TechInsights, a respected microelectronics research company, has examined Huawei's latest HiSilicon Kirin 9030 processor and discovered that it was made using what they call N+3 fabrication technology, the most advanced manufacturing process that China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) has to offer. Although TechInsights claims that SMIC's N+3 is a step towards 5nm, it lags behind 5nm-class fabrication technologies from leading chipmakers.
Huawei's HiSilicon Kirin 9030 and Kirin 9030 Pro are the company's latest system-on-chips (SoCs) that power Mate 80-series smartphones. The vanilla version reportedly has 12 cores, whereas the Pro version boasts with 14 cores, so both SoCs beat Huawei's eight-core Kirin 9000 from 2020 (made by TSMC using its 5nm-class process technology) in terms of core count, thus suggesting that the company has found a way to squeeze in more cores without significantly increasing power consumption, something that clearly implies on a new fabrication process.
