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Arm has resumed licensing the company's chip architecture to Huawei.
Back in May, Arm suspended the sales after the Trump administration placed Huawei on a blacklist that prevents the Chinese company from sourcing components from US suppliers without government approval. Although Arm is based in the UK, the company was worried that its chip designs may contain "US origin technology." As a result, Arm had to review whether the company was in risk of violating the Trump administration's order.
The company's legal team has now found clarity on the issue. At a conference in Beijing this week, Arm's China head Allen Wu said the company recently determined that its v8 and upcoming V9 chip architecture is of UK origin technology. So going forward, the company plans on resuming its licensing deals with all Chinese partners.
The news was first reported by local Chinese media. On Friday, Arm confirmed the development with PCMag, saying that it can supply the v8 and V9 architecture designs to Huawei's HiSilicon chip building division.
"Arm has communicated this to the appropriate US government offices, and we continue to be in compliance with the US Commerce Department guidelines, respective to Huawei and its affiliate HiSilicon," the company said in a statement. However, any other Arm technologies that contain US origin intellectual property can only be licensed to Huawei with US government approval, the company added.
The access to Arm's v8 architecture is good news for Huawei, which will need the chip designs to continue building next-generation smartphones. For instance, the Kirin mobile processors from Huawei's HiSilicon division all rely on Arm's chip architecture to function.
However, US-based companies such as Google, Intel, Microsoft and Qualcomm, have been forced to generally stop sales to the Chinese company. Although Huawei phones can continue using Google's Android, they must use the open source version of the operating system, meaning no Google Play Store apps can be pre-installed over the devices.
Despite the setbacks from the blacklisting, Huawei's smartphone sales continue to remain robust. On Wednesday, the Chinese company said it had shipped 200 million smartphone units for this year so far.