Huawei’s Kirin 9000S system-on-chip powers Huawei’s new Mate 60 Pro smartphone reportedly is using 2nd generation 7nm-class fabrication process and stacking made by China-based SMIC.
Huawei was known to have been stockpiling chips from its HiSilicon unit before TSMC cut ties to comply with US sanctions. TSMC started making 7 nanometer chips back in 2017.
The costs are higher using the older process DUV machines instead of EUV machines. The costs are probably 30-50% higher. However, the fact that China can make these 7 nanometer chips at all is a huge creative achievement. This is what the global semiconductor industry would have had to do if EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) machines were not successfully made about 8 years ago. China will be able to make 5 nanometer chips in about 2 years. It will be too difficult to push DUV (Deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography) machines to achieve 3 nanometers or less.
Huawei and Semiconductor International Manufacturing Corp (SMIC) declined to provide details. Based on tests conducted on the smartphone, Chinese benchmarking website AnTuTu identified the central processing unit (CPU) in the Mate 60 Pro as the Kirin 9000s from Huawei’s chip design unit HiSilicon.
Research company TechInsights (based in California) said in a note on its WeChat account that SMIC has used existing equipment and applied its second-generation 7-nanometer process, known as the N+2 node, to manufacture the 5G-capable Kirin 9000s for Huawei.
Another possibility is Huawei built a secret chipmaking supply chain by recruiting existing foundries to help it skirt US export controls. In this case, the chip inside the Mate 60 showcases how Huawei has achieved a breakthrough.
The third possibility is that this based on stockpiled chips from before sanctions were made stronger.
China likely made these chip using deep ultraviolet immersion ASML machines and not the EUV (extreme ultraviolet machines.) DUV machines use 193 nanometer light while EUV use 13.5 nanometer light. DUV machines were used by the global semiconductor industry to make 14 nanometer process chips.
The China 7 nanometer chip has comparable performance to a Qualcomm chip made with a 4 nanometer process. This would be huge if China is matching computer chips with 4 to 7 nanometer processes. This would mean a technology gap of only a few years.
SOURCES – South China Morning Post, Asianometry, AnaStasi in Tech
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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China may have discovered a key EUV related breakthrough to bypass ASML’s stranglehold, a new high power light source.
https://asiatimes.com/2023/09/china-building-euv-lithographic-cannon-for-chip-war/
though that doesn’t cover optics
Nikon also built EUV machines when ASML was developing their first generation. Too bad they dropped that, there seems to be a decent market for those right now.
Anyone who thought China or Huawei were going to roll over and play dead when the US implemented sanctions on computer chips isn’t on the same planet.
Huawei chips were already ahead of the rest. And anyone thinking that this would put them out of business doesn’t understand that Huawei owns most of the 5g patents. This mean every single device that uses 5g is money in Huawei’s pocket.
Keep provoking a bear and eventually your going to get bit. China will build what ever they need. They have the brains, the money and the know how. But what will the US and rest of the world do when China says the heck with you, get your rare earth to make your computer chips elsewhere??
It’s not like anyone has created any new exciting technology or cell phones since the sanctions stated.
Just got rid of my 2k Samsung phone for my old Huawei P20. The 6 year old Huawei still twice the phone if any Samsung.
Rare earth computer chip?
found the CCP shill. this is the exact message being repeated in many places right down to the tone and subtle threats.
in reality the exact opposite of this message is more accurate.
Patents mean nothing to China, why would Chinese patents mean anything to the rest of the world in an actual trade war situation?
Your English needs a LOT of work before you can pull off a fake western name like that.
“Huawei chips were already ahead of the rest.”
Comments like this are so demonstrably untrue it’s honestly funny.
And for the author:
“China will be able to make 5 nanometer chips in about 2 years.”
Would you like to make a bet on that? Because I gladly will.
Why this US-China competition is full of hate? According to my understanding competition is always good as we the consumers expect only quality of of it. If the soviets never made it to space in the 50’s, the Americans wouldn’t be able to to push much further to land the 1st human on the moon.
I will prefer to sit back and expect only the best out of both China and of course the USA that creating a rift out of me on whether to hire Chinese or American technology.
I reserve the right to consume what i consider the best and affordable in price. Monopolising the world market too is not good for us the end users, It will only limit us from getting the quality we deserve.
Rediculous. The insinuation isn’t that China has done it. It’s that they are doing it illegally. Read between the lines. Skirting sanctions (ok… who cares??) But more crucially is the possibility they have so many Chinese nationals embedded in our society there is nothing we will develop that they won’t smuggle the secrets to.
Nvidia alone must have half the company as Chinese nationals with dual citizenship. China tracks every single person born abroad and then make no mistake they employ them later for technological espionage when they reach employment age.
