After Huawei's inclusion into the Entity List on May 15 this year, ARM was one of the first companies that suspended business with the Chinese manufacturer within a week. Huawei was granted some leeway a couple of months later, but that did not signal clear waters for the company, which is set to lose access to some products and technology next month. Though it seems that there is some good news for the Chinese giant.
Today, ARM announced that it will continue business with Huawei and supply chip technology to the company. To provide legal footing to its decision, ARM cited the fact that its chips were 'UK-origin technologies'. Consequently, this would not break the U.S. sanctions applicable on Huawei. A spokeswoman told Reuters in an email on Friday:
"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."
She also lent credence to the reasoning that the firm was acting well within legal limits by saying that ARM was communicating with authorities and department officials regarding the matter.
The resuming of ties with ARM is important for Huawei because while it has its own chip manufacturer, Hisilicon, it still uses the ARM design architecture for the chips in its devices. Kirin 990 and Ascend 910 A are some notable examples of this. So, all in all, this will be welcome news for the Chinese manufacturer.
Source: Reuters
