Modern microkernels deliver stability, security, performance (look it up if you want the details). Back when I did CS we were talking about this as the next big thing in operating systems. It didn't happen - common operating systems instead expanded in scope, started to include things like a web browser and supporting a gazallion pieces of hardware, rather than trying to "do things right".
The game changer part is of course in terms of the broader tech war. What we have here might be a consumer operating system that is technologically better than what is on offer from Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Built by a vilified Chinese company.
We should have known that if we limited China from accessing our tech, they'd just grow their own.
The game is afoot, and China knew to de-risk and decouple. I don't think that it can be stopped at this point.
HarmonyOS, RISC-V, DeepSeek, domestic EUV, etc. China is standing up its own tech pillars.
So I suppose American lawmakers see this as a game of slowing down the competition rather than fully impeding it. China will eventually route around every road block, so the question is whether or not any of this will help America keep an edge, or if that edge will even matter.
In the meantime, we're holding up our own tech giants up to antirust scrutiny (and rightly so). But does that also hinder America's lead on China? And, if so, what will that mean for the tech/AI race?
Europe is also hell-bent on slowing down American tech. Again, rightly so - data sovereignty is important, and anti-competitive, monopolistic behaviors have long stifled domestic industry and talent. American giants shouldn't be allowed to behave that way as guests in other peoples' homes.
Big part of anti trust is because it crushes healthy competition so don’t think that is necessarily incompatible with winning tech races.
> China will eventually route around every road block, so the question is whether or not any of this will help America keep an edge
I’d say the lead is so slim it’s basically already gone. At least in the practical sense. If you were to isolate both right now. Cut them both off from the outside. One would be able to produce a modern cellphone the other would not.
Any sort of residual technical lead in the pure IP/knowledge sense is good for 3 years max I reckon.
When you prevent somebody from accessing what is out there, they release their own.
The problem with that??
Well, only they mastered it since it was developed with local tech, by the time the goods are sent worldwide, you are blindfolded.
Still, I would never buy a Chinese tech device, you are buying a surveillance system to allow its government to spy on you.
Won't claim to be an expert but there were many high profile stories of china breaking up or otherwise limiting their biggest tech companies. Why would the US not propping theirs up hinder america's lead?
> They were always going to do this, they just had to do it faster than they otherwise wanted to, which has an opportunity cost.
It will pay itself and offset those costs once they reach breakeven and start selling their equal or better tech in the international market, displacing the incumbents.
Not necessarily. That would imply competing with the multinational incumbents during the first trillion dollars of investment is just as easy and profitable as having the market cleared out for you because the US placed tech export bans, caps, or pricing pressures to parts of the world market (not just China alone).
Of course this doesn't automatically mean China wouldn't eventually pull ahead without the external pressure either. I'm just not as convinced it was so clearly a forced opportunity cost loss as much as something which provided a washed mix of both friction and acceleration despite assuredly preventing the US from making more money while its tech was farther ahead.
Really cool to see the microkernel vision come to reality
Who in 1990 would have thought a Chinese telecom company would productionize it before Hurd even released 1.0
Their initial supposed large system type was supposed to run refrigerator displays though: https://gitee.com/openharmony#system-types
Not laptops
With this, China is ahead.
HarmonyOS is a modern (post-Liedtke) microkernel, multi-server OS.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is stuck with the likes of Linux (monolithic), Windows NT (ugly hybrid) and MacOS (pre-liedtke Mach, hybrid, ugly).
Good technology exists (e.g. seL4, genode, RISC-V) but we seem to be stuck investing into bad tech.
Without disagreeing, can you tell me what makes this a game changer? How would I apply this in my personal life or at work?
Modern microkernels deliver stability, security, performance (look it up if you want the details). Back when I did CS we were talking about this as the next big thing in operating systems. It didn't happen - common operating systems instead expanded in scope, started to include things like a web browser and supporting a gazallion pieces of hardware, rather than trying to "do things right".
