Huawei's New Mystery 7nm Chip from Chinese Fab Defies US Sanctions
Huawei's New Mystery 7nm Chip from Chinese Fab Defies US Sanctions
SMIC produces N+2 smartphone SoC from Huawei's Mate 60 Pro.
It was only a matter of time before the Chinese started ramping up their own semiconductor capabilities. With all the inevitable industrial espionage involved, I wonder if the west really has that much of a head start in chip design.
Design? No
Fabs? The advantage is insurmountable as long as the US keeps preventing ASML from exporting EUV to China
What espionage? The western world does not make any chips.
except for the US, Israel, Ireland. Maybe you count Japan and South Korea as western and that number grows more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants
But it makes the machines that make the chips.
They also make the equipment to make the chips
$100 says this is a rebranded chip from something else, just like with the Powerstar P3-01105 CPU.
Doesn't seem like it. The chip supports SMT aka hyperthreading with 8 cores and 12 threads, which is not something you see on a typical mobile ARM* SoC.
edit: I missed a word.
It's nice to see access to one of most important technology of the 21st century not at the hands of a single country whims
Most people would've hoped for it to be from Europe but instead of working to free themselves from USA control over such important tech they regulate random stuff and make themselves look like fools.
I strongly believe a joint cooperation of the European union could produce a powerful CPU, GPU but they're sitting on their butts doing nothing. Shame...
Dutch ASML is essential to 7nm and smaller processes. US pitched in enormous amounts of cash in very risky R&D for EUV lithography so they have a say in how it's used but I wouldn't say they control it entirely.
These things are too risky, complex and expensive for any single country/federation or economic block to be on the cutting edge. It's entirely possible to pour money for years and come up empty.
EU should pull as many strings as possible to have cutting edge production capacity within own borders in case of emergency but first we'd have to invest heavily in education of engineers and guarantee competitive salaries because it's incredibly challenging work.
It took Taiwan a generation to accomplish and even now their manufacturing staff is being poached by China because of economic pressures and likely state funded corporate espionage.
Dutch company makes the machines that shoot US chip designs via lasers via German mirrors to Japanese/German/Taiwanese silicon wafers that are further processes by Japanese machines in a Taiwanese factory.
Dutch company that is heavily pressured not to sell the machine to China by the US government. All the countries you listed are close allies of the US. You can't fault the US from trying to stop China but let's not pretend this is a free global market.
More competition is always good. I welcome developments in Chinese semiconductor tech.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In another Global Times publication, Chinese analysts labeled N+2 as SMIC's 5nm-class production node about a year ago.
Yet, there are independent proofs from TechInsights that SMIC produced MinerVa Semiconductor Bitcoin mining ASICs on its 7nm-class N+1 technology.
Meanwhile, SMIC's Twinscan NXT:2000i deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography scanners can make chips on 7nm and 5nm technologies, so that the company may have developed a 5nm-class fabrication process.
Huawei's HiSilicon is China's most successful chip designer that has used to adopt TSMC's leading-edge fabrication technologies.
After Huawei lost access to American technologies in 2020, HiSilicon could no longer work with the world's largest contract maker of chips, and it is believed that the parent company helped SMIC to advance its fabrication processes.
Huawei has not commented on the matter, and even state-ran Global Times does not explicitly say that the HiSilicon Kirin 9000S uses SMIC's 5nm-class process technology but prefers to call the information a rumor.
The original article contains 574 words, the summary contains 148 words. Saved 74%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
The amount of copium in this thead from triggered Americans is over 9000.
This is definitely real and not propaganda because the Chinese economy is in a huge downturn.
tomshardware.com is [checks notes].. Chinese propaganda.
The cope is unreal
My only surprise here is the turn around. According to the people I listened to China was nowhere near the 7nm range, at all. Sanctions were put place no less than half a year ago, so for them to have figured it out this quickly is what's making it look sus. It takes nations years if not decades to get to thus point, and countries have failed trying too. My money is they are using western manufactured lithography equipment.
Edit: From the South China article:
TechInsights said SMIC used existing equipment and its second-generation 7-nm process to manufacture the 5G-capable Kirin 9000s for Huawei
Huawei was known to have been stockpiling chips from its HiSilicon unit before TSMC cut ties to comply with US sanctions
I am not sure if American legislators realize that all these trade restrictions are only accelerating Chinese domestic chip development. The restrictions have the same effect as import tariffs, which is exactly what a government would do if it wants to protect and/or develop its own fledgling industry.
They were going to figure it out eventually anyway. It buys some time I guess. I don't know what for, though.