In what would be a ‘slap in the face’ moment for the US over the sanctions it put on Huawei in 2019 over accessing chip-making tools in the states, a teardown of the latest Mate 60 Pro smartphone suggests the company may not need US after all. A report from TechInsights suggests that the Mate 60 Pro is being powered a completely made-in-China, 7nm advanced chipset developed by Huawei and Chinese chipmaker SMIC. The chipset is a new addition to the Kirin 9000s family.
According to detailed findings in the report, the team found evidence of SMIC 7nm (N+2) which represents a made-in-China design and manufacturing milestone for the most advanced Chinese foundry TechInsights has documented. “Discovering a Kirin chip using SMIC’s 7nm (N+2) foundry process in the new Huawei Mate 60 Pro smartphone demonstrates the technical progress China’s semiconductor industry has been able to make without EUV lithography tools,” said Dan Hutcheson, Vice Chair of TechInsights.
The development comes in the backdrop of a visit by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, the agenda of which is to cool down the trade war conditions existing between the two nations. One of the biggest reasons this trade war started, was the US banning Huawei from accessing high tech chip manufacturing tools, which it seems now they may not need after all. Making a 7nm chip and using it a production-ready smartphone talks quite something about the progress China’s semiconductor industry has made, in a fairly short span of time.
Several buyers of the new Mate 60 Pro smartphone have been posting videos of 5G internet speed tests. And if those clips are anything to go by, the phone seems to be performing ahead of some top-of-the-line 5G smartphones brought out by the likes of Apple and Samsung.
