News U.S. officials doubt China's SMIC foundry can produce enough 7nm chips to satisfy Huawei's demand

Admin · Dec 13, 2023

U.S. officials say that while SMIC can make 7nm chips, their performance is lower than those of rivals, and their volumes may be lower than Huawei needs.

U.S. officials doubt China's SMIC foundry can produce enough 7nm chips to satisfy Huawei's demand : Read more

ThomasKinsley · Dec 13, 2023

Recap of the facts alone:

- Huawei's Kirin 9000 produced by TSMC in 2020 used the N5 process and is clocked faster than the 9000S.
- The HiSilicon Kirin 9000S uses a lower clockspeed but the in-house 7nm process is similar to TSMC's N5.
- Huawei and SMIC appear to be planning on producing millions of Kirin 9000S chips.

Some benchmark sites claim that the 9000S is slightly faster in CPU but slower in GPU tasks despite the slower clockspeeds. If all of this is accurate, then that would seem to indicate that China is currently 4-5 years behind the West in comparable technology.

The Historical Fidelity · Dec 14, 2023

ThomasKinsley said:
Recap of the facts alone:

- Huawei's Kirin 9000 produced by TSMC in 2020 used the N5 process and is clocked faster than the 9000S.
- The HiSilicon Kirin 9000S uses a lower clockspeed but the in-house 7nm process is similar to TSMC's N5.
- Huawei and SMIC appear to be planning on producing millions of Kirin 9000S chips.

Some benchmark sites claim that the 9000S is slightly faster in CPU but slower in GPU tasks despite the slower clockspeeds. If all of this is accurate, then that would seem to indicate that China is currently 4-5 years behind the West in comparable technology.