Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) recently informed the U.S. Department of Commerce that one of its chips was found in a Huawei device. This discovery came after a teardown conducted by TechInsights, Reuters news report said.
TSMC clarified that it had not supplied chips to Huawei since mid-September 2020, following U.S. export controls on the Chinese tech giant.
Huawei has been under U.S. trade restrictions since 2019 due to national security concerns, and the presence of a TSMC chip in one of its devices could potentially violate those export controls.
TSMC stated that it is not currently under investigation but proactively communicated the matter to the U.S. authorities.
Huawei is the fourth largest smartphone brand in China with 15 percent share in the second-quarter of 2024. Huawei has shipped 10.6 million smartphones in China in Q2 2024 vs 7.5 million smartphones in Q2 2023, according to Canalys data.
Meanwhile, U.S. digital media outlet the Information earlier reported that the U.S. Commerce Department has started investigating to find if TSMC had been making AI or smartphone chips for Huawei.
TechInsights in its Huawei Mate XT teardown indicated that the Mate XT smartphone is powered by the Kirin 980 processor, built on a 7nm process technology. This SoC includes an octa-core CPU (2.6 GHz Cortex-A76 and 1.92 GHz Cortex-A76) and a Mali-G76 GPU, enabling efficient multitasking and graphics rendering. The device is equipped with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and offers 512GB of UFS 2.1 storage, providing enough capacity for apps and media.
Baburajan Kizhakedath
