Huawei has made significant progress along with its Chinese chip maker counterpart, SMIC, as Kirin 9030 has been confirmed as a 5nm chip in a new report.

Last month, Huawei unveiled its latest Mate 80 series featuring Kirin 9030 and Kirin 9030 Pro. This marks the first major release from the Chinese tech giant since 2019, after which it has stopped chip production through TSMC.

Huawei has formally listed Kirin 9030 and 9030 Pro for Mate 80 models. However, it didn’t reveal the processing node, a usual practice for previous chipsets. Instead, Huawei shed light on the performance. It says the Mate 80 Pro Max offers around 42% overall performance improvement, which is around twice compared of the Mate 70 Pro+ featuring the Kirin 9020 chipset.

According to the information, SMIC’s N+3 is achieved through deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography with advanced multi-patterning techniques and without extreme ultraviolet (EUV) access. It unlocks the 5nm chip access but lacks true 5nm nodes in scaling, as mentioned in the report.

DUV lithography operates at a 193mm wavelength, which makes it inferior to EUV at 13.5mm due to its longer wavelength, limiting resolution and requiring complex multi-patterning techniques such as double or quadruple patterning.

This key factor makes scaling a notable issue in SMIC’s case and increases the output cost. For now, Huawei has not published an official statement on this news. To be mentioned, SMIC has to opt for DUV due to advanced EUV tool supplies curbs on companies such as ASML.