Low-order harmonic currents in high-speed permanent magnet brushless dc (PM BLDC) motors cause large rotor eddy-current loss, resulting in high temperature rise and even overheating in the rotors, thus their application in the field of high-speed drive is limited. The rotor eddy-current loss can be reduced by using a split-phase winding method. In this paper, various time-space orders of harmonic eddy-current losses in the rotors of the PM motors with and without split-phase winding are quantified. The calculated results indicate that the rotor harmonic eddy-current losses generated by the low-order harmonic currents, which inherently exist in PM BLDC motors, are greatly reduced. Furthermore, associated with the characteristics of harmonic currents of PM BLDC motors, the mechanism of drastically reducing the rotor harmonic eddy-current lass of high-speed PM motors by using the split-phase winding method is revealed and experimentally validated.