Four years have passed since the United States government placed the Huawei, a Chinese manufacturer of mobile devices, electronics and infrastructure products, on the list of “untrustworthy entities”. In short, no North American company, or external companies that use US intellectual properties in their products and services, can do business with the company. The results were catastrophic: the restrictions caused the company to lose access to Android and Google services, as well as components from manufacturers such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, Xilinx and SK Hynix; they all left because they sold products that use US technologies. As a result, the once third largest cell phone company in the world… collapsed.
Mate 60 Pro uses memories from SK Hynix and SoC Kirin 9000s would be “impossible” to be made without US technologies, which Huawei does not have access to (Credit: Disclosure/Huawei) Huawei ended up selling the Honor division, and was left out of the expansion of 5G around the world, including in Brazil, thanks to a groundhog so as not to displease either China or the USA. Its mobile division ended up restricted to domestic consumption, with weaker hardware products, due to limited access to more recent technologies, which significantly affected the local development of chips, when Washington imposed restrictions on access to semiconductors by any Chinese companies. Exactly for this reason, the North American authorities are concerned about Huawei's latest cutting-edge cell phone, the Mate 60 Pro, launched in August 2023 on the Chinese market, which is equipped with a 7-nanometer Kirin SoC, something considered ” impossible” without the use of US technologies. The device's specifications place it in the high-end category, and preliminary tests and comparisons position it as a strong rival to the latest iPhones in China, even more so with its launch “coinciding” with a Beijing rule aimed at government officials, which is being extended to state-owned companies, prohibiting their members from using iGadgets, which has made Apple lose a lot of money. The Kirin 9000s processor was developed by the foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), the largest in China, and its launch raised all alarms regarding the printing process, as the company, thanks to restrictions, cannot buy extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, produced by companies such as the giant ASML. Under normal circumstances, SMIC could not possibly print the Kirin 9000s in-house, even if it had developed its own method, as it did not have access to essential machinery due to the restriction of semiconductors and ancillary technologies. It also cannot do business with outside companies, such as TSMC, to outsource production, at least not in 7nm. Analysts believe that China is doing its best to create its own semiconductor scenario, but the focus is not on the chip technology, but on who printed it. Designing a processor is complex, but the lithography machine is much, much more, and experts believe that País do Meio has not yet reached (and may never reach) the level of an ASML. However, the eyes on the Mate 60 Pro are not restricted to the SoC; The device's RAM and storage memories are more components that should not be there at all, as they come from the South Korean company SK Hynix, which cannot do business with Huawei. Teardowns revealed that the Huawei Mate 60 Pro has authentic LPDDR5 RAM and NAND Flash chips, with verified numbers and are not Chinese copies of Korean components, which left American regulators furious with SK Hynix, as this constitutes a blatant violation of market restrictions imposed on the Chinese company, which cannot have access to such memories. SK Hynix defended itself, and said in a statement that it “has no idea” how Huawei managed to gain access to its components. The company says it has been complying with the restrictions since they were imposed in 2019, and has not done business with the Chinese since then. There are those who say that Huawei had a stock of memories and has been using it since it was prevented from doing business with outside companies, which applies to NAND memories; the model used, the 176-layer UD310 4D with identification code HN8T25DEHKX077, was launched in 2020, when Huawei still had limited access to North American technologies; Shortly afterwards, the cut was complete. When it comes to LPDDR5 memory, things get more complicated. JEDEC published its specifications in February 2019, the banhammer came down on Huawei in May of the same year, and Samsung started mass printing the memories two months later, in July. The RAM, identified by the code H58GG6MK6G, could also have been stockpiled before the Chinese manufacturer was cut off from access to components from outside China, when it could still do limited business with external companies. The problem with the old stock hypothesis is the fact that the number of devices that Huawei can launch would be limited, and tends to shrink over the years. Therefore, it is possible that Huawei resorted to a simpler solution, such as using an orange company as an intermediary in the purchase of RAM and NAND memories, with the latter passing on the components, or appealing to the black market. If it was the first option, it does not exempt SK Hynix from blame. The South Korean company can be accused of negligence when making the sale, for not having checked who was buying, for example, it should have checked whether the potential customer had, or has, commercial links with China and its companies. Of course, there is the (remote) possibility that SK Hynix is lying, and knowingly sold its memories to Huawei, but if that happens, the wrath of regulators will fall on the company in the same way, or worse, as what happened with Chinese company. In any case, investigations continue. Meanwhile, you can purchase a Mate 60 Pro with 512 GB of internal space for ¥6,999, approximately R$4,736 (quote on 11/09/2023), of course, only if you are touring China; If you decide to import, you will pay “a little” more. Source: ExtremeTech
