Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and China’s top chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) have built an advanced 7-nanometer processor to power its latest smartphone, a teardown report by analysis firm TechInsights showed.
Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro is powered by a new Kirin 9000s chip that was made in China by SMIC, TechInsights said in the report shared with Reuters on Monday.
Huawei started selling its Mate 60 Pro phone last week. The specifications provided advertised its ability to make satellite calls, but offered no information on the power of the chipset inside.
Photo: Bloomberg
The processor is the first to utilize SMIC’s most advanced 7-nanometer technology and suggests that the Chinese government is making some headway in attempts to build a domestic chip ecosystem, the research firm said.
Buyers of the phone in China have been posting tear-down videos and sharing speed tests on social media that suggest the Mate 60 Pro is capable of download speeds exceeding those of top line 5G phones.
The cellphone’s launch sent Chinese social media users and state media into a frenzy, with some saying it coincided with a visit by US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.
From 2019, the US has restricted Huawei’s access to chipmaking tools essential for producing the most advanced handset models, with the company only able to launch limited batches of 5G models using stockpiled chips.
Research firms in July said that they believed Huawei was planning a return to the 5G smartphone industry by the end of this year, using its own advances in semiconductor design tools along with chipmaking from SMIC.
The Huawei breakthrough comes as China is seeking to raise a US$40 billion fund to bankroll investments in domestic chipmaking and research, people familiar with the matter said.
The state-backed China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund is establishing its third and largest investment pool of about 300 billion yuan (US$41.1 billion), the people said.
The Chinese Ministry of Finance might contribute 60 billion yuan to the fund, which won approval to operate in the past few months, they added.
Known locally as “the Big Fund,” it has backed some of China’s biggest chip enterprises including SMIC.
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
OPTIMISTIC: Inflation still has a chance of remaining below the central bank’s 2 percent alert level, as Taiwan’s economy is resilient with healthy exports, the NDC minister said Taiwan’s inflation could exceed 2 percent this year if oil prices continue to surge amid escalating tensions in the Middle East, prompting the government to reassess its economic outlook, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. DGBAS Minister Chen Shu-tzu (陳淑姿) told lawmakers at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee that the agency’s earlier growth forecast of 1.68 percent in the consumer price index (CPI) and 7.71 percent for GDP this year did not account for the ongoing Middle East conflict and would need revision, if tensions persist. The previous forecast assumed an average international crude price of
ELECTRIC DREAMS: Smart cities would use ‘virtual power plants,’ which integrate idle electricity use from households, businesses and factories, Asustek said Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) yesterday showcased key components of its artificial intelligence (AI)-driven smart city initiatives at a trade show in Taipei, eyeing new business opportunities as cities develop sovereign AI infrastructure. Advances in generative, multimodal and physical AI are driving cities toward a new phase of “sovereign AI,” Asustek cochief executive officer Samson Hu (胡書賓) told reporters on the sidelines of the Smart City Summit and Expo at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center’s Hall 2. The company showcased its “AI City” framework, which comprises three layers — computing infrastructure centered on AI servers, AI models and a platform layer for data processing
RSS