(Yicai) Oct. 13 -- Chinese tech giant Huawei has revealed that over 100 million products using its self-developed Kirin chips have been shipped since 2023, marking an impressive milestone for the company after years of its tech progress being hampered by US sanctions. It also revealed that testing has begun for the 2027 version of the Kirin chip.

Xu Songyu, director of the Wireless Terminal Chip Product Management Department at Huawei Semiconductor Business, shared the latest updates at a meeting held in Shanghai today. It was the Shenzhen-based firm’s first chip technology briefing in six years, and the underlying technical structure of its LogicFolding chip technology was also revealed.

“At the early stage of exploring LogicFolding, we faced great uncertainty. No-one in the industry had attempted this before, so it was unclear whether performance gains could be achieved or if high-yield mass production was possible. But as our research advanced, we found the results at every stage met or even exceeded our expectations,” said Xu.

Xu said the Kirin 9050 series is the first to include mass production of the LogicFolding technology, and its transistor density rose by 53.5 percent compared with the prior-generation Kirin chip. For the Kirin 9050 Pro, which was unveiled earlier this month, the energy efficiency of large central processing unit cores has increased by 41 percent and neural processing unit computing power jumped by 140 percent versus the previous generation.

“The hybrid bonding pitch of the Kirin 9050 Pro is 1.5 micrometers. Huawei plans to further shrink this pitch to 1 micrometer for its new-generation chip, and explore multi-layer LogicFolding in the future,” Xu noted.

Kirin chips have long been seen as a cornerstone for Huawei’s high-end smartphones. After the launch of the Kirin 9000 in 2020, US sanctions forced Huawei to pause releases of new Kirin chips. The firm was able to resume production in August 2023 after partnering with Chinese chip foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Tom Litting