U.S. tech played a role in building Huawei’s Kirin 9000s AP for the Mate 60 Pro،
Exactly one year to the day after the United States made things difficult for Huawei by placing the company on the Entity List, the United States has hit Huawei again by announcing a change to its export rules. The new rules prevented foundries using U.S. technology from shipping cutting-edge chips to Huawei without a license. Deemed a threat to national security, Huawei has been blocked from working with its US supply chain including Google, and from sourcing its own Kirin 5G chips designed by its HiSilicon unit.
Until last year, the last Huawei phone with a 5G application processor (AP) was the Mate 40, released in 2020 with the Kirin 9000 SoC inside. Once Huawei ran out of these chips, it had to obtain a license from the US Department of Commerce to purchase Snapdragon chipsets from Qualcomm. These chips have been modified to not work with 5G networks. As a result, in 2022, the flagship P50, Mate 50 and P60 models had to use these 4G-only Snapdragon hotspots.
The Kirin 9000 was built by SMIC using its 7nm node
But last August, Huawei stunned the world by introducing the Mate 60 Pro, powered by the 7nm Kirin 9000, the first 5G chip to power a Huawei phone since 2020. US lawmakers were shocked and Bloomberg reports today that China's largest foundry, SMIC, built the Kirin 9000s chipset with technology obtained from two American companies, Applied Materials Inc. and Lam Research Corp.
Before US lawmakers got a clue, the report notes that SMIC had acquired technology from Applied Materials Inc and Lam Research Corp. which was used to help create the Kirin 9000 before the aforementioned US export rule changed in October 2022. Although nothing inappropriate was considered. Since the Kirin 9000 was unveiled alongside the Mate 60 Pro, the US has blocked SMIC from receiving even more US imports.
Since Huawei launched the Mate 60 Pro, the company has benefited from a rise in nationalism as Huawei has once again become one of the leading phone manufacturers in China.
