Huawei has switchable lenses on the Pura 80 Ultra, iOS 26 is here, Week 24 in review Comments
Huawei has switchable lenses on the Pura 80 Ultra, iOS 26 is here, Week 24 in review
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Phone Arena
3 hours ago
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Taiwan bans chip exports to Huawei and SMIC so that TSMC "Won't get fooled again"
It took the world's leading foundry five years but the Taiwan Commerce Ministry has finally joined the U.S. Commerce Department by banning chip exports to Huawei and SMIC. The latter is China's largest foundry and is the third largest in the world after Taiwan's own TSMC and Samsung Foundry. But there is a lot more going on here than just Taiwan deciding to lock arms with the U.S. Back in April, anonymous sources said that the U.S. Commerce Department was considering a $1 billion or higher fine against TSMC for supplying Huawei with a chiplet for its Ascend 910B AI accelerator chip. First, let's point out the difference between a chip and a chiplet. The difference is in the manufacturing process. With a chip, all parts are built on a single die using the same process node. As a result, even parts of a monolithic chip that don't need to be built with the latest technology have to use it. A chiplet is an integrated circuit built using a modular process. Multiple smaller and independent chiplets are used, each one making up a particular part of a chip such as the CPU cores, GPU cores, memory controllers, I/O dies, AI accelerators, and specialized cache blocks. TSMC unknowingly supplied chiplets to Huawei for its Ascend 910B AI accelerator chip. | Image credit-Huawei Because TSMC uses American technology to produce integrated circuits, it is already banned from shipping cutting-edge silicon to Huawei and SMIC without obtaining a U.S. Commerce Department license under U.S. export laws. The U.S. sanctions alone have been enough to force Huawei and SMIC to turn to costly and less precise manufacturing methods such as multiple patterning using older lithography technology in an attempt to close the gap between TSMC's cutting-edge silicon components and those made by SMIC. While Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei says that his company's latest processors are just one generation behind the U.S., the actual gap is two to three generations. The new sanctions announced by Taiwan are sure to make life worse for Huawei when it comes to sourcing chips. It would appear that TSMC feels that Huawei deceived them by using shell companies to have the foundry build two billion AI compute chiplets that ended up in Huawei's chips. Had TSMC known who the customer really was, it most likely would have followed the U.S. sanctions and not sold the chiplets to the shell companies. With the new rules in place, both Huawei and SMIC will need to obtain export permits from Taiwan-based suppliers to receive manufactured products. This should give the Taiwan government more control over transactions TSMC makes with the two Chinese companies and prevent the foundry from getting scammed again by Huawei and SMIC. Taiwan, more than any other country, fears the weaponization of advanced chips by China. There is always the concern that because China believes in the "One-China Principle," Taiwan could be attacked by the country under the goal of reunification. The People's Republic of China (PRC) has not renounced the use of force to achieve this and that means that cutting-edge chips obtained by Huawei could be used to build weapons used against Taiwan. Additionally, with the PRC wanting to be self-sufficient manufacturing chips, an attack on Taiwan would allow China to take control of TSMC. The foundry has plans to make it difficult for the PRC to take control of the fabs and other equipment used to manufacture chips in the event of an attack. There is speculation that Taiwan's decision to ban chip exports to Huawei and SMIC was the result of negotiations between the U.S. and Taiwan over the potential $1 billion+ fine that TSMC faced from the U.S. for shipping the chiplets to Huawei. But as we pointed out, TSMC was deceived by Huawei and having imposed its own ban on shipments to Huawei and SMIC, Taiwan and the U.S. are now on the same page.
Phone Arena
6 hours ago
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Feature in iOS 26 will reduce one major fear about software updates for iPhone users
Have you ever been caught in a situation where you have a software update to load on your iPhone but don't have enough storage space remaining? So you are forced to go through your apps to decide which ones you really need. Do you really want to keep CSPAN? Do you really need all 22 weather apps you've downloaded on your iPhone? So you delete some apps and hope that you've opened up enough space to load the software update. The actual part of the release notes discussing this new feature says, "Depending on the amount of free space available, iOS might dynamically reserve update space for Automatic Updates to download and install successfully." Think about how big this could be for app hoarders or even just those iPhone users who love shopping at the App Store. What we don't know yet is how the dynamic storage reserve works, how much storage Apple will be able to create in reserve, whether iPhone users will be allowed to opt out of the feature, and whether iPhone users will receive a notification telling them that they have a certain amount of storage held aside for the next software update. With the new feature, the process of installing software updates on your iPhone will be more seamless and less of a worry assuming that the dynamic storage reserve does its thing. Seeing a notification like this on your iPhone might be a thing of the past once iOS 26 is installed. | Image credit-Cisdem Currently, iOS uses a temporary feature that requires storage to be temporarily created and employed during an iOS update. This temporary working space can be two to three times the size of the file being downloaded as a software update. This space is needed during the update process to hold the files being unpacked. It's at this point in the updating journey that you might receive a message reading "Not Enough Storage." While iOS 26 Developer Beta 1 is available now, you don't have to be a developer to install it. Make sure to back up your phone first. There are bugs, as you can expect, and your battery life will be shorter. The first Public Beta for iOS 26 will arrive next month and the stable version of the new major iOS build should be released in September alongside the iPhone 17 series.
GSM Arena
8 hours ago
- GSM Arena
Huawei has switchable lenses on the Pura 80 Ultra, iOS 26 is here, Week 24 in review Comments
Huawei has switchable lenses on the Pura 80 Ultra, iOS 26 is here, Week 24 in review Comments
