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Cellphones China Government Hardware

Huawei Shocks With Advanced New Smartphone Built With South Korean Memory Chips (cnn.com) 67

Posted by EditorDavid from the Hynix-inside dept.
Huawei's launch last week of the Mate 60 Pro smartphone "shocked industry experts," reports CNN, who didn't understand how Huawei "would have the ability to manufacture such an advanced smartphone following sweeping efforts by the United States to restrict China's access to foreign chip technology."

And in a related note, CNN adds that South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix "is investigating how two of its memory chips mysteriously ended up inside the Mate 60 Pro, a controversial smartphone launched by Huawei last week." Shares in Hynix fell more than 4% on Friday after it emerged that two of its products, a 12 gigabyte (GB) LPDDR5 chip and 512 GB NAND flash memory chip, were found inside the Huawei handset by TechInsights, a research organization based in Canada specializing in semiconductors, which took the phone apart for analysis. "The significance of the development is that there are restrictions on what SK Hynix can ship to China," G Dan Hutcheson, vice chair of TechInsights, told CNN. "Where do these chips come from? The big question is whether any laws were violated."

A Hynix spokesperson told CNN Friday that it was aware of its chips being used in the Huawei phone and had started investigating the issue.

The company "no longer does business with Huawei since the introduction of the U.S. restrictions against the company," it said in a statement... Industry insiders said it was possible that Huawei had purchased the memory chips from the secondary market and not directly from the manufacturer. It's also possible Huawei may have had a stockpile of components accumulated before the U.S. export curbs kicked in fully.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader hackingbear for sharing the news.
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Huawei Shocks With Advanced New Smartphone Built With South Korean Memory Chips More

Huawei Shocks With Advanced New Smartphone Built With South Korean Memory Chips

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  • OK, so they made one. Surely to be successful they need the parts to make 10s of 1000s of them

    • They wouldn't make one if they didn't have secure supplies to mass produce.

      Also, they won't be making "10s of 1000s". They'll likely be manufacturing 10s of millions. Huawei phones are popular in China, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. By population, that's half the world.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Huawei phones are popular in the UK too. They have sub brands like Honour as well. They are good value for money and flagship quality. The only real issue is the lack of Google services like their app store, but the Huawei one seems to have most popular apps.

    • They're being produced in some kind of volume, but interestingly, they apparently weren't marketed or advertised, or even announced - they just showed up in stores.

      I expect that this is more of a PR/propaganda thing than a money-making exercise, due to the low yields they must be experiencing. But they can pump them out, no problem.

  • Manufacture everything in China (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Saturday September 09, 2023 @03:42PM (#63835208) Homepage Journal

    But then act surprised when Chinese products have the same chips in them. Seriously, you can go to a hundred different distributors in a city like Shenzhen and have them deliver whatever you want from their warehouse to your factory. It's kind of how things work in all of China's special economic zones, and it's one reason why foreign companies use them for manufacturing products that have complex supply chains for components.

  • Oh my, harumpf! (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by byronivs ( 1626319 )
    Wha wha wha, fwa fwa. How dare them? Shocked SHOCKED! I tell you. Simply NOT possible. But we... and we're... oh posh. Can't be. We're simply too good for that to happen to us good people of the world.

  • Why is everyone so scared of all this? (Score:3)

    by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Saturday September 09, 2023 @04:46PM (#63835298)

    Why is everyone so worried about China being able to make (or in this case obtain) advanced chips?

    I keep seeing mentions about "military applications" but what exactly could they do with these chips they can't do otherwise? More sophisticated AI autopilots for drones? Advanced supercomputers to help design future weapons? AI to make deep fakes of important people and use them to spread propaganda? Better guidance systems for rockets and missiles? Skynet?

    • We created the (so-called) monster. Now we are (so-called) afraid of it.

      America makes me laugh. I gotta move. Anyone need an old scraggly room mate?

      • We created the (so-called) monster. Now we are (so-called) afraid of it.

        America makes me laugh. I gotta move. Anyone need an old scraggly room mate?

        The USA takes a very short term view of things. Can't plan past the next 4 years. They are dragging the rest of us down with them.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Just wait when everyone fearmongers against India as well. Maybe it will take a decade or so. The West is going to figure out that India doesn't give a fuck what the West thinks either.

    • Why is everyone so worried about China being able to make (or in this case obtain) advanced chips?

      Actually is both. They were able to MAKE the microprocessor in china. Designed by HiSilicon, a wholy owned subsidiary of Hawei, and manufactured on a ~7nm equivalent process by SMIC. Both fully chinese, both sanctioned.

      Meanwhile, for some reason, instead of going to YMTC (another chinese sanctioned entity) for Flash and DRAM, they in this case "OBTAINED" those chips from SKhynix. Why? Only especulation at this time.

