Arm China lays off staff amid chip war and licensing concerns

Arm may be doing well, but its China-based joint venture has reportedly laid off a significant number of staff in the face of a challenging business outlook. Arm China has shed about 90 to 95 employees, according to Reuters, which would represent about 14 percent of the entire operation's workforce, understood to be in the …

[werdsmith]

Restricting access to designs will only drive them sooner towards semiconductor autonomy, a real boost for RISC V. Then it is only a matter of time before Chinese processor tech overtakes the Western designs.

Unless the development gets proprietary and fragmented.

[DoContra]

While it would be unwise to not follow RISC-V development, China already has quite the momentum on MIPS (LoongSon)

PD: Just checked, and according to Wikipedia (and elreg!), the very latest chips from Loongson are a MIPS/RISC-V hybrid:

https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/02/china_loongson_mips/

[3arn0wl]

You've got to wonder

how well Arm will continue to do as China gradually weans itself off Western intellectual property. There's not only a huge home market; China is also one of the biggest exporters of electronics.

Are the world's consumers going to stop / be prevented from buying Chinese goods once they have RISC-V as a primary processor? Or

Will there be a 'Tech Curtain', with the BRICS nations (et al.) going Open Source, and the West clinging onto the proprietary IP model? (And which aesthetic will Europe choose?) Or

Will RISC-V be increasingly incorporated into Western electronic devices too?

I think it's telling that Google announced at the end of last year that they're readying Android for RISC-V... Whether it'll be chosen over a purer Linux OS in China, remains to be seen.

[IGotOut]

Re: You've got to wonder

Why do you think they are busy moving stuff to other places with cheap labour?