Huawei and China have clearly achieved a historic success by developing the Kirin 9000s chip entirely with their own resources. With this chip, Huawei also started to provide 5G support in the Mate 60 series. But it seems that rumblings are starting to emerge from the other side of the ocean, from the United States. And some details can get quite interesting. Let’s take a look at these.

Kirin 9000s and SMIC

While SMIC has clearly made a technological breakthrough by completing the development of its 2nd generation 7nm-class (N+2) fabrication technology and starting high-volume production at this manufacturing node, it has to obtain an export license from the US government before supplying the Kirin 9000s system-on-chip to blacklisted Huawei. had to buy it because this production process uses American technology. For this reason, a request is made to the US Senate that SMIC violates sanctions and a complete export ban should be implemented.

SMIC’s development of its 2nd generation 7nm manufacturing process raises concerns about the enforcement of US intellectual property and technology export restrictions. House of Representatives Committee on Competition with China Chairman Mike Gallagher joined the bandwagon, emphasizing the need for stricter enforcement of US technology exports. Gallagher, who advocated a complete halt to US technology exports to both Huawei and SMIC, stated that this would further increase tensions and complexities in the US-China technology trade environment.

However, it is unclear whether SMIC used US technologies when moving to the N+2 production process. According to figures in the US Senate, SMIC could not carry out this production without US technology.

Due to export restrictions introduced in 2020, all American technologies supplied to Huawei or its subsidiaries require an export license from the US Department of Commerce. And of course, it is not possible to obtain this license in practice for advanced technology. Therefore, Huawei lost access to the advanced 7nm and below processes of leading semiconductor manufacturers Samsung Foundry and TSMC.

SMIC is also blacklisted in the USA and its exports are subject to license conditions. However, although it is not known how, it seems that SMIC has produced Huawei’s Kirin 9000s chip without obtaining an export license in order to produce N+2.

Huawei and Sk Hynix crisis

As if it wasn’t enough for SMIC to produce the Kirin 9000s chip despite all the obstacles, another mystery has recently emerged. According to what is stated, SK hynix branded memory and flash storage are used in the Kirin 9000s chip.

Currently, SK hynix has launched an official investigation into how the company’s LPDDR5 and NAND flash memory found its way into the Huawei Mate 60 Pro. The Korean chip manufacturer reiterated that it has not sold any of its products to Huawei since the USA blacklisted Huawei in 2020.

However, in a teardown video of the Mate 60 Pro, SK hynix’s UD310 176-layer 4D NAND flash is clearly visible. The UD310 is a high-capacity and high-performance NAND storage unit that complies with the UFS 3.1 standard, and the 512 GB capacity HN8T25DEHKX077 variant offers sequential read and write speeds of up to 2,050 MB/s and 1,700 MB/s, respectively. The properties of LPDDR5 memory, popularly called “ghost RAM”, remain a mystery and it is completely unclear how these memories enter the chip.

The most likely explanation that comes to mind is that Huawei may have created a large inventory of SK hynix NAND or LPDDR5 before the export restrictions. Because SK hynix announced the UD310 in 2020, which coincides with the time when the USA added Huawei to its trade blacklist.

The answer to all these mysteries lies in Huawei. However, the brand, which quietly launched the Mate 60, Mate 60 Pro and Mate 60 Pro Plus models, is keeping its mouth tightly shut for now. Huawei’s historic success with Kirin 9000s is currently under US scrutiny.