ARM Chip Design Company has announced that it will continue to provide the Chinese chip company Huawei and that the company will continue to license its technologies and provide support service to Chinese customers. This is after an evaluation by the Department of Legal Affairs found that the technologies used by chip manufacturers in designing processors are of British origin and it will not violate US restrictions on supplying the Chinese technology giant.
Cambridge-based ARM, owned by Japan’s SoftBank Group, suspended ties with Huawei in May after telling employees via an internal memo to stop working with the Chinese company because its designs included US-origin technology.
Although Huawei has been given a deadline until November, it is still poised to lose access to some technologies next month, and ARM’s continued supply of HiSilicon, a wholly-owned company to Huawei’s chip technology, eases the pressure it faces.
Huawei’s own chips, such as Kirin 990 mobile processors and Ascend 910 artificial intelligence chips, are built on ARM architecture, and Huawei is a hallmark of the Chinese company’s attempts to reduce its reliance on US technologies.
The US government claims Huawei is a threat to national security as Beijing could use its spy equipment, which the Chinese company has repeatedly denied, saying its products do not pose a security threat.
Huawei, the No. 2 smartphone maker in the world, is using ARM schemes to design processors that power its smartphones. It is unclear whether the US embargo will affect ARM chip architecture beyond the next generation ARM v8-A.
Huawei’s results released last week showed the company’s revenue continued to grow under the US embargo, with revenues for the first nine months of this year rising 24.4 percent to 610.8 billion yuan.