UPDATE 1-UK export controls have impeded China’s access Arm’s chips designs.

(Additional details taken from FT Report, Disclosures)

Dec 14, 2012 (Reuters) – Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd can’t buy some of the latest chip designs after Arm Ltd, a SoftBank-owned British chip technology firm, determined that the U.S. and Britain wouldn’t approve licenses for technology exports to China.

According to the report, it is the first time Arm has said that it can’t export its most advanced designs to China.

The report stated that the British chip-tech firm found the performance of the latest Neoverse V series was too high and would not allow the U.S. or UK to approve its sale.

Reuters reached out to Arm and Alibaba for comment but they did not respond immediately.

This development comes just two months after the U.S. published an extensive set of export controls. It included a measure to block China from certain semiconductor chips made anywhere on the planet using U.S. tools. This vastly expands its ability to slow Beijing’s technological and military advancements.

Bloomberg News reported that the Biden administration is also planning to place Chinese chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies as well as 35 other Chinese firms on an international trade blacklist, which would block them from purchasing American components.

Arm introduced its next generation data center chip technology, Neoverse V2, earlier this year in response to the rapid growth of data from 5G devices and other internet-connected gadgets.

The report stated that Arm has released a number of new core designs over the past year, including Neoverse N2 (and Neoverse V1 & V2), which were the most powerful cores ever made.

Chinese companies were prevented from buying Neoverse V2 or its predecessor V1 due to U.S. and UK Export Controls. These controls are linked to technologies listed under Wassenaar. This agreement restricts the movement of “dual use” technologies. (Reporting by Rhea Benoy in Bengaluru; Editing done by Savio D’Souza, and DhanyaAnn Thoppil).