There’s reason they are buying all our farm land up hand over fist. It’s to put the squeeze on us down the road when we need more land for food.
Weare all copy cats.
the Huawei phone is now being dissected in many USA labs right now.
Google ” Operation Paperclip”, where USA stole German technology to make the atom bomb plus.
German Scientists were rounded up and shipped to America after world war 11
7 nm is not a size. In any other context it would be; but in this context it is just a name. You can call it 1 femtometer if you like; it doesn’t matter. What matters is now too complex and full of caveats to boil down to a single number. Density, power and performance matter; but density in what context? SRAM, DRAM and random logic are all different. There’s a tonne of different design rules and caveats that rule out particular features and combinations of features and too many pernickity details to keep track of.
7 nm intel is not 7 nm TSMC is not 7 nm samsung etc. It’s ugly and full of compromises.
[ one interesting measure with nm scale for comparing computing circuits node levels is gate length for logics ‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_nm_process#7_nm_process_nodes_and_process_offerings’ , what’s dependent on transistor technology, too and where difficulties rise with getting closer towards 2nm (starting (risk)/volume production ~(2022)2024/2025) ]
7 nm chips made by DUV using SADP is more costly than directly using EUV, so there would not be any market for it, but US ban on exporting chips more advanced than 16/18 nm to China has created a huge Chinese market for 7nm made by DUV, because there is no competition & alternatives.
The semiconductor industry has been banking on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for the past decade to circumvent the problems that 193i is beginning to encounter. For example, immersion lithography requires double patterning at 16nm/14nm and quadruple patterning at 7nm. Both schemes work, but they present some new and major challenges. Extra patterning increases the cycle time and cost in both the photomask shop and in the fab. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
But if chipmakers extend immersion/multi-patterning to 5nm, they may need to resort to the unthinkable—octuple patterning, described almost universally as a nightmarish scheme that is considered unwieldy and too costly.
https://semiengineering.com/multi-patterning-problems-grow/
All depends on whether China keeps building walls and pushing the aggressive hegemonic stance. Their economy is in a terrible state, population collapsing, huge unemployment, severe recession, wide swathes of economy and critically their tax base vanishing, and world quickly pulling away from PRC’s hostility. This must be damaging Xi’s hold on power.
I expect if they reversed course, liberalized and opened up again the world would come back to them pretty quickly. But if they are driving a lot of industry and trade out of China with their current settings.
China its doing the right thing, militarizing first, so usa won’t be a threat anymore. Then they can fix the rest of the things, but I expect China economy to get better due to brics, while usa will fall apart in a few years.
“China its doing the right thing, militarizing first, so usa won’t be a threat anymore. ”
China is a nuclear power already. The US will be the same threat no matter how China develops militarily.
“Then they can fix the rest of the things, but I expect China economy to get better due to brics,”
Ah yes, the coalition of third-rate collapsing nations. Best of luck with that.
“while usa will fall apart in a few years.”
This is my favorite! Been enjoying this line for the last 20 years. Surely, any day now, the US will collapse! Keep dreaming!
Everything you said was so true only you confused China for USA .
Is the higher costs due to a high manufacturing failure rate for 7nm chips using DUV ? Do they have to throw half of them away?
Doing smaller geometries with DUV requires the use of heavily OPC’D reticles for pattern control and multiple exposures at the most critical layer for dimension and dimension control. This leads to high variability and susceptibility to defects (this impacts parametric control and defect related non functional die), hence higher cost, lower yield and longer throughput times.
It can be done and for china may be a reasonable work around. Especially if you can control chip size/density requirements with your design. It is not optimal and likely to be non profitable, but I doubt China is worried about that. But the wall is hovering where your print variation becomes too much for functional devices…
Per Zeihan, they acquired the tooling before the ban was in place and apparently DUV isn’t very portable for making different kinds of chips
Yes, it’s called molten salt reactor. It will be up by 2026.
Yes its called EV vehicles. Tesla is using Chinese brand battery, CATL. China already dominate the EV market in terms of technology.
And yes, China is working its butt off to improve their environment. Do you still hear any smog problem in Beijing like ten fifteen years ago? The answer is no. Have you heard China’s green project on northern deserts?
Its the US playing the zero sum game because it wants to maintain hegemonic status.
I have and am still hearing about china’s & Beijing’s smog problems, there’s been somewhat of an information blackout on on Beijing’s pollution since the Olympics.
You have to listen to NON CCP RUN MEDIA to hear about it.
Latest pollution problem has been uranium dust contamination, Which they’re trying to shift the blame onto fish from Fukushima, and a new bizarre weather phenomenon, classic communist tactic, blame outsiders for your own faults.
