The United States today withdrew the license that allowed Huawei to buy chips manufactured by Intel and Qualcomm, according to a Bloomberg report. Steps were taken to restrict Huawei from accessing chips with AI capabilities such as the Intel Core Ultra series equipped with NPU.
The withdrawal of the license to buy chips is the latest obstacle imposed on Huawei, which has been included in the entity list since 2019. Previously, we reported that President Biden's administration would prevent the sale of Intel chips to Huawei.
Just yesterday the Huawei MateBook X Pro was launched and it can be pre-ordered in Malaysia today. The barrier to buying a Qualcomm chip is probably to prevent Huawei from accessing the Snapdragon X Elite chip which is also equipped with an NPU to run AI directly on the machine.
The impact on Huawei is certainly huge as the majority of laptops they offer use Intel chips. Last year they sold the Huawei Qingyun L540 only in China with their own Kirin 9006C chip. AMD has long been barred from selling chips to Huawei which led them to file a grievance for alleged unfairness.