Latest news with #HiSilicon
Phone Arena
6 days ago
- Phone Arena
China's SMIC may have used older lithography gear to build Huawei's new 5nm chip
China's largest foundry, SMIC, is also the third-largest foundry in the world. Thanks to U.S. and Dutch sanctions, the foundry cannot obtain cutting-edge lithography machines. Without the ability to use extreme ultraviolet lithography machines (EUV) to transfer circuitry patterns to silicon wafers, SMIC was believed to be limited to producing chips using its 7nm node. We are now in the middle of an interesting mystery. Huawei's new Mate Book Pro laptop runs HarmonyOS and is powered by the Kirin X90 chip designed by Huawei's HiSilicon chip design unit. One leaker says that the X90 is a repurposed Kirin 9010 with a different layout of the CPU cores. We should know for sure sometime over the next few days when in-depth reviews of the chip are expected to be released. The Kirin 9010 AP was used to power Huawei's photography-based Pura 70 flagship series that was released in April 2024 and it was built using SMIC's 7nm N+2 process node. Did SMIC really build a 5nm chip using DUV? | Image credit-X A tweet on "X" from leaker @Jukanlosreve credited Chinese state-run broadcaster CCTV with running the report about the 5nm node for the X90. Another X user, @zephyr_z9, claims that the Kirin X90 has a transistor density of 125 million transistors per mm2. That makes it less dense than TSMC's 5nm node (approximately 138 million transistors per mm2) but close to the density used with Samsung Foundry's 5nm node. What makes this amazing is that it appears to have been achieved using a DUV machine. Not all of the numbers were positive. One analyst reportedly discovered that SMIC is producing 3,000 wafers per month with an extremely low 20% yield. Most foundries want to see a minimum yield of 70% before starting mass production of a chip. Despite the anemic yield, if SMIC is able to produce 5nm chips using DUV, this will worry U.S. lawmakers who have been concerned about Huawei's ability to design cutting-edge silicon for the Chinese military and AI even with U.S. sanctions.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Suspected SK hynix HBM tech leaker arrested boarding flight to China
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A man suspected of attempting to smuggle SK hynix tech secrets to China was apprehended at South Korea's Incheon International Airport earlier this month. DigiTimes reports that the former employee subcontractor aimed to leak the firm's proprietary high-bandwidth memory (HBM) packaging technology to entities based in China. According to the source report, authorities had been aware of the activities of suspect 'Mr Kim' for several months. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's Industrial Technology Security Investigation Unit made the dramatic airport arrest, moments before flight boarding, and charged Kim with violating South Korea's trade secret and unfair competition laws. Its investigators say that Kim stole critical data about HBM at around the same time he resigned as a subcontractor at SK hynix, at the beginning of the year. Korean prosecutors allege that Kim kept printed and photographed records from his time at SK hynix. He went as far as removing SK hynix branding and 'confidential' markings from any material he captured, it is claimed. In total, reports say Kim was caught with a haul of 11,000 images from his time at SK hynix. Boldly, Kim is even said to have cited some of these stolen documents in job applications to Chinese firms, including Huawei's HiSilicon. Above, we mentioned that the stolen proprietary data was mostly about HBM technology. More precisely, the almost-leaked SK hynix secrets were focused on the backend packaging stage of HBM, and hybrid bonding techniques, says reports. HBM is widely used in AI accelerators, so it is understandable that Chinese rivals would covet SK hynix's work on fine-tuning the production of this kind of computer memory. The case of Mr Kim is possibly only the tip of the iceberg, and there have been several other high-profile tech leaks to China involving rival companies like Samsung, for example. South Korea already has reasonably strong deterrents to stem semiconductor IP theft. Individuals can face fines up to the equivalent of US$71,000 and up to 10 years behind bars. Harsher penalties and sentences can be imposed where strategic sectors fall victim to IP theft. Nevertheless, Korean authorities are making efforts to bolster legal deterrents, say reports.
