Huawei‘s smartphone sales saw a significant boost last year, largely due to the popularity of the Mate 60 series featuring their Kirin 9000S chip. 

Although the 9000S, built on a 7nm process, isn’t the top-performing smartphone SoC, its in-house development is a notable achievement for Huawei. 

However, the company is now in need of a more powerful and efficient chip for its upcoming smartphone models.

Huawei SMIC 5nm chips

A report by Financial Times now suggests that Huawei is now aiming for 5nm chip production. Its partner, SMIC, which is China’s largest chipmaker, has set up a new semiconductor line in Shanghai specifically for making chips designed by Huawei.

The move comes as the Biden administration has imposed stricter export restrictions on advanced chipmaking equipment citing national security concerns. 

Additionally, the US government is also working with the Netherlands, and Japan to make it harder for China to access cutting-edge chip manufacturing equipment. 

For now, SMIC is said to be repurposing its existing DUV equipment for 5nm chip production. However, this approach might lead to lower yields and higher costs of SoCs. 

Moreover, while Huawei’s 5nm chip will certainly not be able to compete with flagship chipsets from Qualcomm or MediaTek, it’s important to take into account that China’s semiconductor industry is still making progress despite the US ban. 

So manufacturing a 5nm chip without relying on foreign support would be a big achievement for both Huawei and SMIC.

An insider familiar with the plans told the Financial Times, “With the new 5nm node, Huawei is well on track to upgrade its new flagship handset and data center chips.”

Huawei is rumored to using the upcoming Kirin SoC in the P70 series of smartphones. Besides this, the company is actively working on Harmony OS NEXT, a new generation operating system built on Huawei’s proprietary kernel. The OS will also ditch Android app support completely. 

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