ARM’s legal team has officially ruled that the company’s chip technology is of UK origin and there will be no breach of U.S. restriction if the firm continue to supply it’s parts to Huawei.
According to Reuters, a spokeswoman from ARM has told them that “ARM’s v8 and v9 are UK-origin technologies”.
“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.”
Since Huawei’s latest chips, including the Kirin 990 SoC are based on these architecture, there will be no issue for ARM to ship it’s components to Huawei.
This latest development came at the right time for Huawei, whose 90-days temporary reprieve is set to end on November 17th, next month. After which, the Chinese firm will no longer have access to US supply chains unless they are able to obtain a special license from the US Commerce Department.
The US trade ban on Huawei has began to take effect on Huawei’s smartphone business, starting with the Mate 30 series smartphones. Due to the omission of pre-installed Google Play apps and services on the Mate 30 series smartphones, the device has so far seen a limited launch in the global market.
However, amidst the ongoing pressure from the US trade ban, Huawei has managed to forge ahead and shipped more than 200 million smartphones globally this year.
Source: Reuters
Featured Image: Huawei Press Center
