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Huawei wants to continue using Chinese chips, even if they are inferior

  • September 18, 2023
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The acting rotating chairman emphasizes that the gap with the West will remain if China does not use its own chips. Xu Zhijun, Huawei’s rotating chairman, said in

Huawei wants to continue using Chinese chips, even if they are inferior

The acting rotating chairman emphasizes that the gap with the West will remain if China does not use its own chips.

Xu Zhijun, Huawei’s rotating chairman, said in an interview with UDN that it is important to use home-made chips even if they lag behind foreign competitors. Zhijun makes this comment after being asked about the difficult production process of his own Kirin 9000 chip.

This chip surprised friends and foes in the Huawei Mate 60 earlier this month. This chip is baked by the Chinese SMIC in a specially developed 7-nanometer process. This confirms suspicions that Huawei is working closely with the largest Chinese chipmaker to circumvent US restrictions.

Even if the chip is a surprise, the Yields not high. This means that a lot of chips have to be thrown in the trash because they are not good enough. Zhijun confirms this, but at the same time says that the Kirin 9000 had to be built. “If we don’t use these chips, the hole will always be a hole and being left behind is always being left behind.”

Chip manufacturer SMIC

SMIC is the largest and most important chip manufacturer in China, which has to give the country a lifeline due to the trade war with the USA. Today TSMC is baking chips at 3 nanometers, SMIC is still struggling at 7 nanometers. The first 7nm production process, N+1, has so far only been used in very small chips for mining crypto coins. Huawei’s Kirin 9000 chip is reportedly made using the newer N+2 process, still 7 nanometers.

Nevertheless, Zhijun emphasizes that it is important to continue to develop. “Until recently, we couldn’t even make network card chips or RAID chips. We couldn’t make chips for power management in a server computer. So we have to deal with the fundamentals of the computer industry.”

He compares the level of foreign chips to a doctorate, while Chinese ones only come from the hand of an elementary school student. Despite this big difference, he emphasizes that developing its own chips is crucial for China and its technical infrastructure to prevent vulnerabilities and security leaks from external sources.

Source: IT Daily

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