Report: Arm Suspends Business with Huawei - Future Chip Development In Jeopardy
by Ryan Smith on May 22, 2019 6:40 AM EST
In the latest event in the quickly moving saga that is Huawei’s technology export blacklisting by the United States Government, the BBC has published a report this morning claiming that IP vendor Arm has “suspend business” with Huawei and its subsidiaries. If this is correct, then it would represent a massive setback for Huawei’s hardware development efforts, as the company and its HiSilicon chip design subsidiary rely heavily on Arm’s IP for its products.
According to the BBC News report, Arm has almost entirely severed ties with Huawei, with the company instructing employees that they are 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”.
Huawei, for its part, is one of Arm’s top customers and a close ecosystem partner, shipping countless numbers of chips and devices with Arm IP in it every year. The company is a leading-edge implementer of new Arm CPU and GPU IP, and in the last few years has been the first vendor to ship chips using Arm’s latest Cortex-A series CPUs. Furthermore, via HiSilicon, Huawei is also an ARMv8 CPU architectural licensee. As a result of their close workings with Arm, Huawei has built up a significant amount of their product portfolio around Arm technologies, including their Kirin consumer SoCs and Kunpeng server SoCs. So being cut off from Arm would touch virtually every aspect of Huawei’s hardware business, from smartphones to networking gear.
Meanwhile Arm, for its part, is headquartered in the UK and not the US. However as a multi-national company, Arm develops its technology around the world, including its major design centers in San Jose and Austin. As a result, according to the report, Arm has deemed that its designs contain “US origin technology”, and as a result make it subject to the US technology blacklist.
What’s less clear, however, is just how much Huawei will be impacted by Arm’s suspension and how soon. The BBC’s report indicates that Arm’s suspension only involves further technology transfers and development, and that the company can continue to manufacture chips based on technology they already have – including chips that have finished development and are coming on the market later this year. In which case Huawei wouldn’t immediately feel the impact of the suspension, as the long lead time on chip design means it would be a bit until that development pipeline runs dry. However it’s not as clear what this means for HiSilicon’s Arm architecture license as a whole, and if and how that could be rescinded.
For now, the full ramifications for Huawei are going to depend heavily on whether they remain on the US technology blacklist, or if at some point they are removed or otherwise granted a waiver. If Huawei is reinstated, then the company can continue development of their current product pipeline – though the company would want to take a hard look at moving away from US-sourced IP anyhow to prevent a repeat of this event. Otherwise if they remain cut-off from Arm, then Huawei is without a doubt going to be left in a tough spot and will be forced to go it alone. This is where the nuances of their Arm architecture license come into play – if the company can legally develop their own hardware using the Arm ISA – but either way Huawei would need to increasingly develop its own IP and license other parts from non-US sources.
Ultimately it’s been clear from the start that the US technology blacklisting would have severe repercussions for Huawei. However of all of Huawei’s US-bound technology partners, there is arguably none more important than Arm. So losing access to Arm’s IP could very well cripple the company.
In the meantime, we’ve reached out to Huawei and Arm for further comment.
Source: BBC News
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
114 Comments
View All Comments
bortiz - Wednesday, May 22, 2019 - link
ARM is owned by a Chinese venture firm. They also have a domestic architecture. Also, Fujitsu, who owns SPARC architecture now, also moved design and development to China. AMD just licensed and transferred IP of x86-64 b to a Chinese company. Only missing the IP to the new SIMD instructions. Don't know if they have access to AMD SIMD instr.Ixionuk - Wednesday, May 22, 2019 - link
Softbank who owns ARM is Japanese not ChineseR0H1T - Wednesday, May 22, 2019 - link
>AMD just licensed and transferred IP of x86-64 b to a Chinese company.No they didn't, stop making things up!
>Only missing the IP to the new SIMD instructions.
So you think they can tack AMD's AVX or AVX2 instructions on a run of the mill ARM or MIPS processor? Cool story.
Tamdrik - Wednesday, May 22, 2019 - link
I don't know about retaliation, but I imagine the main effect will be that China prioritizes investment in native chip design capabilities. They're already in the middle of a broad effort to identify and address critical areas where they lack self-sufficiency. As I understand it, that initiative is actually (indirectly) one of the reasons for the recent US economic pressure on China, in that China had been resorting to objectionable methods for obtaining some of the tech they sought towards fulfilling their goal of self-sufficiency. Though from what I've read, the immediate driver of the anti-Huawei actions is fear of China compromising 5G networks at the hardware level (I'm not sure what evidence is out there to support this concern apart from China's general proclivities for cyber operations).boeush - Wednesday, May 22, 2019 - link
Self-sufficiency us one of the major reasons for the trade war from the U.S. perspective, in fact. It's not good for the U.S. when its supply chains so heavily depend on a semi-hostile foreign power with ambitions for aggressive global expansion and domination - which furthermore insists on waging a multi-decade mercantilist and cleptocratic economic war against the U.S. despite having a "favored nation" status in trade.What happens if China eventually attacks/invades a U.S. ally (such as Taiwan or Japan, for instance) - would the U.S. be able to go to war when cut off from all its outsourced manufacturing, against a country that had turned itself into the world's factory? Bringing manufacturing and vital resource production back home, and/or diversifying the supply chain toward other trade partners, is actually a policy direction strongly aligned with U.S. national security interests.
Spunjji - Wednesday, May 22, 2019 - link
Again, that's a great theoretical reason for a trade war, but it is not the reason for the current trade war. Always be careful not to mix theory with what's actually going on (let alone the Trump approved version of what's actually going on).If your claim here were true, the US could more easily have created its own industries *and subsidized them to be competitive*. It would be no more costly than the trade war and have a better long-term payoff. Note that that is *not what is happening here*.
Mark242 - Wednesday, May 22, 2019 - link
There is always the "nuclear" option of China telling Foxconn to stop producing IPhones ...wilsonkf - Wednesday, May 22, 2019 - link
This will not happen. Chinese government will not do something to hurt their own economy only to pretend they are strong.US banned supercomputer tech export to China in 2011 to 12. China responded by building the fastest supercomputer, using its own manycore CPU, built on (at best) 32nm process by local foundry in 2015 or 16 - and probably things go the same way this time.
shing3232 - Wednesday, May 22, 2019 - link
They could ban the sales of Iphone in China， let locals and korea company to take the market share left by Apple.wilsonkf - Wednesday, May 22, 2019 - link
Ban on iphone makes no sense because there are enough competition and replacement.