Latest news with #MateBook
Phone Arena
a day ago
- Business
- Phone Arena
New report says Huawei is not as close to challenging U.S. chip designers as it claimed
Last month there seemed to be some excitement surrounding Huawei as its Mate Book Fold laptop was reportedly powered by a 5nm Kirin X90 processor. Huawei and the foundry it uses these days, China's SMIC, aren't allowed to obtain Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines thanks to U.S. and Dutch sanctions. These machines are used to print extremely thin circuitry patterns on the silicon wafers that chips are built on top of. EUV lithography is needed to produce chips using a 5nm process node and lower. Originally, it was thought that Huawei and SMIC were able to build 5nm chips by using older Deep Ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines that are not covered by sanctions. By using multiple impressions with a DUV machine, SMIC tries to print features at a size smaller than they would come out at with a single DUV impression. The problem is that this technique is incredibly difficult to pull off resulting in low yields which hike the price of the components produced this way. As it turns out, the Kirin X90 wasn't built using a 5nm SMIC process node (N+3) after all. New reports say that the Kirin X90 was produced using SMIC's 7nm process node (N+2) after all. That is the same process node used by SMIC to build the 7nm Kirin 9020 application processor (AP) which debuted on last year's Mate 70 series smartphones. This new information certainly makes comments made recently by Huwaei CEO Ren Zhengfei look suspect. Talking to state-run People's Daily , the executive said, "Our single chip is still behind the U.S. by a generation. We use mathematics to supplement physics, non-Moore's law to supplement Moore's law, and cluster computing to supplement single chips, and the results can also achieve practical conditions. Software is not a bottleneck for us." If the Kirin X90 is made using a 7nm node and not a 5nm node as first believed, Huawei and SMIC would be two generations behind the U.S. right now. Next year, when we see Apple's iPhone 18 line powered by 2nm APs designed by Apple, that would extend the advantage over Huawei by another generation. The only thing that will help Huawei is an EUV alternative and while there are always rumors that Huawei is working on such a thing, for now, the company has a large gap that it can't seem to close. Secure your connection now at a bargain price! We may earn a commission if you make a purchase This offer is not available in your area.
GSM Arena
05-06-2025
- Business
- GSM Arena
Huawei Pura 80 Pro+ design officially unveiled Comments
Huawei MateBook Fold Ultimate is an 18" all-screen laptop that folds to the size of a 13" laptop
GSM Arena
04-06-2025
- Business
- GSM Arena
Huawei Pura 80 series has an official launch date Comments
Huawei MateBook Fold Ultimate is an 18" all-screen laptop that folds to the size of a 13" laptop
GSM Arena
28-05-2025
- Business
- GSM Arena
Huawei nova Y73 announced with familiar looks and specs Comments
Huawei MateBook Fold Ultimate is an 18" all-screen laptop that folds to the size of a 13" laptop
Asharq Al-Awsat
19-05-2025
- Business
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Huawei Launches 1st Laptops Using Home-grown Harmony Operating System
Huawei launched two new laptop models on Monday, the first sold with its own Harmony operating system, in a bid to take on well-established Western Big Tech rivals even as the United States seeks to limit its access to crucial chips. Despite its emergence as the world's leading producer of tech hardware, China's development of computer operating systems has lagged behind Microsoft (MSFT.O), and Apple (AAPL.O), whose Windows and macOS have cornered the global market for decades. The new MateBook Fold and MateBook Pro both run on HarmonyOS 5, the latest version of an operating system Huawei Technologies began developing in 2015 and introduced five years later on its Mate series smartphones, Reuters reported. It began developing the laptop prototypes in 2021. "The Harmony laptop gives the world a new choice," Yu Chengdong, head of Huawei's consumer business group, said during a livestreamed launch event. "We kept on doing the hard things but the right things." The base model of the MateBook Fold, which does not have a physical keyboard and offers an 18-inch OLED double screen when fully extended, will sell for 23,999 yuan ($3,328). The MateBook Pro model, which uses a conventional laptop keyboard, is priced from 7,999 yuan. Washington began restricting Huawei's access to U.S. technology in 2019 over national security concerns, pushing the company to build its own capacity to develop and produce chips and operating systems. Huawei said the HarmonyOS for computers currently offers over 150 applications, including WPS Office from Kingsoft ( - an alternative to Microsoft's Office - and photo editing app Meitu ( Xiu Xiu. By the end of 2024, over 7.2 million individual developers were developing apps for HarmonyOS, which was installed on over a billion devices, including smartphones and TVs, according to Huawei's latest annual report. Huawei did not disclose which processing chip it had used to power the newly-launched laptops. But it said the computers' relatively high prices were the result of the cost of new manufacturing technology for the chipset.
