Opened Huawei Phone... "Semiconductor Chip Design Joins 'Big Tech' Ranks Like Apple and Samsung"

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Analysis has emerged that China's 'Huawei' has reached a level of technological capability comparable to global big tech companies. It is said to possess the ability to design advanced semiconductors independently without relying on foreign technology.

On the 20th (local time), a foreign media outlet reported the analysis results of the application processor (AP) 'Kirin 9000S' of Huawei's recently released smartphone 'Mate 60 Pro.'

According to the report, the Kirin 9000S is equipped with eight central processing unit (CPU) cores. Among these, four are identical to the existing designs of the UK semiconductor design company ARM. However, the other half, four cores, are products independently designed by Huawei's semiconductor design company 'HiSilicon.'

Huawei Photo by Yonhap News

Most smartphone AP designs are based on ARM's technology. ARM provides the 'Instruction Set Architecture' (ISA), which is the blueprint fundamental to creating CPU cores, and also sells its own designed CPUs to other semiconductor companies for a fee.

Except for some big tech companies like Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Google, most companies tend to purchase ARM's off-the-shelf CPU cores.

However, Huawei is the first Chinese company to design its own cores using only ARM's ISA. This places it on a level comparable to top-tier big tech companies such as Apple and Samsung.

Designing CPUs independently requires enormous engineering manpower and research and development costs, so until now, only a few companies have been able to approach this method. According to the Financial Times, since Huawei was sanctioned by China's Ministry of Commerce in 2019, it appears to have shifted from relying on foreign technology to independent development.

Dylan Patel, senior analyst at semiconductor consulting group SemiAnalysis, said in a media interview, "It seems Huawei has made a breakthrough that enables independent design without excessive reliance on foreign technology."

Brady Wang, a researcher at global market research firm Counterpoint Research, also analyzed, "Huawei now has the opportunity to save on related licensing fees and differentiate itself from competitors who use externally developed processors as is."

However, the performance of the Kirin 9000S, which contains Huawei's independently designed cores, is still known to be far behind the highest-level CPUs.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.