The game changer part is of course in terms of the broader tech war. What we have here might be a consumer operating system that is technologically better than what is on offer from Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Built by a vilified Chinese company.
We should have known that if we limited China from accessing our tech, they'd just grow their own.
The game is afoot, and China knew to de-risk and decouple. I don't think that it can be stopped at this point.
HarmonyOS, RISC-V, DeepSeek, domestic EUV, etc. China is standing up its own tech pillars.
So I suppose American lawmakers see this as a game of slowing down the competition rather than fully impeding it. China will eventually route around every road block, so the question is whether or not any of this will help America keep an edge, or if that edge will even matter.
In the meantime, we're holding up our own tech giants up to antirust scrutiny (and rightly so). But does that also hinder America's lead on China? And, if so, what will that mean for the tech/AI race?
Europe is also hell-bent on slowing down American tech. Again, rightly so - data sovereignty is important, and anti-competitive, monopolistic behaviors have long stifled domestic industry and talent. American giants shouldn't be allowed to behave that way as guests in other peoples' homes.
Big part of anti trust is because it crushes healthy competition so don’t think that is necessarily incompatible with winning tech races.
> China will eventually route around every road block, so the question is whether or not any of this will help America keep an edge
I’d say the lead is so slim it’s basically already gone. At least in the practical sense. If you were to isolate both right now. Cut them both off from the outside. One would be able to produce a modern cellphone the other would not.
Any sort of residual technical lead in the pure IP/knowledge sense is good for 3 years max I reckon.
When you prevent somebody from accessing what is out there, they release their own. The problem with that?? Well, only they mastered it since it was developed with local tech, by the time the goods are sent worldwide, you are blindfolded.
Still, I would never buy a Chinese tech device, you are buying a surveillance system to allow its government to spy on you.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
Won't claim to be an expert but there were many high profile stories of china breaking up or otherwise limiting their biggest tech companies. Why would the US not propping theirs up hinder america's lead?
> We should have known that if we limited China from accessing our tech, they'd just grow their own.
It was known and was accounted for.
The idea is to make them spend resources developing their own technology on our terms instead of their own.
They were always going to do this, they just had to do it faster than they otherwise wanted to, which has an opportunity cost.
> They were always going to do this, they just had to do it faster than they otherwise wanted to, which has an opportunity cost.
It will pay itself and offset those costs once they reach breakeven and start selling their equal or better tech in the international market, displacing the incumbents.
If that was the case then they would have done this work without impetus from external policy.
Not necessarily. That would imply competing with the multinational incumbents during the first trillion dollars of investment is just as easy and profitable as having the market cleared out for you because the US placed tech export bans, caps, or pricing pressures to parts of the world market (not just China alone).
Of course this doesn't automatically mean China wouldn't eventually pull ahead without the external pressure either. I'm just not as convinced it was so clearly a forced opportunity cost loss as much as something which provided a washed mix of both friction and acceleration despite assuredly preventing the US from making more money while its tech was farther ahead.
> opportunity cost
What was the opportunity cost in this equation? A substantially smaller bailout for their commercial real estate market?
> [The idea is to make them spend resources developing their own technology] on our terms (emphasis added)
What terms did we dictate? Timelines? Trade?
How does America or the West emerge ahead here?
I hope Europe figures it out too
Completely new kernel and userspace? Wonder how long until it's Tier 1 or Tier 2 for Rust. ... Do they use GCC in China?
It's already Tier 2. [1]
*-unknown-linux-ohos:
> Tier: 2 (with Host Tools): aarch64-unknown-linux-ohos, armv7-unknown-linux-ohos, x86_64-unknown-linux-ohos
> Tier: 3: loongarch64-unknown-linux-ohos
OpenHarmony has no support for gcc. All the toolchains are LLVM. [2]
[1]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/rustc/platform-support/openharmony...
[2]: https://gitee.com/openharmony/third_party_llvm-project