The rise and impact of Huawei's Kirin 9000S chip
In this era of rapid development of science and technology, chips are undoubtedly the core driving force for innovation. As a global technology giant, Huawei is re-emerging in the 5G era with its self-developed Kirin 9000S mobile processor, posing an unprecedented and severe challenge to foreign chip giants such as Qualcomm. The launch of this chip not only demonstrates Huawei's outstanding strength in the field of chip design, but also indicates that China's chip industry is accelerating its independence and controllability and moving towards the world-class level.
In this wave, the Kirin 9000S is like a bombshell, causing a violent shock to the entire industry. Its emergence will undoubtedly rewrite the future smart phone chip pattern and set off a new round of white-hot competition. Qualcomm, as a traditional chip giant, bore the brunt of this change and became the biggest loser of this change.
The technical strength of the Kirin 9000S
What is so special about the Kirin 9000S that it can occupy such an important position in the chip battlefield? Let's take a look at the hard power of this chip. It is manufactured on TSMC's leading 7nm process, and its performance is comparable to Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor.
The Kirin 9000S is equipped with Huawei's self-developed Taishan CPU architecture and Maleoon 910 GPU, which fully demonstrates Huawei's outstanding strength in the field of chip design. The Taishan CPU architecture adopts a 4+4 core design, with a frequency of up to 3.13GHz, which can provide excellent multi-core performance.
As for the GPU, although the Maleoon 910 is slightly inferior in theoretical performance, it is fully capable of meeting the needs of most current mobile games and 3D rendering. The comprehensive strength of the Kirin 9000S is not inferior to the flagship chips of the same level, which is enough to drive Huawei's 5G mobile phones to play the best performance.
Shock to Qualcomm
It is with its outstanding strength that the Kirin 9000S has dealt a heavy blow to Qualcomm. According to Ming-Chi Kuo's prediction, starting in 2024, Qualcomm will completely lose more than 40 million orders from Huawei. In 2023, Qualcomm's shipments to Huawei will still be around 40 million to 42 million. It is conceivable how much impact this huge order loss will have on Qualcomm's revenue.
Qualcomm has already been hit hard in the 2022 fiscal quarter. According to the financial report, the revenue in the quarter fell by 22.7% year-on-year, and the profit margin plummeted by 51.7%, mainly due to the sharp decline in revenue in the Chinese market.
In the face of a strong squeeze from Huawei, Qualcomm is also responding. Qualcomm has already begun laying off employees, and its Shanghai R&D center is one of the hardest hit areas to adjust to the decline in the Chinese market.
Opportunities and challenges in the 5G era
The Kirin 9000S's influence doesn't stop there. The emergence of this chip has promoted the breakthrough of Huawei's 5G mobile phone network speed. Tests by a number of media and bloggers have shown that Huawei Mate X5 series mobile phones equipped with Kirin 9000S can download network speeds of more than 1000 megabits, or even more than 2000 megabytes, and the uplink speed is also more than 300 megabytes.
This excellent network performance may be related to Huawei's removal of operators' restrictions on network speeds. It once again demonstrates Huawei's leading position in 5G communication technology.
It is with this leading 5G technology that Huawei has been able to achieve today's achievements in chip design. The advent of the Kirin 9000S will also further promote the acceleration of China's chip industry to be independent and controllable, and enhance its international competitiveness.
The road has not been easy. As a traditional chip giant, Qualcomm's strength should not be underestimated. It is likely to face the loss of major customers such as Apple and Samsung, which will undoubtedly intensify the fierce competition between the two sides.
The advent of Huawei's Kirin 9000S chip marks the rise of China's chip industry, bringing unprecedented challenges to foreign giants. In this competition, the two sides come and go, and the future pattern will be more confusing and cruel. But this chip war will surely promote the pace of innovation in the entire industry, and the ultimate benefit will be the majority of consumers.