Huawei can be introducing its second flagship line of the yr late within the fourth quarter. The producer has lengthy launched two flagship sequence every year with the photography-based P-series (now generally known as the Pura line) usually seen in Q1, and the modern Mate sequence hitting {the marketplace} in This autumn. After beautiful the smartphone world final yr by packing the Mate 60 line with its first homegrown 5G supporting Kirin chip in three years (the Mate 40 line was the final Huawei telephone powered by a 5G Kirin chip), U.S. lawmakers threw a match.
The Kirin 9000s chipsets used to energy the Mate 60 sequence have been produced by China’s largest foundry, SMIC, which can be the third largest foundry on the earth. As a result of U.S. and Dutch officers block shipments of utmost ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines to China, SMIC had to make use of the earlier era deep ultraviolet lithography (DUV) machines to etch circuitry patterns on the silicon wafers that change into chips.
The final 5nm chip designed by Huawei was the Kirin 9000 5G from 2020. | Picture credit-Huawei
Huawei is taken into account a risk to U.S. nationwide safety which explains why American lawmakers have been so determined to position sanctions on the corporate and its suppliers. There may be nonetheless a very good probability that SMIC must keep on with the 7nm node it used to make the Kirin 9000s.
The large query is whether or not SMIC can produce 5nm chipsets with a excessive sufficient yield to make it possible. Huawei’s AP will nonetheless be trailing the 3nm processors utilized by Apple, Samsung, vivo, and Oppo these 4 telephone producers can have flagship handsets powered by 3nm chips by the primary quarter of 2025.
A put up on the Chinese language social media platform Weibo says that the Kirin 9100 will price Huawei $157-$186 to purchase which might be in the identical vary as MediaTek’s Dimensity 9400 ($155) and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 ($190-$240). You would possibly take into account the Kirin 9100 to be expensive at that vary contemplating that the Dimensity 9400 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will each be constructed utilizing TSMC’s second-generation 3nm node, and the Kirin 9100 could be constructed utilizing a 5nm-7nm node. Lastly, the Kirin 9100 simply managed to beat the two-generation previous Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in a benchmark check.
Nonetheless, Huawei is making sufficient progress together with SMIC that we would not be stunned to see a 5nm chip underneath the hood of the Mate 70 sequence later this yr. If this happens, you possibly can think about what the response can be in Washington D.C.
