Dec 12 (Reuters) – Canadian research firm TechInsights said the Kirin 9030 chip that powers Huawei’s latest flagship Mate 80 series phones has been produced by China’s top foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) in an improved version of 7 nanometers, still lagging behind TSMC and Samsung.
TechInsights said in a report published on December 8 that the Kirin 9030 is manufactured using SMIC’s N+3 process, which is a “scale expansion” of its previous 7-nanometer (N+2) node.
“However, in absolute terms, the scale of N+3 is still much smaller than that of TSMC and Samsung’s Industrial 5 (nanometer) processes,” it said.
Huawei and SMIC did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside normal business hours.
In October, China added TechInsights, which has been publishing regular reports on Huawei and SMIC’s chip progress, to its list of unreliable entities.
(Reporting by Che Pan, Brenda Goh and Gursimran Kaur; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
