its flagship Kirin chipsets next month, financial magazine Caixin said on Saturday, as the impact of U.S. pressure on the Chinese tech giant grows.
U.S. pressure on Huawei's suppliers has made it impossible for the company's HiSilicon chip division to keep making the chipsets, key components for mobile phone, Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's Consumer Business Unit was quoted as saying at the launch of the company's new Mate 40 handset.
[...] "From Sept. 15 onward, our flagship Kirin processors cannot be produced," Yu said, according to Caixin. "Our AI-powered chips also cannot be processed. This is a huge loss for us."
Huawei's HiSilicon division relies on software from U.S. companies such as Cadence Design Systems Inc or Synopsys Inc to design its chips and it outsources the production to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), which uses equipment from U.S. companies.
Also at PhoneArena.
Previously: Arrest of Huawei Executive Causing Discontent Among Chinese Elites
Huawei Soldiers on, Announces Nova 5 and Kirin 810
U.S. Attempting to Restrict TSMC Sales to Huawei
TSMC Dumps Huawei
Huawei on List of 20 Chinese Companies that Pentagon Says are Controlled by People's Liberation Army
HarmonyOS 2.0 Beta Released, HarmonyOS Devices Coming in 2021
Due to geopolitical tensions, Huawei cannot rely on Google Android operating system over the long term, and in May 2019 we reported HongMeng OS may become Huawei's OS alternative to Android. HongMeng (鸿蒙) OS will finally be called HarmonyOS outside of China, and we recently reported Huawei was trying to attract more developers with monetary incentives to brings more apps to HMS (Huawei Mobile Services).
We now have a more clear timeline with the company's recent release of HarmonyOS 2.0 beta that's currently available for smart home applications, smartwatches, and head-on-displays, and will become available for smartphones in December 2020.
Previously: Huawei Announces HarmonyOS, a Smartphone OS and Android Alternative
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 24 2021, @07:28PM (5 children)
'On Squandering Power, Authority, and Influence'
I don't mention Good Will, because that's about gone anyway. The genie is out of the bottle, and Washington, D.C. isn't going to stuff the dude back in there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 24 2021, @07:37PM (3 children)
Hey, at least our president is a nice, decent man now, who doesn't say mean things on the internet.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 24 2021, @07:58PM (2 children)
That's because he's too old to know how to use the internet.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 24 2021, @08:10PM (1 child)
Rumor has it, he's too old to remember how to walk up a flight of stairs. I'm waiting for the regression in potty training. I notice that no one stands close to him in a crowd . . .
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 25 2021, @01:09AM
But he can walk down a ramp AND hold a glass of water in ONE HAND! We haven't been able to say that about a president since Jan 19th, 2016!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RamiK on Monday May 24 2021, @08:48PM
Honestly considering the rise of ASIC and the fall of Moore's law, it might have been the US's last chance to leverage its chip IP dominance before it loses relevancy anyhow. So it could be argued the problem wasn't the 2019 sanction but the lack of earlier sanction.
Regardless, this 160Mhz single core microcontroller and RTOS OS are hardly a threat to the Intels and Qualcomms of the world while the RISC-V tool-chain is already mature regardless of Huawei adopting it now or not. In fact, the current shortage of MCUs is partly fueled by vendors not looking into investing any further into license extensions since this market tier is clearly going non-proprietary.
Overall, the genie wasn't going to stay in that bottle forever.
compiling...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Snotnose on Monday May 24 2021, @08:21PM (5 children)
In the next 10-20 years. China has a bunch of super-smart folks. They have a good starting point in RISC-V (and knowledge of ARM, SH-x, MIPS-x, and, dare I say it, x86).
RISC-V will become very powerful in the next 5-10 years, then the Chinese will have their own chip architecture and ISA that will blow Intel out of the water in the CISC arena, and ARM out of the water in the RISC arena. They probably won't be the same architecture, but 2 different strains. Combine that with China's inability to buy from TSMC and friends, and Chinese fabs will be getting pretty good in 10 years (not better than TSMC, or even Intel, but getting there and Good Enough).
I'm old, I'll probably be dead by then, but I would not build my retirement on TSMC nor Intel dividends.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 25 2021, @01:13AM (2 children)
The Chinese will stagnate unless they can keep stealing or blackmailing IP secrets. I'll build my retirement elsewhere until they start showing they can lead instead of follow.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by gawdonblue on Tuesday May 25 2021, @05:14AM (1 child)
Even after the first year of WW2 the, shall we say, "racially complacent" were saying that the Japanese couldn't build competitive armaments such as planes [youtu.be], ships [youtu.be] or torpedoes [youtu.be] than those nations of, shall we also say, European stock such as the Good Ol' USA.
Even when Japanese were acknowledged to have decent equipment it was then often claimed that they must have copied "superior" European/American technologies [youtu.be].
Japan did of course lose that conflict for a number of reasons, the main one being that the USA had a much larger manufacturing capacity - the greatest the World had ever known.
Now you're claiming that the Chinese cannot create anything of their own but can only copy "superior" American technology. Interesting.
And who now has the greatest manufacturing capacity in the World [youtu.be]? Also interesting.
Still feeling complacent?
(Score: 2) by gawdonblue on Tuesday May 25 2021, @05:17AM
That last link should be this instead [brookings.edu].
I checked the first 3 links but then got complacent :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 25 2021, @06:33AM
Flexible architectures are the future. Systems that reconfigure themselves on the fly to optimize for any workload will be revolutionary for computing paradigms, and are not that far away... Instruction sets will move toward radical specialization and efficiency that isn't currently feasible, because they can be swapped out on demand.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday May 25 2021, @08:00AM
China has nothing. China has ripped off last-gen tech.
Where does this 3nm news come from originally ? Oh, a guy with the last name Li, who chimes in with opinion and theories.
https://www.huaweicentral.com/huawei-3nm-processor-design-under-development-suggests-new-kirin-chip-trademark-and-a-report/ [huaweicentral.com]
Japan has 2 companies that make photo plates, and one company that makes the machine necessary to fix the thousands of errors in each one, before manufacturing can proceed. Those 3 Japanese companies are used by every single chip manufacturer out there - from Intel to our Taiwan and Korea friends, and are all controlled by the US in terms of who they can sell to.
So no, China won't be making a 3nm anything till the rest of the world has been on 1nm for a few years. And, umm, "Harmony OS" - yeah, some chinese operating system, I'm sure that's going to be just groundbreaking, given that 90% of the shit they make is literal shiny plastic garbage that's broken on shipment.
Fun story. Last time I went to China, I was at the hotel and they had this great 3-ply toilet paper. Nice and soft outer layers, and an inner layer that was less porous and a little harder. The perfect combination for a wet poo - which is what you get if you eat the food cooked with sewer oil (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil) - which is all food, and drink any of the bottled or tap water (which tastes like soap and gasoline). So, nice, high quality TP.
The holes were misaligned. As in, 3 ply paper, the holes on each ply do not align, so the ply comes apart, your finger slips through sometimes, and when you rip it off, you rip it like a roll of paper. Useless.
Oh, they'll have a 3nm chip by 2022. They'll design some half-working shit, invent a different ruler, and announce to their own people that they now have beaten the rest of the world in CPU design. The world will laugh, they won't care. All this propaganda is for their own people, who willingly believe it, eat it up, and ask "may I have some more gutter oil, Poo-Pooh?"