Once the second-largest smartphone OEM, Huawei has been slowly strangled by restrictions placed on it by the US entities list, which forbid US companies from trading with them without permission.
This has also included overseas companies with US relations, such that TSMC, the fab for their Kirin processor, which has been forced to cease trading with them, leaving the company with no alternative except to use inferior chipsets produced in China.
According to a recent report, via SamMobile, Samsung may have ridden to their rescue, however, with the company apparently agreeing to fab Huawei’s Kirin 9000L 5G processor using a 5nm process.
The chip will reportedly be somewhat less powerful than the usual Kirin 9000 and Kirin 9000E processor, with the big cores running at 2.86GHz vs Kirin 9000’s 3.13GHz and the GPU featuring 18 Mali-G78 GPU cores vs 24 in the Kirin 9000’and 22 in the Kirin 9000E processor.
It is not clear if Samsung has received permission from the US to produce the chips for Huawei – the company has been one of the main beneficiaries of Huawei’s stumble and it seems unlikely the Korean company would seek to anger the new US administration unnecessarily.