Huawei has released a new processor that it claims does not use American technology and will use it in a new phone with three screens.
The company named the new processor Kirin 9o50 Pro and says that the LinxiCore processor cores, GPU, and neural processing unit feature only its own designs.
The SoC that Huawei added them to uses the “Tau Scaling” architecture, which the company says places components closer together to reduce size and improve performance without needing the kind of advanced chip manufacturing processes that TSMC and Intel employ.
When Huawei announced Tau Scaling last May, analysts believed it would do interesting things with its silicon, but they didn't think it had made any major breakthroughs.
Huawei, of course, disagrees, saying its new silicon offers 42% higher performance than the chip it used in a triple-screen phone it released last year.
The Chinese company uses the Kirin 9050 Pro in its new $2.979 Mate XT2 phone.
So Huawei appears to have a chip aimed at the high end of a niche market – and it announced it a few days before experts say Apple will release a foldable iPhone, which Counterpoint predicts will capture 25% of the foldable phone market by the end of the year.
Huawei's Kirin 9050 Pro will not succeed, according to analysts, in making a difference in the smartphone market.
At the chip launch event, Huawei executives mentioned that completely non-Android versions of HarmonyOS are now running on 85 million devices, a huge increase since Huawei launched the operating system in October 2024.
If Huawei can use the technology it created for the Kirin 9050 Pro in other products, it could allow local organizations to avoid products from AMD, Intel, or Nvidia. Its new chip will show that Chinese companies can create technology that reduces the country's reliance on imports.
However, Huawei has not said anything about its intentions to adapt its new chip to different devices.
Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.
