Since the introduction of the Huawei Qingyun L540 laptopThe technology industry has tried to find out the origin of the processor HiSilicon Kirin 9006Cthereby overcoming the reluctance of Huawei, which preferred not to talk about it too much.
There were two hypotheses: a remarkable advance in Chinese innovation and development capabilities or a chipset that the Shenzhen company had purchased before the sanctions.
To clarify the doubt, the TechInsights website opened the laptop and analyzed it in a process that is technically “Reverse engineering“.
The technology portal would have concluded that the HiSilicon Kirin 9006C is actually produced by TSMC, thereby also dispelling the debates about the involvement of the Chinese SMIC (also registered on the American Entity List). The SoC is therefore based on an older and less efficient production process from 2020, and Huawei would therefore use old stocks of 5nm TSMC hardware.
Will it be enough to dispel doubts about who also makes the 5G processors built into Huawei’s latest smartphones? Probably not. It remains to be seen how close Smic is to producing more advanced processors and, above all, with what waste capacity. Information that will not leave the corporate sector for the time being.
