Huawei Struggling To Make Enough Chips For Mate70

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Chinese IT websites reported on Thursday (September 5) that Huawei will unveil the world's first triple-fold smartphone, known as Mate XT, at a marketing event on September 10. They said the long-awaited Mate70 or Mate70 RS will not be unveiled at the event.

Cailian Press, a Chinese financial news agency, reported citing unnamed sources on August 28 that Huawei will launch the Mate 70 in November. It claimed the smartphone will use HarmonyOS NEXT, an operating system developed by Huawei without Android code, and a new Kirin processor.

It is widely expected that the Mate70 will use a 7nm chip known as Kirin 9100.

A Guangdong-based IT columnist says there are several versions of Kirin 9100, but even the lowest-end one has a performance equivalent to Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor. The columnist claims that Kirin 9100 can achieve video smoothness similar to that of Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and 3 processors.

Limited production capacity

Since 2019, the US has asked ASML, the world's largest chip equipment supplier based in the Netherlands, to stop shipping extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines to China. EUV lithography can make 7nm chips in a single exposure and 2-3nm chips in multiple exposures.

A team led by Liang Mong-Song , managing director of SMIC and a former engineer at TSMC and Samsung, later successfully made 7nm chips using deep-ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines and multiple exposure techniques.

In June this year, The Information reported that Huawei had faced obstacles in manufacturing its Ascend 910B, a 7nm chip that is said to be equivalent to 80% of Nvidia's A100 in terms of AI-training efficiency. It said the situation was a result of the US Commerce Department's chip export controls.

However, a calculation made by Asia Times using public figures showed that Huawei can still easily finish its target of making 400,000 to 500,000 Ascend 910B chips this year even if its yield is as low as 20%. In case Huawei needs more capacity to make AI chips, it can reduce the production of HiSilicon's Kirin chips.

It remains unclear whether Huawei and SMIC have slowed the production of Kirin chips to accommodate Ascend 910B.

Despite a difference in yield, SMIC's capabilities are only three years behind TSMC's, based on the performance of the Chinese chips that were shipped, according to Hiroharu Shimizu , CEO of Tokyo-based TechanaLye, a semiconductor research company that disassembles and analyzes 100 electronic devices a year.

Shimizu told Nikkei in an interview last month that HiSilicon's design capabilities have also improved, given that its 7nm chips perform comparable to TSMC's 5nm products.

More chip export rules

Since the beginning of this year, the Dutch government has stopped granting licenses for ASML to export its NXT:2000i and subsequent DUV immersion systems to China.

On Friday, the Dutch government said ASML will need to apply for export licenses with it rather than the US government for shipments of its older machines – NXT:1970i and 1980i DUV immersion lithography systems. The new rule will take effect on September 7.

“I am making this decision for our security. We see that technological developments are creating more safety risks when exporting this specific production equipment. Especially in the current geopolitical climate,” Dutch Foreign Trade Minister Reinette Klever said in a statement on Friday.

“The Netherlands has a unique and leading position. That comes with a responsibility that we must take seriously,” he said.