Huawei's latest handset uses improved China-made chip, report shows

Dec 12 (Reuters) - ?The ?Kirin 9030, ?the chip that powers Huawei Technologies' latest flagship Mate 80 ?series handset, has been manufactured ?by China's top ?foundry SMIC with an improved version of 7 nanometres, which is still behind TSMC and Samsung, ?Canadian research firm ?TechInsights said.

The Kirin 9030 is manufactured using SMIC's N+3 process, ?a "scaled extension" of its previous ?7 nanometer (N+2) node, TechInsights said in a report published on ?December 8.

"However, in absolute terms, N+3 remains substantially less scaled than industry ?5 (nanometer) processes from TSMC and Samsung," it said.

Huawei and SMIC ?did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside ?regular business hours.

In October, China added TechInsights, which has been publishing regularly reports on Huawei and SMIC’s chip progress, to its unreliable entity ?list.

(Reporting by Che Pan, Brenda Goh and Gursimran Kaur; Editing ?by Christian Schmollinger)

Source: Reuters.