The US sanction has hurt Chinese tech giant Huawei so badly that it will have to close its own chip production unit. It will no longer make Hisilicon Kirin SoCs. According to Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Unit, “From September 15 onward, our flagship Kirin processors cannot be produced (and) our AI-powered chips also cannot be processed. This is a huge loss for us”.
Kirin Processors are designed and manufactured by Huawei which powers Mobile phones and Tablets offered by Huawei. According to Chinese financial publication, Caixin, Yu also lamented that the decision will be a massive loss for the company and undo years of painstaking R&D in chip development. “Huawei began exploring the chip sector over 10 years ago, starting from hugely lagging behind to slightly lagging behind to catching up, and then to a leader. We invested massive resources for R&D and went through a difficult process”, he said.
After the US government’s decision to block all US companies from supplying equipment and software to Huawei, it has become next to impossible for Huawei to continue it chips production. Huawei’s HiSilicon division relies on software from U.S. companies such as Cadence Design Systems or Synopsys to design its chips, and it outsources the production to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC), which uses equipment from U.S. companies.
Huawei is taking the head from all over the world. It has been already blocked by the US government to supply 5G equipment to the US telecom company along with ZTE. While the British government has said they will also purge all Huawei equipment from their country’s network by 2027. Huawei is accused of supplying critical and private information of their customer to the Chinese government.