BEIJING, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. will invest 3 billion yuan (about 436 million U.S. dollars) in the next 5 years to develop an ecosystem for its ARM-based server chips and complementary products, China Daily reported Wednesday.
The investment will be used to bolster Huawei's IT infrastructure and create various applications based on Kunpeng 920, its central processing unit unveiled in January, the company's rotating chairman Xu Zhijun said.
Xu added that Huawei will concentrate on developing the high-performance Kunpeng chip series and offer high-quality cloud and artificial intelligence products based on those chips.
Huawei said its chips will not be sold as a stand-alone product. Instead, it will only sell servers powered by its in-house CPUs. The servers can be used for big data, distributed storage, and ARM-native applications.
ARM-based chips are for special businesses which can serve as a good complement to Huawei's computing enterprises, said Danny Mu, an analyst at market research company Forrester.
"Huawei is moving in the right direction by stepping up efforts to cultivate an ARM-based ecosystem, including software and applications," Mu said.
Huawei has sold more than 900,000 servers worldwide in 2018, bringing the total shipment in the past six years to 3.56 million units.
