The Kirin 9000S will go down in history as the chipset that caused Huawei’s resurgence, and while it fails to provide any competition to its current-generation competitors in performance or power efficiency, its existence signifies what the company achieved when its back was against the wall as a result of the U.S. trade ban. One tipster now reveals that the chipset had reached tape-out status back in 2021, which meant that mass production of the silicon should not have been far off. Unfortunately, Huawei was met with a ton of obstacles in its path thanks to the trade sanctions from the U.S., resulting in the Kirin 9000S delay.
SMIC, Huawei’s only semiconductor foundry, may have also found it difficult to improve its 7nm yields for the Kirin 9000S, leading to further delay
Before the Kirin 9000S was used in the Mate 60 series that was introduced in August last year, Huawei relied on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 for the P60 family. Given that the U.S. introduced a trade ban on the former Chinese giant back in 2019, Huawei had plans to mount a comeback early in 2021, but @jasonwill101 points out on X that it was challenging to materialize such goals. For one thing, just because a chipset has reached the tape-out stage does not mean it has successfully entered the production phase, and that was a formidable obstacle to scale.
Since TSMC and Samsung were barred from accepting Kirin 9000S orders from Huawei, it was up to SMIC, China’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, to do its bidding. Unfortunately, successfully mass producing the Kirin 9000S at an acceptable cost was a Herculean task, especially when SMIC suffered from poor 7nm yields. In the end, both entities successfully managed to churn out the first Kirin 9000S shipments, which powered the Mate 60 models’ innards.
Although the Kirin 9000s chip had already completed tape-out in 2021, it was constrained by sanctions (supply chain and process technology), preventing mass production. The issues were only resolved and the chip released last year.
— jasonwill (@jasonwill101) July 31, 2024
The SoC’s existence caused a firestorm of backlash from U.S. lawmakers, with Representative Michael McCaul believing that Huawei violated sanctions with this launch. While there was a sense of immense tension in the air, the U.S. realized that Huawei was limited by the technology it possesses, with a report stating that SMIC’s 7nm node was four years behind the most advanced manufacturing process, even though the opposition intended to limit its capabilities by a whole decade.
To block Huawei’s and SMIC’s progress altogether, ASML, the Dutch-based company that provides ‘state of the art’ EUV machinery for wafer manufacturing, has been barred from supplying Chinese entities with any hardware that would give them an edge against the U.S. Fortunately, SMIC pulled through and reportedly developed its 5nm process using the older DUV equipment. Sadly, there is no telling when this technology will be ready to use for Huawei’s next Kirin chipset.
From what we have heard, the company might have to re-purpose the current 7nm technology for the Mate 70 launch, but it is said to have a higher transistor density, so at least there is some improvement.
News Source: @jasonwill101
About the author: Omar Sohail is a reporter and analyst for Wccftech's mobile section, specializing in the technology and business of the mobile industry. His expertise lies in the intricate hardware supply chain, covering developments in semiconductor manufacturing, chip lithography, and camera sensor technology.
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