HiSilicon

HiSilicon Co., Ltd.
Native name
海思半导体有限公司;上海海思
Company typeSubsidiary
IndustryFabless semiconductors, Semiconductors, Integrated circuit design
Founded1991 (1991)[1][citation needed]
HeadquartersShenzhen, Guangdong, China
ProductsSoCs
BrandsKirin

Gigahom

Kunpeng

Balong

Ascend
ParentHuawei
Websitewww.hisilicon.com/en
HiSilicon
Simplified Chinese海思半导体有限公司
Traditional Chinese海思半導體有限公司
Literal meaningHaisi Semiconductor Limited Company

HiSilicon (Chinese: 海思; pinyin: Hǎisī) is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province and wholly owned by Huawei. HiSilicon purchases licenses for CPU designs from ARM Holdings, including the ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore, ARM Cortex-M3, ARM Cortex-A7 MPCore, ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore,[2][3] ARM Cortex-A53, ARM Cortex-A57 and also for their Mali graphics cores.[4][5] HiSilicon has also purchased licenses from Vivante Corporation for their GC4000 graphics core.

HiSilicon is reputed to be the largest domestic designer of integrated circuits in China.[6] In 2020, the United States instituted rules that require any American firms providing equipment to HiSilicon or non-American firms who use American technologies or IPR (such as TSMC) that supply HiSilicon to have licenses[7] as part of the ongoing trade dispute, and Huawei announced it will stop producing its Kirin chipset from 15 September 2020 onwards[8] due to this disruption of supply chain. On August 29th 2023, Huawei announced the first fully domestically fabricated chip, the Kirin 9000S, which is used on its latest Mate 60 Pro phablet series of phones and MatePad 13.2 tablets.

  1. ^ "HiSilicon Technologies Co., Ltd.: Private Company Information". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on 19 January 2019. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
  2. ^ HiSilicon Licenses ARM Technology for use in Innovative 3G/4G Base Station, Networking Infrastructure and Mobile Computing Applications Archived 27 January 2013 at the Wayback Machine, 2 August 2011 on ARM.com
  3. ^ "HiSilicon Technologies Co., Ltd. 海思半导体有限公司". ARM Holdings. Archived from the original on 15 January 2013. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
  4. ^ ARM Launches Cortex-A50 Series, the World’s Most Energy-Efficient 64-bit Processors Archived 5 January 2013 at the Wayback Machine on ARM.com
  5. ^ Lai, Richard. "Huawei's HiSilicon K3V3 chipset due 2H 2013, to be based on Cortex-A15". Engadget. Archived from the original on 15 May 2013. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
  6. ^ "Hisilicon grown into the largest local IC design companies". Windosi. September 2012. Archived from the original on 21 August 2014. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
  7. ^ Josh, Horwitz (21 May 2020). "U.S. strikes at a Huawei prize: chip juggernaut HiSilicon". Reuters. Archived from the original on 22 May 2020. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  8. ^ "Huawei to stop making flagship chipsets as U.S. pressure bites, Chinese media say". Reuters. 8 August 2020. Retrieved 8 August 2020.