Huawei Technologies Co. used advanced components from Asia’s largest technology firms in at least some of its leading Ascend AI processors, a research firm discovered during teardowns, highlighting China’s reliance on foreign hardware as it works to boost domestic production of AI semiconductors.
TechInsights discovered gear from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. in multiple samples of Huawei’s third-generation Ascend 910C chips, the firm said in a statement.
In an investigation, the Ottawa-based researchers concluded that TSMC manufactured the dies used in the Huawei accelerators. They also uncovered an older-generation type of high-bandwidth memory, designated HBM2E, made by Samsung and SK Hynix. Components from the two manufacturers were found in two different samples of the Ascend 910C, TechInsights said.
Huawei didn’t respond to a request for comment during a weeklong holiday in China.
The Shenzhen-based hardware giant has been a target of American policymakers since President Donald Trump’s first term, when Washington embarked on a yearslong campaign to curtail Beijing’s semiconductor prowess. It added Huawei to its Entity List, restricting the flow of technology to the Chinese firm.
The broader US effort has also included export restrictions on AI chips themselves, the HBM they’re paired with, and the tools and components used to make both. Those policies aim to curtail Beijing’s access to frontier AI systems, and also prevent Huawei and other Chinese chipmakers from developing the manufacturing capacity to challenge Nvidia Corp. on the global stage.
Chinese officials, meanwhile, want to wean the country off Nvidia chips, and Huawei’s 910C is the most competitive domestic offering. It entered mass shipment earlier this year. While Huawei is working to boost the number of 910C chips made by local partners, the company’s access to foreign goods — stockpiled ahead of, or around, export controls — has been of crucial importance.
In one prominent example, Huawei managed to get millions of dies manufactured at TSMC from an intermediary company called Sophgo that didn’t disclose it would resell the components to the Chinese firm. TSMC cut off Sophgo and reported the incident to the US government, which sanctioned the company. Still, Huawei has been able to use the stockpile of some 2.9 million dies in its Ascend chips and will have enough for the 910C through this year, according to estimates from SemiAnalysis experts including Dylan Patel.
Huawei’s current-generation accelerator, the 910C, is made by packaging two 910B dies together. The 910C hardware recently investigated by TechInsights, TSMC said in a statement, appears to be made with dies “analyzed by this organization in October of 2024, and not with a more recently manufactured die or more advanced technology. Shipments and manufacturing of that chip have been halted since then.” TSMC added that it complies with all export control rules and has not supplied Huawei since mid-September 2020.
Then there’s HBM. SK Hynix is the leader against Micron Technology Inc. and Samsung in production of those components, which are essential to support AI systems like those from Nvidia and are typically manufactured to be paired with specific processors. The technology is immensely complicated, so much so that even Samsung — a leader in regular memory — struggled for years to qualify its HBM for Nvidia’s use.
The US restricted sales to China of HBM2 and more advanced models in late 2024, and escalated controls designed to limit the production capacity of Chinese chipmakers like Changxin Memory Technologies Inc. But “much like how Huawei was able to stockpile TSMC logic wafer inventory, they were also able to stockpile HBM inventory,” according to SemiAnalysis.
It’s unclear when and how Huawei obtained the Samsung and SK Hynix hardware, which both companies introduced years ago.
“SK Hynix ceased all transactions with Huawei after the restrictions were placed in 2020,” the Korean company said in a statement. “SK Hynix is fully committed to strict compliance of all applicable laws and regulations, including US export regulations.” Samsung said it “continues to strictly comply” with US export rules and doesn’t have “any business relationships with entities outlined in the regulations.”
While China’s CXMT is making progress on HBM, SemiAnalysis said, Huawei remains heavily dependent on foreign hardware. As they deplete that stockpile, SemiAnalysis said, “we expect that China will be bottlenecked by HBM by the end of the year.”
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