[author: Blair Robinson]*

Chip manufacturer ARM reportedly won’t sell its latest Neoverse V series computer chips to Chinese tech giant Alibaba due to concerns over U.S. and UK export controls on certain classes of powerful chipsets. Among the most advanced chips on the market, sale of the Neoverse V chips would likely violate trade restrictions intended to keep civilian chips from being repurposed for military use.

ARM designs chipset architecture, but does not manufacture chips in its own facilities. Instead, ARM sells the designs to manufacturers such as TSMC and Samsung. This distinction is irrelevant for the export controls, which apply to all chips designed in the United States.

ARM’s decision not to sell its Neoverse V series chips in China could impact China’s cloud computing development. High-powered chips such as the Neoverse are valuable for cloud platform providers like Amazon Web Services, which uses the chips in servers to virtualize commercial cloud instances.

*Non-Lawyer Intern

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