      • Could also be old stock. Or just RAM obtained on the open market without Hynix knowing. Hard to stop.
        While YMTC makes advanced flash, they still use a lot of US tools in the process (and setting up to use alternatives, since those US ones are now banned). Them selling to Huawei rightnow would be violating US sanctions, which I guess they want to avoid if not really needed.
        Also, Chinese DRAM still isn't up to par. Their weakest link in the chain right now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      I keep seeing mentions about "military applications" but what exactly could they do with these chips they can't do otherwise?

      that's just the populist argument. nobody fears military action from china now. they fear its prosperity. this thing about tech is purely economic war to try and stifle their progress and, guess what, it's failing.

      the real fear is that china is becoming an economic, technological and military great power that rivals the us, which has had no actual rivals for a while. the us doens't like rivals, as it hampers their ability to freely roam around. then again, this fear only manifests itself in these incoherent

      • Re:Why is everyone so scared of all this? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Saturday September 09, 2023 @06:57PM (#63835510)

        Nobody fears Chinese prosperity except maybe environmentalists. What people fear is China projecting their despotism abroad.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Nobody fears Chinese prosperity except maybe environmentalists.

          Wrong, American leaders fear Chinese prosperity because it contradicts the "Western" == "Modern" narrative, namely, you *need* to westernize to become modern and prosper. That would give ideas to poor countries in Africa, make them question if they should continue to grow crops like coffee to sell to the west while their own people are starving.

          A prosperous China also give alternatives to US sanctions, like what is happening with Iran now. It weakens the US hegemony.

          Not only that, American elites also rem

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      The US gains a lot of advantages from being the largest economy in the world. China is almost as big and still gaining, so it's time to leverage that world's biggest position to try and keep it. You can't say "we like 'em poor" though, so "military applications" it is.

      It looks like China has managed to put together a domestic 7 nm equivalent chip making process much, much faster than expected though, so things are probably going to get interesting.

    • That SoC isn't terribly advanced. It is reportedly big, hot, and slow.

      SMIC's N+2 process does not impress.

    • in a word; AGI, as noted in this meme:
      https://www.genolve.com/design... [genolve.com]
      once you get AGI, you win!

  • The real story is the Kirin 9000s CPU powering the phone. Apparently SMIC is now mass producing 7nm chips.

    • Re:The Real Story (Score:4, Interesting)

      by hirschma ( 187820 ) on Saturday September 09, 2023 @05:13PM (#63835338)

      Kind of, not really. See: https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]

      TL;DR is that doing 7nm on DUV equipment (the last gen of lithography equipment) is possible, as TSMC demonstrated around 5 years ago (before EUV was available), although the machines were not rated to do below 10nm.

      So, SMIC bought the same machines, and hired many of the same people, that made things happen at TSMC. Can't find the article, but researchers found that the SMIC process looks like the old TSMC process.

      However: it's an expensive, lower-yield process, and it won't scale to smaller nodes - and the current EUV equipment is sanctioned off. So China is stuck at 7nm for some period of time.

      Nonetheless, it's a great achievement, and I expect that the Chinese will find a way to overcome the sanctions at some point - and will be leading chip producers in the nearish future.

  • Are shares of Apple also going to fall? We have to do something about this.

    • Are shares of Apple also going to fall? We have to do something about this.

      Yeah, annex Taiwan! Go USA!

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        All the US has to do is officially recognize Taiwan and open formal diplomatic, trade, and military relations with Taiwan. All of that already exists unofficially. Call the CCP's bluff. They need us as much or more than we need them. Their economy is more precarious than ours at this time, with incredibly high youth unemployment and dissatisfaction.

        • All the US has to do is officially recognize Taiwan and open formal diplomatic, trade, and military relations with Taiwan. All of that already exists unofficially. Call the CCP's bluff. They need us as much or more than we need them. Their economy is more precarious than ours at this time, with incredibly high youth unemployment and dissatisfaction.

          Yeah because the USA is capable of such long term planning eh

  • Shocked! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CommunityMember ( 6662188 ) on Saturday September 09, 2023 @05:08PM (#63835330)

    “I'm shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on in here." -- Louis

    Only a fool did not expect companies and countries to try to find ways to bypass the intent of sanctions, any sanctions, and they usually succeed. When there is money to be made, rules don't matter.

    To be fair, the US did not expect the sanctions to be completely successful (they never are). The more important question is always are they having some of the desired effect, and will they push off having to make some hard decisions until the next administration.

  • This revelation DOES NOT bode well for YMTC (Score:3)

    by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Saturday September 09, 2023 @05:30PM (#63835372)

    See, the phone is made by a sanctioned entity (Huawei), the processor is designed by a sanctioned entity (HiSilicon a wholy owned subsidiary of Huawei), manufactured by a sanctioned entity (SMIC).. but when it came time to get DRAM and Flahs, they went the tourtuous route, instead of using technology from another sanctioned entity in the form of YMTC?!

