ARM Says Supplying Chip Technology to Huawei is "Within Guidelines"
British chip designer ARM will continue to supply Huawei Technologies despite the pressure from Washington.
Speaking to Reuters, ARM's legal team said that its chip technology is of UK origin and would not breach U.S. restrictions on supplying the Chinese tech giant.
Huawei, the world’s No. 2 smartphone manufacturer, licenses ARM's technology to design its proprietary chips such as Kirin 990 mobile processors and Ascend 910 AI chipset processors.
“ARM’s v8 and v9 are UK-origin technologies,” an ARM spokeswoman told Reuters. “ARM can provide support to HiSilicon for the ARM v8-A architecture, as well as the next generation of that architecture, following a comprehensive review of both architectures, which have been determined to be of UK origin.”
“Arm is actively communicating with department officials regarding any support of our partner HiSilicon, and we remain confident we are operating within the parameters of those guidelines,” ARM added.
In May, ARM, owned by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp, halted relations with Huawei after the United States all but banned American companies from doing business with it, disrupting Huawei’s ability to source key parts.
While Huawei was granted a reprieve until November, it remains set to lose access to some technology next month.
It is unclear whether the U.S. ban will affect ARM’s chip architecture designs beyond its next generation of the Arm v8-A.