Huawei is preparing to transition from Arm-compatible processor architecture to LinxISA

Chinese giant Huawei Technologies Co. is systematically moving towards achieving complete technological independence after being hit by U.S. sanctions in 2019. This is not only reflected in developing its own processors and assisting in organizing mass production in China, but also in “import substitution” in the field of processor architecture.

Image source: Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

At least there are resources Electronic Engineering Times According to the report, from the perspective of geopolitical risks, Huawei’s permanent license to use the Armv8 architecture does not allow the Chinese company to expect to successfully use the newer Armv9. To this end, she is considering switching from Arm and RISC-V architecture to the internally developed LinxISA. The documentation for the latter is available in Chinese, and generally speaking, the architecture focuses on executing commands across entire blocks rather than one command at a time. The architecture must provide a high degree of parallelism to process the data and therefore will certainly perform well in modern reality.

There is currently no reason to believe that the recently launched HiSilicon Kirin 9050 Pro processor, which powers the Huawei Mate XT 2 foldable smartphone (pictured above), uses the new LinxISA architecture. However, if Huawei aims to achieve complete technological independence, it will likely achieve this in future components. Together with its own operating system and wafer production technology, this will provide a comprehensive approach to solving the import substitution problem.