Over the past few years like clockwork, Huawei has launched two flagship series. In the spring, the photography-oriented “P” series was released and in the fall, the manufacturer distributes its most technologically advanced devices of the year with the Mate series. Such flagship phones should be powered by flagship chips, but Huawei has one major drawback thanks to the United States.
Rumors that the Huawei Kirin 9000L chip may drive the Huawei P50 series
Last May, the U.S. Department of Commerce changed an export rule that would require all foundries on the planet that use U.S. technology to obtain a license before they could legally ship components to Huawei. This caused the manufacturer’s plans to shrink. The company was TSMC’s second largest customer after Apple, and the foundry managed to deliver some leading Kirin 9000 chips before the new rules went into effect. It was used on the Mate 40 series and will give the folding power Size X2. What makes them cutting edge is that the chips were manufactured by TSMC using its 5nm process knot. Each chip supposedly contains more than 15 billion transistors.
Weibo tipster reveals some specifications of the rumored 5nm Kirin 9000L chipset
Huawei also designed the Kirin 9000E. This off-shoot of the Kirin 9000 has one large core of the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) and one small core compared to the two large NPU cores and one small core found on the latter. The NPU component is used to process tasks related to artificial intelligence (AI). The only other difference is that the Kirin 9000 has a 24-core GPU, but that the Kirin 9000E has a 22-core GPU. According to a report on China’s Weibo website (via Huawei Central), another Kirin 9000 variant may be on the way. It is rumored that the Kirin 9000L has a slower clock speed compared to the Kirin 9000 and 9000E. While the clock speed of the large core in the Kirin 9000 weighs 3.13 GHz, the large core of the Kirin 9000L runs at 2.86 GHz. Similar to the Kirin 9000E, the “L” version will also have one large NPU core and one small one. Furthermore, compared to the aforementioned 24 and 22 GPU cores on the Kirin 9000 and 9000E respectively, the Kirin 9000L carries 18 GPU cores on the Mali-G78 GPU with which it is equipped.
The Kirin 9000L will reportedly be manufactured by Samsung Foundry, the second largest contract foundry in the world after TSMC. The chip is manufactured using the 5nm EUV process knob of the foundry. EUV, or Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography, allows the foundry to mark waffles with incredibly thin patterns for placing circuits on a slide. The thinner the line, the higher the number of transistors that can fit in a chip, making them more powerful and energy efficient. However, Samsung Foundry is affected by the US export rule change, so it is not entirely clear whether Samsung will be able to participate in the production of the Kirin 9000L if there is such a chip.
The Huawei P50 series is reportedly powered by the Kirin 9000L chipset
What is also not clear at the moment is the future of the important relationship between the US and China. Under the previous US government, many Chinese enterprises were considered threats to US national security. Huawei and TikTok, parent ByteDance, were considered security risks, and Huawei said they were too closely committed to the Communist Chinese government. On the other hand, it seems that OnePlus can sell its phones and accessories in the US without any problems.
So far, talks between the new Biden administration and China have not shown much promise, according to media reports. It is possible that China may demand that Huawei be removed from the list of entities (which prohibits it from using supplies acquired by its US supply chain) and that the chip restrictions be removed before agreeing to join the US in to sit at the table. it would seem that the US has the leverage and the upper hand as far as Huawei is concerned, so we would not expect the Biden government to undo the ban and restrictions that are so deeply damaging to Huawei without first getting anything out of China.
