Chips and lithography machine is what everyone is more concerned about, mentioning the gap in the chip will think of lithography machine is limited, especially the high-end chip manufacturing needs EUV lithography machine, ASML still can not give us shipments, restricting the development of high-end chips.
In fact, there is another thing we rely on is also very serious, that is, the ARM architecture, its importance is comparable to the lithography machine, to some extent it is exceeded, once ARM is restricted, the mobile chip will have to be stopped. Recently, ARM has changed again.
ARM is once again in a state of flux
Arm architecture was originally launched by the British ARM company, it is actually the real mobile Internet era behind the chip giant, because about 95% of the world's mobile chips are based on ARM architecture, which requires authorization to use.
For example, Huawei's Kirin, Apple's A series, Qualcomm's Snapdragon and other series of chips, which are inseparable from ARM.
How important and impact is ARM? We can see from the resistance that NVIDIA encountered to acquire ARM. ARM was previously acquired by Japan's SoftBank for reasons of interest, and later SoftBank encountered financial difficulties and wanted to sell.
As a result, the US company Nvidia wanted to buy ARM for $40 billion, which was the largest merger in the history of semiconductors at that time. What makes Nvidia different from SoftBank is that it is a chip giant in itself, and mergers and acquisitions need to be reviewed by multiple countries.
NVIDIA's acquisition of ARM was not only investigated by the United Kingdom, the European Union and other aspects, but even the FTC in the United States also filed an administrative lawsuit, and giants such as Qualcomm, Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, and Intel also objected, forming a coalition to reflect upwards.
It can be seen how much resistance NVIDIA has to acquire ARM, which to a certain extent shows the impact of ARM.
Of course, in the end, the merger case ended in failure, and there was also strong opposition from Anmou China. Anmou China, also known as ARM China, unlike other ARM subsidiaries, accounts for 51% of the domestic capital and enjoys ARM perpetual and exclusive licenses.
ARM China's refusal to provide relevant financial data will not only affect the previous NVIDIA acquisition of ARM, but also affect the next ARM listing promoted by Japanese software. As a result, ARM has begun a struggle for control of China.
Recently, the board of directors of British chip giant ARM made a decision to officially announce the removal of Wu Xiongang, CEO of Anmou China.
Arm's changes bring hidden dangers
Although Wu Xiongang is a Chinese-American, under his leadership, Anmou China has developed very well in recent years, 95% of the advanced chip designs in China are based on ARM, and ARM's IP business revenue in the mainland accounts for about 20% of its total revenue.
Anmou China has more than 300 authorized partners in China, and the cumulative shipment of ARM-based partners has reached 25 billion. And Anmou China is not only authorized by ARM, but also independently develops many other IP-related technologies.
Huawei is one of the partners, and Anmou China has indeed provided strong support for the development of the domestic chip industry.
It can be seen that the dependence of domestic chip companies on ARM is very high, and once the authorization changes, the consequences will be unimaginable. Now, however, ARM, with the support of Japanese software, is fighting for de facto control of Anmu China.
ARM's struggle for control is to make it easier to obtain relevant financial data, which involves which domestic companies use ARM authorization, and which chips have been designed using ARM, which is also the reason why Anmou China wants to develop independently.
Originally, Anmou China had the right to independent development, and once the control was taken away, the authorization in the future may not be the same.
But what was unexpected was that arm, under the operation of Japan's SoftBank, pulled Hopu Investment to 80% of the shares, to remove Anmou China CEO Wu Xiongang, take away control of Anmou China, and is said to have applied for a new business license and official seal.
At this point, whether the confrontation and dispute between Wu Xiongang and ARM headquarters in the past two years is over depends on the progress of follow-up events.
However, mainland academician Ni Guangnan warned that he could not agree to NVIDIA's acquisition of ARM. Because that is equivalent to lagging behind the hands of US companies, but the ready-made Anmou China has lost control, and listing in the United States will actually be controlled by US capital.
Therefore, Academician Ni Guangnan has been calling for the core technology to be bought, exchanged, or sought, and must establish its own architecture to support domestic enterprises to adopt the open source architecture RISC-V, and to strengthen self-research if it is not restricted.
In this regard, LoongArch has done a good job, developed its own architecture LoongArch, and believes that the future architecture will also get rid of restrictions!