Intel has received permission to sell to Huawei under a U.S. exemption, giving Intel the green light to supply laptop and server processors to the Chinese-owned tech company, according to Reuters.
In addition to Intel, AMD has also been granted a license to sell its chips to Huawei.
In July, the Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) announced that it plans to stop taking Huawei chip orders in two months. Without a fab that can fulfil its order size, Huawei may not be able to produce its own chips, including the Kirin mobile processors. In the meantime, the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), China’s largest semiconductor fab which also uses U.S. technology patents, has applied for an exemption license to sell to Huawei.
Huawei is currently on the U.S. Entity list due to security concerns over its hardware. U.S. technology companies can’t do business with Huawei without an exemption license granted by the U.S. government. In addition, semiconductor companies using U.S.-sourced IPs are also prohibited from selling chips to Huawei. This includes Intel, which has its own semiconductor fabrication plants. Other notable companies include TSMC, SK Hynix, AMD, and Qualcomm.
Intel and Huawei today jointly announced the Huawei FusionServer Pro V6 series servers in ShangHai. The new servers will be equipped with Intel’s Xeon server processors.
Intel and AMD were not immediately available for comment.
