Huawei laptop teardown shows China’s steps toward tech self-sufficiency
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:
Unless We get better close up tear down photos, this devices primary purpose is propaganda
They have a looooong way ahead.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
It has nothing to do with the US, so presumably, no.
IANAL, but current case law indicates source code is considered protected speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States
and?
redstaros is better