The ongoing trade war between the United States and China has resulted in another stunning development. The BBC is reporting that semiconductor IP company ARM has suspended business with Huawei. Huawei’s chip designs use a lot of ARM’s IP, so Huawei faces yet another significant setback in its path to becoming the number 1 smartphone vendor in the world.
According to the BBC, ARM has instructed its employees to suspend “all active contracts, support entitlements, and any pending engagements” with Huawei and its subsidiaries named in the U.S.’s Entity List of the Export Administration Regulations. The BBC further notes that ARM told its staff not to “provide support, delivery technology (whether software, code, or other updates), engage in technical discussions, or otherwise discuss technical matters with Huawei, HiSilicon or any of the other named entities.” Although ARM is based in the United Kingdom and its parent company is Japan-based SoftBank, ARM is complying with the U.S. trade restrictions because the company says its designs contain “US origin technology.” ARM is a multi-national company and has multiple offices in the United States in places such as Austin and San Jose, so it’s possible that some of ARM’s architectural technologies designed in their U.S. offices might be subject to the new regulations.
To call this move a devastating blow to Huawei would be an understatement. If the U.S. and China cannot reach a deal, then the one-two punch of Google revoking Huawei’s Android license and ARM suspending all business with Huawei will be the death of China’s largest technology company. The inability to distribute Google Play apps and services, get early access to the next Android platform release and security patches, and even potentially fork AOSP have led Huawei to consider its “Plan B” OS for its smartphones. Although reportedly far from ready, Huawei’s Android alternative has been in development for years, and the company is already seeking alternatives to Google Play. On the other hand, Huawei’s hardware independence (for the most part) from U.S.-based companies has been its one saving grace in this trade war – at least until now.
Huawei’s smartphone business is heavily dependent on IP from ARM. The majority of smartphones from Huawei and its sub-brand Honor feature chip designs from another Huawei-owned entity: HiSilicon. And HiSilicon’s chip designs are based on ARM architecture. For instance, HiSilicon’s latest consumer SoC, the Kirin 980, features ARM’s latest Cortex-A series CPU and Mali GPU designs. But HiSilicon is also a licensee of ARM’s v8 CPU architecture, which it uses to build custom chip designs for servers. Thus, ARM IP is significant to Huawei’s hardware business across the board, and losing access to that IP will be crippling to the company.
While the loss of ARM IP will prove devastating, Huawei won’t immediately feel the effects as the company has stockpiled 3 months worth of supplies in anticipation of the U.S. trade ban. And as the BBC notes, Huawei and HiSilicon can continue to manufacture existing chips using ARM technology, so current smartphones like the new Honor 20 series should be unaffected. A source told the BBC that the upcoming HiSilicon Kirin 985 will also not be affected by the ban, but that HiSilicon’s next chip design will likely need to be “rebuilt from scratch.” Given the long design and development process for new chips and how dependent Huawei has been on ARM IP, it could take Huawei years to build a new chip without ARM IP. If they survive that long, that is. Huawei’s best hope now is to petition China to resolve its trade dispute with the United States because going it alone just doesn’t seem possible for Huawei with this latest development.
The BBC reached out to both ARM and Huawei, but both companies declined to comment. If we hear any further developments on this news, we’ll update this article accordingly.
The post ARM has reportedly suspended business with Huawei, jeopardizing future Kirin chips appeared first on xda-developers.
0 comments:
Post a Comment