Tipster says Huawei has already mass-produced 12nm and 14nm chips for its own use
The problem that Huawei faces is that the largest foundry in China is a company called SMIC and outside of the 7nm chips it produced for cryptocurrency mining (which can’t be used for smartphones), SMIC is limited to manufacturing smartphone chipsets using its 14nm process node. That’s far from the 3nm process node that both TSMC and Samsung Foundry are mass-producing right now.
Huawei has already produced 12nm and 14nm chips says tipster
Simply put, the lower the process node the higher the transistor count on a chip. For example, the 2019 iPhone 11 line was powered by the 7nm A13 Bionic SoC which carried 8.5 billion transistors. The A16 Bionic chipset found under the hood of the iPhone 14 Pro models is made using TSMC’s 4nm process node and contains close to 16 billion transistors. The higher a chip’s transistor count, the more powerful and energy-efficient that chip is.
Actually, the tip doesn’t mention the name of the foundry that will manufacture the components but does say that the initial mass production of the 12nm and 14nm chips is basically ready. It has already been used inside the company and while 12nm-14nm chips will not help Huawei in the smartphone market, the tipster writes that they could be used to power wearable devices.
Huawei patent application could help the company source cutting-edge chips
Only one company makes the EUV machine and that is a Dutch firm called ASML which has been following U.S. requests not to sell them to China. But Huawei has created some components that are different enough from ASML’s patents to warrant awarding a patent to the beleaguered Huawei. And if it can create its own EUV technology, it will open up a whole new world for the company. It could result in SMIC being able to match TSMC and Samsung Foundry nanometer for nanometer.
Huawei has its own semiconductor design unit, HiSilicon. Huawei’s Kirin branded chips were at one time considered to be as good as the silicon designed by Apple and Qualcomm. Huawei’s goal is to return to those good old days.
