A teardown of Huawei Technologies Co.'s latest laptop shows that the device uses chips from Taiwan, not mainland China. After dismantling the device for Bloomberg News, research firm TechInsights found that the Qingyun L540 notebook is built with a 5-nanometer chip produced by TSMC in 2020, around the time that U.S. sanctions cut off Huawei's ties with chip manufacturers. This means that at least this batch of 5-nanometer process components has nothing to do with Huawei's domestic chip manufacturing partner SMIC.
Last August, Huawei caused a stir in the United States and China when it released a smartphone powered by a 7-nanometer processor manufactured by Shanghai Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. A teardown by the Canada-based research outfit for Bloomberg News shows the Mate 60 Pro's chip is just a few years behind state-of-the-art technology, an advancement that U.S. trade restrictions are designed to prevent. The news sparked celebrations in China's tech community and a domestic debate in the United States over the effectiveness of sanctions.
In the latest teardown, TechInsights discovered the Kirin 9006C processor, which is manufactured using TSMC's 5nm process and will be assembled and packaged around the third quarter of 2020. Industry experts had speculated that SMIC achieved the milestone by developing a workaround to U.S. sanctions, which would mark its second technology victory in as many months.
Representatives for Huawei and TSMC had no immediate comment when contacted by Bloomberg.
The progress Huawei has made with its Mate 60 smartphone, launched in 2023, has solidified Huawei's position as a benchmark company in China's efforts to move away from Western technology and create domestic alternatives. Chinese consumers snapped up the smartphone in the final quarter after hearing the news, helping Huawei cross the symbolic $100 billion revenue threshold again, a shift that began to erode Apple's iPhone dominance.
For this Shenzhen company, which is on the cusp of the storm, entering the 5nm field will be a major leap, bringing it closer to the most advanced processes currently in use (mainly focused on the 3nm node). Before TSMC cut ties with Huawei, it had been supplying the Chinese company with chips advanced to its 5nm process.
It's unclear how Huawei sourced the three-year-old processors, but the Chinese company has been stockpiling vital semiconductors since the United States began cutting off Huawei's access to parts and equipment around the world. Although Huawei has been on Washington's entity list since 2019, it was not until 2020 that TSMC stopped accepting orders from Huawei to comply with tightening U.S. trade restrictions.
Huawei has since invested billions of dollars in chip research and stockpiling over the past few years, while also building a network of domestic suppliers and manufacturing partners, in some cases with government support.