Huawei Technologies is working with French-Italian chipmaker STMicroelectronics to co-design mobile and automotive-related chips, the Nikkei Asian Review reported Tuesday citing two sources familiar with the matter.
STMicro is Huawei's longtime sensor chip supplier. The collaboration is amid at to shielding Huawei from U.S. possible tightening of export restrictions as well as aimed at accelerating Huawei's autonomous driving development, the sources said.
The joint chip development began as early as last year but has not yet been publicly announced by either. It comes as Huawei braces for tighter U.S. restrictions that could include requiring key chip manufacturers, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., to apply for licenses if using U.S. equipment to build chips for Huawei.
Partnering with STMicro on some advanced chips, rather than designing them mainly in-house and ordering their production directly from contract chipmakers, could help shield Huawei from a U.S. crackdown, the sources explained.
The collaboration also enables Huawei to secure access to the latest software needed for developing advanced chips, the report said.
This software is mainly provided by two U.S. companies, Synopsys and Cadence Design Systems, and Huawei rotating Chairman Eric Xu admitted last summer that his company could not get the latest support from these providers because of the trade blacklist.
"Such chip joint-development would give Huawei more flexibility to help itself if the U.S. later presses the nuclear option to block Huawei's key chip contract manufacturers from producing chips for it unless they can obtain licenses. No one knows what the new export control regulations will be and if these efforts will work, but from Huawei's point of view, it needs to try to secure more sources of possibilities for those crucial chips," one of the people familiar with the plan said.
"Forging a close tie with STMicro is also a great opportunity for Huawei to hasten [its effort to] build automotive chips, a relatively new attempt in Huawei's product road maps."
Apart from possible insurance against any U.S. moves, the collaboration with STMicro is also in line with Huawei's key corporate strategy of expanding its development in connected cars. The company is making a big push in autonomous driving to beat its foreign and domestic rivals, Nikkei reported earlier.
Partnering with STMicro, a leading automotive semiconductor provider to Tesla and BMW, could catapult Huawei into the top tier of players in autonomous driving, the next key battleground for tech companies, sources said.
