Samsung, which is among the world's biggest semiconductor chip manufacturers, makes chips for brands like AMD, IBM, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and others. In the past, it used to fabricate processors for Apple as well. It is now being rumored that it will expand its clientele later this year to include Huawei.
A new report coming out of China claims that Huawei's next 5nm chipset, the Kirin 9000L, will be made by Samsung Foundry. The new 5G chipset will reportedly feature a lower clock speed compared to the Kirin 9000 and the Kirin 9000E. Its big cores will be clocked at 2.86GHz as opposed to the Kirin 9000's 3.13GHz. The new chipset will also feature an 18-core Mali-G78 GPU compared to the Kirin 9000's 24-core and Kirin 9000E's 22-core Mali-G78 GPU. The Kirin 9000L will feature one big and one small AI core.
Since the US imposed a trade ban on Huawei, it got really hard for the Chinese smartphone giant to get its Kirin chips made by foundries like TSMC and Samsung. The brands that want to do business with Huawei need to get prior approval from the US government. It is still not clear if Samsung has already received the required approval or if it is still in the process of doing so. The Kirin 9000L is expected to be used in Huawei's mid-range smartphones and tablets.