GSM Arena
20-05-2025
- GSM Arena
Teardown reveals the Kirin 8020 chipset inside the nova 14 Ultra
Huawei announced its nova 14 series yesterday without a trace of information regarding their chipsets. Luckily, Chinese social media has once again come through and user @FixedFocus shared more details about the SoC inside the nova 14 Ultra. The device is equipped with the new Kirin 8020 chipset. The preliminary verdict – it's an underclocked version of the Kirin 9020 from the Mate 70 series. The chip apparently features the same 1+3+4 CPU configuration, though with slightly downclocked speeds. Kirin 8020 gets 1x prime core @2.29GHz, 3x cores @2.05GHz and 4x efficiency units @1.3GHz. The CPU is joined by the Maleoon 920 GPU with 2x processing units clocked @840MHz. Huawei nova 14 Ultra teardown and the Kirin 8020 chipset The teardown reveals that the Kirin 8020 inside the nova 14 Ultra features a 30% larger package area which makes it similar in size to the Kirin 9010 – the chip inside the Pura 70 series. Kirin 8020 comes with HiSilicon branding and bears the Hi62B0 identifier. Huawei also managed to integrate the Beidou and Tiantong satellite connectivity into the new Kirin 8020 chipset. Source (in Chinese)
South China Morning Post
16-05-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Huawei's chip unit doubled revenue last year as firm gains China smartphone market share
Revenue for HiSilicon, Huawei Technologies ' chip design unit, doubled last year owing to the telecoms equipment giant's comeback in the high-end smartphone market, although its long-term growth still faces challenges, according to Counterpoint Research. HiSilicon's 'strong and loyal customer base in China' helped revenue jump 100 per cent in 2024, according to a report published last week. Its market share also grew on the popularity of its Pura 70 and Mate 70 series smartphones, Counterpoint analyst Akash Jatwala wrote. HiSilicon last year captured 12 per cent of the global premium Android smartphone system-on-a-chip market, up from 8 per cent in 2023, Counterpoint said. The market is largely dominated by US-based Qualcomm , which held 59 per cent of the market last year, ahead of South Korea-based Samsung Electronics , which had 13 per cent. Huawei's chip unit is likely to retain its third-place position this year, according to Counterpoint. Amid Huawei's success in designing its own chips, other Chinese tech firms have sought to do the same, including rival Xiaomi . The Beijing-based company is launching its smartphone chipset Xring O1 later this month, founder and CEO Lei Jun said in a post on Weibo on Thursday, without sharing any details.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Former SK hynix employee transferred advanced chip packaging technologies to Huawei
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A former SK Hynix employee has been formally accused of illegally transferring technologies related to advanced chip packaging used for 3D NAND, HBM, and multi-chiplet assemblies as well as CMOS image sensors to Huawei's HiSilicon division, reports DigiTimes citing the Seoul Central District Prosecutor's office. There is an interesting wrinkle in this story: Huawei's HiSilicon did not directly ask for specific technologies. While working at Huawei, the suspect allegedly took IP related to CMOS image sensors (CIS) and hybrid bonding chip packaging technology that is used for 3D NAND, HBM3/HBM3E/HBM4 memory, as well as advanced stacked multi-chiplet packages (e.g., TSMC's SoIC and Intel's Foveros 3D). It is unclear whether the suspect's targets were hybrid bonding and image sensors, or 'just' hybrid bonding as modern CMOS sensors also use hybrid bonding. SK Hynix reportedly clarified that the leaked bonding-related information concerned general wafer-to-wafer processes and not the specific hybrid bonding technique currently being developed or used for commercial products. For Chinese companies like Huawei (which does not have access to advanced process technologies and packaging methods used by TSMC and SK hynix) as well as SMIC (which does not have access to the latest lithography equipment made by ASML), getting wafer bonding know-how from SK hynix, which had licensed such technologies from Xperi, may be considered as a major breakthrough as wafer bonding is becoming increasingly important for multiple semiconductor applications. The individual in question, a South Korean citizen named only in the complaint by his surname, Kim, previously worked for the Chinese unit of SK hynix. Authorities allege that in 2022 he secured a position with HiSilicon and, during the hiring process, improperly accessed and misused internal data belonging to SK hynix. Kim reportedly printed out and captured photographs of internal files against policy. Investigators discovered that over 11,000 photographs of confidential content were taken, and steps were allegedly made to mask the origin by removing company identifiers such as brand logos and secrecy labels from the images. Evidence indicates that Kim submitted these materials as part of job applications to two separate companies in China, using them to enhance his qualifications. Authorities now claim this was a calculated effort to secure employment using unlawfully obtained information from his former employer. The report confirms that many technologies developed in China in general and by Huawei specifically originate from multi-national corporations. But there is an interesting twist: Huawei did not explicitly ask the suspect to bring it SK hynix's trade secrets (even though the company is known for poaching highly-skilled employees from world-class companies by offering them huge salaries), but accepted them as part of the hiring process. The case has drawn attention in South Korea due to rising concerns about the outflow of specialized semiconductor knowledge, specifically as China is trying hard to achieve semiconductor self-sufficiency. It highlights the increasing risks around workforce migration and the global effort to enforce tighter control over the transmission of high-value industrial IP. This is not the first time when an SK hynix employee left for Huawei and takes the company's IP with them. Last year the Suwon District Court sentenced one of SK hynix's employees who departed to Huawei with 4,000 secret documents to 18 months behind bars and a fine. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.