    It means that:
    1.) YMTC does not have the required tech.
    2.) Huawei had ample inventory of SKHynix parts (highly unlikely, in particular the LP-DDR5)
    3.) The volume they forecast to sell is so low, that going the toruous route was better than to expose YMTC to more sactions.

  • DISCLAIMER (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hackingbear ( 988354 ) on Saturday September 09, 2023 @05:35PM (#63835380)

    I'm hackingbear [slashdot.org]. The summary of this piece is NOT written by me. What I wrote, as shown below, is totally different:

    TITLE: Chinese Netizens Mock U.S. Sanctions Following Huawei Chip Breakthrough

    Chinese social media users are having fun teasing the U.S. government and the (in)effectiveness [tomshardware.com] of its technology sanctions on chipmaking equipment. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo has been a particular target, as the Huawei Mate 60 Pro launched on the same day Raimondo arriving in China for official visit. Huawei Mate 60 Pro is a smartphone packing new cutting-edge Chinese technology including a new 5G Kirin 9000s processor, despite sweeping and fanatic efforts by the United States to restrict China’s access to foreign chip technology. The exact manufacturing source remains a mystery with speculations ranging from China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) [reuters.com], which itself is under U.S. sanctions, to Huawei's own semiconductor plant. The U.S is scrambling to investigate [cnn.com] how its sanctions got broken. US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said during a White House press briefing Tuesday that the US needs “more information about precisely its character and composition” to determine if parties bypassed American restrictions on semiconductor exports to create the new chip. The processor suggests the Chinese government is making some headway in attempts to build a domestic chip ecosystem capable of producing advanced 7nm chips. In addition to 5G, the Mate 60 Pro might also be capable of satellite voice calls [fiercewireless.com] for subscribers on China Telecom’s network, making it the first device in a smartphone form factor with such capability, while Apple's iPhone 14 can only send emergency text messages via satellite. The company said only, “Without a ground network, you can also make and receive satellite calls. You can also freely edit satellite messages, select multiple pieces of location information to generate a trajectory, and travel with more peace of mind.” The U.S. placed Huawei and a long list of Chinese hi-tech companies under heavy sanctions in an attempt to stop China's technology progress [nytimes.com], similar to what the Great Britain had done to the U.S. in the 19th century [foreignpolicy.com] — apparently the British had failed.

    The slashdot has totally removed anything that looks inconvenient to the U.S. public and chose to publish this on Saturday.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Lol. I'm not surprised the editors actually edited that.

      "... despite sweeping and fanatic efforts by the United States..." among other zingers. The one that really burns is this one though:

      The U.S. placed Huawei and a long list of Chinese hi-tech companies under heavy sanctions in an attempt to stop China's technology progress [nytimes.com], similar to what the Great Britain had done to the U.S. in the 19th century [foreignpolicy.com] — apparently the British had failed.

    • Good, you're a wumao asshole.

    • Who knew the editors were editing?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khchung ( 462899 )

      The slashdot has totally removed anything that looks inconvenient to the U.S. public and chose to publish this on Saturday.

      Shows you what the editors were actually paid to do.

  • at least one american corp. got a kick back for facillitating this,

  • Before the US sanctions, Apple and Huawei were head-to-head with both ~45% of the Chinese high-end phone market. in 2023, 3 years after the sanctions, Apple had 70% of that market while Huawei dropped to almost nothing. Now China sales account for ~15-20% of Apple revenue.

    So Apple directly profited from the sanctions, and now we can expect Apple to lose 5-8% revenue if things just went back to pre-sanction share. But would it stop there? As hackingbear clarified [slashdot.org], there were a few killer features (e.g. s

    • You expect Chinese citizens to stop buying high-end smartphones?

      In the real world Huawei effectively doesn’t exist in the smartphone business and chip foundries in China are rapidly losing market share. The Mate 60 didn’t have a launch event for a reason.

      That Huawei can produce some parts for a design that is 2 years out of date is more a cautionary tale, not a battle cry.
      • two years behind now - depsiate all the sanctions , how long to catch up bearing in mind it's something that has allready been done? The argument they cant buy the latest tech doesn't wash they don't need it in large volume and they can always find some american corp willing to sell it via a circutous route to find a way to copy it.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by khchung ( 462899 )

        That Huawei can produce some parts for a design that is 2 years out of date is more a cautionary tale, not a battle cry.

        You didn't read before you reply, did you? Did they have satellite phone functions 2 years ago? How about better than 5G network speeds (some called it 5.5G)?

        You pretend it's a rehash of a 2 year old phone, but it actually is in some ways more advanced than the most current iPhone. If the next iPhone coming out this month didn't have some surprise, Apple will be losing market share in China very quickly.

  • I mean, it can be good business to set up companies in a neutral country, buy restricted tech from US companies, and sell with a markup to Chinese companies. Even if there are US trade restrictions, such companies are not in the US, so the incentive is great to make some quick money.

    All that trade restrictions end up doing is slightly increase the prices and making some intermediaries very rich.

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