Recently, Huawei Consumer Business CEO Yu Chengdong stated in a speech that due to the U.S. sanctions and ban on Huawei, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. can no longer continue to supply Huawei Kirin high-end chips. It cannot be manufactured after September 15th and will be out of print. In addition, he also said that due to US sanctions, the number of Huawei smartphones has dropped a lot. Without US sanctions, Huawei's mobile phones may have topped the market last year. But due to the lack of Kirin chips, the number of Huawei smartphones may be fewer than last year.
Second translation: Our Chinese Kirin chips are going to be gone, and Huawei phones may not be able to use Kirin chips in the future!
The United States continues to impose increasing sanctions on Huawei, and Huawei has been struggling to resist. Relevant personnel said that in order to resolve the U.S. sanctions and suppression of Huawei, Huawei has recently started a new project, the Nanniwan Project. This project is to avoid using American technology and accelerate "de-Americanization."
But even without the trump card of Kirin chips, even if it loses the halo blessing of self-developed chips, Huawei will not sit still and wait for death. Huawei has already signed a cooperation intention with MediaTek and handed over the entire 120 million chip order to MediaTek. In other words, if there are no Kirin chips in the future, MediaTek's Dimensity chip series will become Huawei's main choice. Even without the advantage of Kirin chips, Huawei will not be without cards! It just returns to the same starting line as other domestic mobile phone brands.
At first we wanted to manufacture the chips ourselves, which required the core equipment for processing the chips? the photolithography machine. The lithography machine is a necessary tool for making chips. Whether a complete chip can be created exactly according to the design drawing depends on whether the lithography machine is good enough. The Dutch company ASML (ASML) is the only high-end lithography machine manufacturer in the world. Whether it is TSMC or Samsung, they must buy ASML's lithography machines to be the first to have high-end processes. The price of photolithography machines is high and the output is low. Everyone is scrambling to buy one. Originally, we bought a photolithography machine at a high price last year. The funny thing is that the place where the photolithography machine was manufactured was burned down for no apparent reason, and we couldn't get the machine.
The lithography machine was destroyed. Mainland China is currently unable to produce high-end Kirin chips, so it has to go to the foundry in Taiwan, TSMC, to produce them. Then the United States issued a ban prohibiting TSMC from selling chips to Huawei!
As long as China’s chip industry does not die and talent is not lost, there is hope for everything! Ren Zhengfei went to 4 domestic universities in 3 days to recruit top talents. As long as we have confidence and determination, one day we will have our own chip!