Did Bitcoin Mining Expedite Huawei’s Chip Comeback?
Huawei bypasses U.S. curb to make 7-nm chips
Huawei’s unusually low-key launch of the Mate 60 Pro smartphone last week received much attention on Chinese social media and global markets.
But the story isn’t about the smartphone, but the chips inside. Many mainstream and tech media outlets covered the news with extensive follow-ups trying to answer one fundamental question: Has Huawei resolved the U.S. sanctions by making its own 5G chips? If yes, it would be a successful counter-strike to the U.S. efforts in limiting Huawei and China’s capability in the global chip war.
The news even made some in the local crypto community excited. One Chinese crypto media outlet went as far as to claim that bitcoin mining is the main force behind Huawei’s chip comeback citing previous partnerships between bitcoin miner manufacturers and Huawei’s unspoken foundry partner: SMIC.
That is an interesting narrative to explore, although there is no way to substantiate the claim unless Huawei and SMIC go public with it. Nonetheless, it is worth pointing out some interesting contexts. For instance, Canaan was among the first to complete a test on SMIC’s N+1 7-nm process before launching the Avalon 1246 in 2020 and selling more than 22 EH/s of it in 2021. Huawei’s new smartphone is reportedly powered by SMIC’s N+2 7-nm process, which is the second generation after N+1.
TheMinerMag has laid out more interesting dots that can be connected. Read more on this in its latest post here.
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