News Huawei's New Mystery 7nm Chip from Chinese Fab Defies US Sanctions

[Admin]

Huawei's Kirin 9000S that powers Huawei could pack numerous breakthroughs.

Huawei's New Mystery 7nm Chip from Chinese Fab Defies US Sanctions : Read more

 

[everettfsargent]

Defies US sanctions is just a bit rich here, in my honest opinion. If they got stuff that was under sanctions that would be one thing. Its like the US is the Big Bad Wolf that will huff and puff and blow China's house down. But China made their own bricks!

 

[pointa2b]

This is to be completely expected that they'd figure out a way. They don't want to fall too far behind.

 

[Shirou]

The stacking refers to the LPDDR5X memory IC on-top of the SOC die I believe.
Also amazing is the 4.999999G technology.

 

[BethelOne]

Maybe they stockpiled those chips in 2020 before the sanctions kicked in. 7 nm chips was the standard back then. As far as I remember the chip prices had a peak back then and somewhere those chips had to go.

 

[gg83]

The stacking refers to the LPDDR5X memory IC on-top of the SOC die I believe.
Also amazing is the 4.999999G technology.

AI5G

 

[Laika21]

Maybe they stockpiled those chips in 2020 before the sanctions kicked in. 7 nm chips was the standard back then. As far as I remember the chip prices had a peak back then and somewhere those chips had to go.

Kirin 9000S is based upon 4x Arm Cortex 510 based core architecture, which is launched in 2021, 1 year after the sanctions initiated against Huawei, Then How come Huawei managed to stockpile millions chips in 2020 made upon an architecture released in 2021.. That is very highly unlikely.

 

[pug_s]

Defies US sanctions is just a bit rich here, in my honest opinion. If they got stuff that was under sanctions that would be one thing. Its like the US is the Big Bad Wolf that will huff and puff and blow China's house down. But China made their own bricks!

Agreed. Sanctions is to bar Huawei from using US tech. If the Chinese developed their own tech, it didn't defy US sanctions at all.

 

[Zerk2012]

One thing that has already been proven is that some exports that were sanctioned were just shipped to another Conutry and repackaged so what makes people think they don't get imports the same way.

 

[tooltalk]

Agreed. Sanctions is to bar Huawei from using US tech. If the Chinese developed their own tech, it didn't defy US sanctions at all.

a couple of key points some of you are missing here:
1. China does not have a lot of native chip/manufacturing talent, or chip manufacturing supply-chain.
2. SMIC's 7nm was developed quite a while ago -- by a former TSMC head of R&D, Mong Sang Liang, now co-CEO. They already had all the equipments they needed.
3. the big question was not if China could "develop" their own 7nm, but how efficient and cost-effective their process and how fast yield would improve.
4. Sanction failed in that it came too little and too late; not b/c China did something impossible.

 

[parkerthon]

4. Sanction failed in that it came too little and too late; not b/c China did something impossible.

Too late to stop this development I guess. But I’d argue the timing of the export ban has been highly effective and has been executed as well as one could hope diplomatically by drawing in all the key countries to support the ban to the hilt. The 2020 tarriffs were something else completely and not effective at all. That said, It won’t stop China from figuring this apparently crazy complex lithography tech out on their own eventually. The point was to knee cap China’s hostile use of technology so we(and other western style democracies) could get a lead in this next industrial revolution that is being spurned by AI supposedly. China has an unfair advantage in that they have no ethical boundaries to slow them down when developing and using this technology.

 

[thisisaname]

Wonder where they are getting their wafers from.

 

[bit_user]

There is an essential detail, though: to print outstanding features on a 5nm-class node or a refined 7nm-class process technology, SMIC has to heavily use multi-patterning, which is an expensive technology that affects yields and costs, so the economic efficiency of SMIC's 5nm-class technology is likely considerably lower than that of market leaders Intel, TSMC, and Samsung Foundry.

Not only that, but probably makes the node non-viable for large server-class CPUs and AI chips. In contrast, phone SoCs tend to be rather small - especially if they're using chip-stacking to put some of it on a cheaper, older node.

 

[bit_user]

One thing that has already been proven is that some exports that were sanctioned were just shipped to another Conutry and repackaged so what makes people think they don't get imports the same way.

That applies to commodity, mass-market products. It does not apply to specialty lithography equipment costing tens of $Millions, or more.

Plus, it's not like you can just unbox such equipment, plug it in, and go. It takes a lot of support to set it up, configure it, calibrate it, and get it integrated into your production process.

 

[ralei]

Too late to stop this development I guess. But I’d argue the timing of the export ban has been highly effective and has been executed as well as one could hope diplomatically by drawing in all the key countries to support the ban to the hilt. The 2020 tarriffs were something else completely and not effective at all. That said, It won’t stop China from figuring this apparently crazy complex lithography tech out on their own eventually. The point was to knee cap China’s hostile use of technology so we(and other western style democracies) could get a lead in this next industrial revolution that is being spurned by AI supposedly. China has an unfair advantage in that they have no ethical boundaries to slow them down when developing and using this technology.

As the Moore's law is near its limit, there is no surprise for China with some many engineers to figure it out. Talking about no ethical boundaries, no country in the world beats America . Just look at the recent history such as Iraq war hoax. Using high-tech drones killed civilians in mid east and many other things. So there is no moral high ground here about high technology such as AI.

 

[COLGeek]

Closing this thread. Thank you to those who stayed on topic.