According to reports testing of these tools will be completed this year – and Huawei is said to have developed 78 tools related to chip hardware and software.
The news is important and shows that in the face of mounting US sanctions Chinese companies are looking to localise supply chains. Huawei, which developed the tools working closely with domestic EDA suppliers, said that it will be making them available to both partners and customers.
Important, but the news shouldn’t be viewed as alarming. Huawei has been targeted by numerous US sanctions and export controls since 2019, which has restricted access to cutting-edge chips and design tools, and while it may now have its own tools to develop chips at the 14nm level, this technology is some two to three generations behind the leading-edge technology available to companies in the West.
EDA companies – Cadence, Synopsys and Mentor Graphics – are subject to US sanctions and are prohibited from exporting technology to China. This policy has certainly had an impact on Chinese technology firms, not least Huawei, which had been a leader in 5G technology up until 2020 but which has since then seen its global position completely undermined.
Currently the home of only a few EDA companies, China has struggled to cope with US sanctions, but this announcement may suggest some progress in developing their own EDA industry.
That progress though is slow, as the loss of access to cutting edge EDA software and tools as well as advanced manufacturing tools at chip production fabs, is certainly hampering its efforts to compete with the likes of Taiwan, South Korea and the US.