The “7nm” is a several years old design copied from Taiwan, the high cost is due to the low throughput with their last fabs purchases & stockpiles just before the embargo.
China is a paper tiger made from two sets of books, question every official report.
Remember this is the same China that gave us:
The worlds largest gold re-hypothecation scam in history.
Ghost cities (to keep construction industry from collapsing)
Massive IP theft (they can’t innovate, so theft is easier)
Tofu dreg (no quality control/massive bribery)
Gutter oil (unsafe oil reclaimed drum city sewers and gutters, sometimes even sold to restaurants!)
Sinking cities (drilling geothermal wells without Checking if it’d cause sublimation to the ADJACENT high rises…)
Hell, China has only just recently acquired the industrial precision to make ball points for pens, (something the west has been doing for over a century.)
China is a paper tiger, they still haven’t organically made their own phone, at best, they’re using someone else’s machine to copy someone else’s design.
Go back to sleep. You just rehashed what happened 10 years ago!
You don’t seem neither rational nor impartial so your opinion means nothing
There is no way to stop China’s rise, it’s to big, to rich, to smart. It has millions more high IQ engineers than the EU and US combined.
China is no Japan, no Russia, which had and still have around half of US pop. China is like 11 Japan’s! or US, EU, Japan, Russia, Korea combined, and you probably still can add one additional USA.
Modern world has never seen anything like that, very few grasp this scale and potential. China is barely starting its rise and it already caught up with basically every high-tech West ever developed and has. They wasted 200 years but now catch up phase is quickly ending and we should see ‘real’ innovation phase, all those forces and brain power that were invested into catching up now will be redirected into doing new things, because basically there is not much more to catch up to.
India may be even crazier.
US alone has no chance to compete (long term). It’s simply to small. If US will merge with EU, Canada, Australia and create kind of a new ‘country’. United States of West or just West, then (assuming China’s pop decline) we can have some chances and in time, both be around 1B people.
China is the nation of geeks and nerds, in US and EU we have few of them. With current culture in the West I see no hope, even if China population will shrink to 900M which will take many decades, it will still have 3-5x more scientists and engineers than US/EU combined.
And the gap is growing.
Solution to how not become irrelevant.
The only hope for the West to be on top for a bit longer is to develop AGI/ASI first. But after that achievement we will enter post scarcity utopia for all, so current scarcity mentality which we all have, competition between states, corporations, all that primitive stuff should become thing of a past. I hope for such future.
So short term US gov should start a huge project of building zettaflop (1000 exaflops) supercomputer as soon as possible, it’s possible already if you add enough NVIDIA GPU’s or cerebras chips. It will need huge amount of energy, but even if, so what?
US can afford it easily. Just print more money, world will pay for it.
Current largest supercomputers cost around $1B, so I think 100B should be enough for zettaflop F8 or 16 precision supercomputer. On such machine, you can train larger than human brain models with possibly quadrillion parameters, instead of below dog brain size models with less than trillion parameters(current gen). It all can be done in 2-3 years.
what basic problems are they solving with their “nation of geeks and nerds, millions more high IQ engineers.”
Have they improved nuclear technology? Not really. Nothing to improve there.
Have they improved vehicles? They make competitive vehicles (jets to e-bikes).
They certainly dominate the consumer goods market, and will so long as they have hoards of poor to work in their factories.
Will they apply their millions of high IQ engineers to improving their own environment, or will they continue to empty the oceans of fish, and spoil their landscape building sprawling gigafactories while forests reclaim north america?
Why is it a competition? Is this a zero sum game? What about all the people like me? Are you writing me off?
Yes, it’s called molten salt reactor. It will be up by 2026.
Yes its called EV vehicles. Tesla is using Chinese brand battery, CATL. China already dominate the EV market in terms of technology.
And yes, China is working its butt off to improve their environment. Do you still hear any smog problem in Beijing like ten fifteen years ago? The answer is no. Have you hear China’s green project on northern deserts?
Welcome to the 1960s is all I can say about a 3MW MSR experiment built literally under the Gobi Desert. Anybody with any actual sense and breadth of knowledge on the subject will admit that the LWRs represent a certain optimum, balancing the frontiers of material science, with reasonable handling of hazards. Darn things show up and run 700-day cycles with power density of 110 kw/liter, but I must defer to the internet, because what is said on the comment boards of the internet with regards to nuclear power is gospel. If enough believe in the MSR, it becomes the savior. Not sure what we’re being saved from, but it’s better – fo sho.
“There is no way to stop China’s rise, it’s to big, to rich, to smart. It has millions more high IQ engineers than the EU and US combined.”
Their own demographics will do them in.
The Chinese ought to work on nano-imprint lithography to bypass the need for EUV. I know that Nikon (in Japan) is working on this.
first heard about that in the mid ’90s.