Huawei’s Mate 70 Has Older Chips Than Expected

In a sign that China’s ability to develop new tech might be slowing, the flagship Huawei Mate 70 Pro smartphone appears to have only a chipset update, rather than one made with a smaller fab process. According to TechInsights, which analyzed the Mate 70 Pro’s processor, the phone has a HiSilicon Kirin 9020 instead of the Kirin 9100 chipset they expected. Why Huawei stuck with the 7nm process instead of moving to a 5nm process is an open question.

“We were expecting to find the Kirin 9100 chipset in the Mate 70 line-up, rumoured to be fabbed by SMIC using 5nm technology,” wrote the authors of the TechInsights report. “However, it seems we have found the Kirin 9020 instead, indeed fabbed by SMIC, but using a 7nm process node.”

As Tom’s Hardware points out, using the 7nm process for the new Huawei smartphone isn’t a big deal as far as the smartphone itself goes. (The Mate 70 is getting a cooler reception in China that was probably expected, but it’s not likely that the chipset is the issue.) What’s interesting about the move (or rather, lack of movement) is that it could point to the severity of trouble Huawei is having in advancing its chipmaking capabilities. That difficulty is probably due, at least in part, to restrictions the U.S. has imposed. Chipmakers outside China are capable of much smaller chip processes than even the 5nm we expected.

Credit: ASML

China appears to be falling way behind outside fabs in chip development. Taiwan’s tech minister recently suggested that TSMC will be a decade ahead of mainland China when it ramps up 2nm production in 2025. Once a rising star on the global stage, Huawei faced restrictions from the U.S. over concerns about China. Despite the restrictions, the company managed to develop chips with 5nm transistors, but it hasn’t managed to get anywhere close to the 2nm TSMC and Intel have in the works. Still, SIMC has been producing processors with older tech in large quantities for various electronic devices.

One of the problems facing Huawei is that China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), which fabs the chips, can’t buy equipment from Dutch-based ASML. The company makes EUV lithography machines for fabs. So far, restrictions that are in place to prevent Huawei from getting the latest lithography machines appear to be working.