Kirin 9000s 'is an improved 14 nm chip'

According to experts from Fomalhaut Techno Solutions, the Kirin 9000s on the Huawei Mate 60 Pro is actually a 14 nm chip modified closer to the 7 nm process.

When introducing the Mate 60 Pro phone at the end of August, Huawei did not mention anything about the chipset in the device. After disassembling the machine, experts from the research company TechInsights found that the chip was produced by China's largest foundry, using a 7 nm process node. This information excited Chinese users, while the technology world questioned whether SMIC violated US sanctions during the manufacturing process.

However, according to SCMP , Minatake Mitchell Kashio, CEO of electronics research company Fomalhaut Techno Solutions (Japan), said they disassembled to analyze the device and found that the Kirin 9000s' CPU was actually manufactured Manufactured using SMIC's 14 nm process. He said that the Chinese company has applied some special techniques to enhance the chip's performance, bringing it closer to the level of a 7 nm process node processor.

Kirin 9000S chip inside Mate 60 Pro model. Photo: TechInsights/FT

The smaller the manufacturing process node, the more efficient the processing chip will be because it allows more transistors to be packed into the chip. Therefore, the 7 nm processor chip performs much better and is more advanced than the 14 nm one. In September, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo also said there was no evidence that China could produce 7 nm chips "on a large scale".

Although denying that the Kirin 9000s is manufactured using a 7 nm process, Fomalhaut Techno Solutions did not mention in detail how Huawei or SMIC applied it to be able to upgrade a 14 nm chip closer to 7 nm. Mr. Kashio said there are many secrets behind Kirin 9000s.

Kirin 9000s is the first ARM chip with 8 cores that supports hyper-threading. The chip includes a main core clocked at 2.62 GHz, three medium cores clocked at 2.14 GHz and four power-saving cores.