Huawei’s latest phone, the Mate 60, shouldn’t exist. The sanctions and blockades that the US has imposed on China for years make it practically impossible for the manufacturer to access chips with a sufficient level of miniaturization and connectivity that today is made in mobile phones from other manufacturers.
But, against all odds, the phone not only has compatibility with 5G networks but is also the first to be manufactured in China in a 7-nanometer process, a level of miniaturization that requires special lithography equipment to which China, initially, does not have access.
This level of miniaturization has long since been surpassed by other manufacturers. Today the vast majority of telephone processors are manufactured in 5 or 4 nanometer processes. Most of it is produced at TSMC factories in Taiwan, the rest at semiconductor factories in South Korea, Japan or the US. The next iPhone, to be announced next week, is expected to be the first phone with an even more advanced processor, manufactured using a 3-nanometer process. The figure refers to the distance that separates the gates of each of the millions of transistors integrated into a chip. The smaller this distance, the more powerful and efficient the processors are, since a greater number of transistors can be integrated on the same surface, generating less heat during operation.
When a manufacturer, even a Chinese one, wants to use the most advanced processors, they often turn to these providers, especially Qualcomm (a Californian company). Since 2019, however, Huawei has been blacklisted by the US Department of Commerce and no US company, with very specific exceptions, can do business with it.
This blockade has had devastating effects on the brand’s mobiles, which until not long ago was one of the most important manufacturers in the world. The problem isn’t just that you can’t get access to the latest chips. Although its phones, for example, use an operating system based on the same code as Android, they also don’t have access to Google’s official app stores or services, which has significantly reduced their appeal.
The company has managed to launch some phones with 5G connection but in very limited productions and thanks to the collection of chips that it managed to do before the sanctions came into force.
After its inclusion in the list, Huawei has had no choice but to bet on the Kirin processors from the Chinese company Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), which for years have tried to position themselves as a low-cost alternative to Qualcomm’s Snapdragons.
In 2020, however, a new wave of trade restrictions left SMIC without access to today’s most advanced lithography equipment. Since then its chips have been “stuck” in a 14-nanometer manufacturing process.
The announcement of the new processor in the Mate 60 seems to indicate, however, that SMIC has found a way to obtain new lithography equipment or modify those it has access to to achieve a higher level of miniaturization, probably in exchange for reducing the amount of viable chips on each wafer (and thus increasing the cost).
China is trying to revitalize the semiconductor sector with a major injection of capital, in a bid to develop its own technology capable of competing with the processes and machinery used by semiconductor makers in Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. The launch of this new phone and its chip in a way is the starting gun in this new race.
On Tuesday, one of the US national security advisers, Jake Sullivan, assured that the government is trying to obtain more information about the manufacturing process of these new processors and the way in which China would have managed to circumvent the commercial blockades. The country and many of its European partners, including Spain, still consider that Huawei’s products may pose a serious danger to national security. Not all have blocked sales of phones to consumers, as the US has, but the vast majority ban the use of Huawei’s network equipment in mobile network infrastructure.