The newly released Huawei Mate 60 Pro is equipped with the self-developed 5G 7 nm Kirin 9000S chip.
Despite facing significant sanctions from the U.S. government since 2020, China’s Huawei is alleged to have used semiconductor chips produced by Samsung Electronics, U.S.-based Micron, and Japan-based Kioxia. Questions regarding the effectiveness of sanctions against China are being raised, especially following revelations that Huawei’s new smartphone models include NAND flash from SK hynix.
On Sept. 25, Taiwan’s DigiTimes reported that in addition to SK hynix, the main smartphones and tablets Huawei released over the past three years also incorporated memory semiconductors from Samsung Electronics, Micron, and Kioxia. This means chips from representative memory semiconductor companies of South Korea, the U.S., and Japan have all been used in Huawei products.
DigiTimes further highlighted that Huawei’s new products did not use chips from Chinese memory companies Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC) and ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT). Following the U.S. export controls in August 2020, global major memory corporations had halted direct transactions with Huawei.
However, over the past three years, Huawei’s newly launched smartphones and tablets are found to be blended with Samsung and Micron’s mobile DRAM as well as Kioxia’s flash memory. Earlier, upon dissecting Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro, both DRAM and NAND flash from SK hynix were detected. SK hynix clarified, “After U.S. sanctions were imposed, we no longer deal with Huawei.”
As Huawei is revealed to have used memory semiconductor products not only from South Korea but also from the U.S. and Japan, skepticism over the effectiveness of the sanctions is growing. An industry insider commented, “Controlling the entire supply chain of memory semiconductors is challenging, and unless it’s related to manufacturing technology, it’s tough to categorize it as a security threat.” This implies that even if companies adhere to sanctions against China, products can still find their way into China through resale in other countries or through multiple intermediaries.
There is speculation that prior to the enforcement of the 2020 export controls, Huawei had stockpiled products from major memory companies such as Samsung Electronics and SK hynix. Consequently, these stockpiled products might have been utilized in the smartphones and tablets shipped by Huawei between 2021 and 2022.
There’s growing evidence suggesting that Huawei has been circumventing the sanctions on using South Korean, U.S., and Japanese semiconductor products through stockpiling and alternative channels. This brings forth analyses suggesting that China’s semiconductor manufacturing capabilities might still be lagging. For instance, over the past three years, Huawei’s mobile products have employed LPDDR5 DRAM, which neither YMTC nor CXMT have yet reached in terms of technology.
While CXMT recently announced the development of cutting-edge high bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI servers, reports suggest they are still operating mainly with a 20-nm process. In contrast, Samsung Electronics had already pioneered the development of 14-nm mobile DRAM LPDDR5X using the EUV process as early as November 2021.