Huawei's New Smartphone Is Equipped with a 7-nanometer Chip Produced by SMIC

echInsights, a Canadian research firm, stated that the Kirin 9030 chip powering Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.’s latest flagship smartphone series, the Mate 80, is manufactured by SMIC—the largest wafer foundry in China—using an enhanced 7-nanometer process. However, it still lags behind the process technologies of TSMC and Samsung in terms of manufacturing maturity.

According to Reuters, in a report released on Monday (December 8), TechInsights noted that the Kirin 9030 adopts SMIC’s N+3 process, which is a “scaled-up iteration” of the foundry’s previous 7-nanometer (N+2) node. The report pointed out that in absolute terms, the scaling level of the N+3 process still lags significantly behind the 5-nanometer processes of TSMC and Samsung.

Huawei launched its new-generation Mate 80 series smartphones at the end of November. Among the lineup, the premium Mate 80 Pro models are equipped with the Kirin 9030 Pro processor, while the standard Mate 80 variants feature the Kirin 9020 chip.

Last October, China’s Ministry of Commerce added TechInsights Inc. and its affiliated branches to the Unreliable Entity List. Prior to this, the firm had continuously published research reports on the chip development progress of Huawei and SMIC.