China poised to break 5nm barrier — Huawei lists 5nm processor presumably built with SMIC tech, defying U.S. sanctions (yahoo.com)

Chinese foundry SMIC may have broken the 5nm process barrier, as evidenced by a new Huawei laptop listed with an advanced chip with 5nm manufacturing tech — a feat previously thought impossible due to U.S sanctions.

This year, SMIC shocked the world after it began mass production of Huawei's HiSilicon Kirin 9000S processor using its second-gen 7nm process technology. But the company seems to have at least one more trick up its sleeve: a 5nm fabrication process that is either already in use for high-volume manufacturing (HVM) or is in the final stages of its development. In fact, Huawei now lists a chip made on a 5nm-class process node — an eight-core Arm-based HiSilicon Kirin 9000C processor with Arm Mali-G78 graphics for laptops — on its website.

A posting on Huawei's website claims the Qingyun L540 laptop is "equipped with the Kirin 9006C chip, utilizing a 5nm process technology, eight cores, with a maximum clock speed of up to 3.13 GHz, offering higher performance, lower power consumption, and faster processing speeds."

The Kirin 9006C's general-purpose cores are listed at up to 3.13 GHz, which is only slightly lower than the clocks that TSMC and Apple could wring out of the original TSMC N5 process technology (the maximum frequency for Apple's M1 high-performance cores is 3.20 GHz). Meanwhile, the Kirin 9006C's peak clock rate looks similar to another chip, the Kirin 9000, which was produced for Huawei by TSMC.