China's biggest chipmaker, SMIC, has made real, measurable progress on advanced chip manufacturing — but a new independent lab teardown shows it still has a significant gap to close against the world's leading fabs.
Research firm SemiAnalysis recently opened its own in-house chip teardown lab, and its first published analysis targets the HiSilicon Kirin 9030, the processor powering Huawei's latest smartphones. The chip is built on SMIC's third-generation 7nm process — a notable feat given that U.S. export controls have cut Huawei and SMIC off from the most advanced chipmaking equipment.
According to Tom's Hardware, which covered the findings, SemiAnalysis measured SMIC's minimum local metal pitch — essentially how tightly the chip's wiring can be packed — at 32.5 nanometers. That figure actually edges out Intel's upcoming 18A process on this specific metric. The catch: SMIC's overall transistor density still lags TSMC's comparable node by roughly 38%, the teardown found.
On the ambition front, Wccftech reports that a new Kirin chip expected in the Huawei Mate 90 is said to match TSMC's 3nm node in certain respects. Huawei is reportedly targeting the iPhone 18's launch window as a competitive benchmark — a sign of growing confidence from a company that has spent years navigating sweeping American sanctions.
Taken together, the findings suggest Chinese semiconductor manufacturing is advancing faster than many had assumed, even as a meaningful density gap with TSMC's best processes remains. That gap matters because transistor density directly shapes the speed, power efficiency, and AI performance of the chips inside smartphones and other devices competing for global consumers.