New Kirin SoC In The Mate 90 Said To Match TSMC’s 3nm Node, Huawei Targeting iPhone 18 Launch Timeline As Its Competitive Confidence Grows - Wccftech

The upcoming Huawei Mate 90 series featuring the Kirin chipset represents a significant technological breakthrough amid ongoing US trade sanctions. While Huawei faces challenges accessing advanced EUV... Read original →

Huawei’s achievement in matching TSMC’s 3nm performance using only DUV lithography—without EUV access—reveals unexpected headroom in Moore’s Law and pressures global equipment vendors to reassess DUV’s scalability. This breakthrough elevates SMIC’s technical ceiling while forcing EDA and IP ecosystems to adapt to non-standard process nodes. U.S. export controls, intended to constrain China’s semiconductor progress, have instead accelerated supply chain de-Americanization, albeit at the cost of yield and margin pressure. If Apple sticks with TSMC’s N3E for iPhone 18, Huawei’s system-level optimization could neutralize raw transistor advantages. Over the next 12–24 months, Chinese SoC competitiveness will pivot from node metrics to heterogeneous integration and software-hardware co-design, potentially redefining how the industry values high-end mobile chips.