Huawei Mate 70 runs on SK Hynix chips instead of China-made options

Huawei Mate 70 series chip mystery is being solved with new teardowns and the latest one reveals that the flagship phones run on SK Hynix chips instead of China-made alternatives. The company still relies on foreign materials to some extent.

TechInsights performed a teardown of the Huawei Mate 70 Pro, revealing SK Hynix chips in the device. It shows that the phone equips 12GB low-power DRAM SoC and a 512GB NAND processor to ensure accurate RAM and storage capabilities.

Meanwhile, the Mate 70 Pro+ uses the same NAND processor with a 16GB DRAM. SK Hynix made these 14nm DRAMs via EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography).

DRAM or Dynamic Random Access Memory in smartphones stores data in cells temporarily. Whereas, NAND processors help in flash storage and store data like photos, videos, and music. It retains the device data even when it is off.

Inputs reveal that Huawei might have used SK Hynix chipsets due to limited Chinese options. The company is struggling with the supply chain problems following the US ban. The sanctions also hit the OEM with a lack of high-end chipmaking tools.

When asked to SK Hynix about this implementation, it said:

“…we have been strictly complying with the relevant policies since the restrictions against Huawei were announced and have also suspended any transactions with the company since then.”

Huawei Mate 70 Pro+ teardown (Image Credits: TechInsights)

TechInsights further revealed that most of the P and Mate models run on SK Hynix chips. Although the trend changed with the Mate 60 Pro launched last year.

Mate 60 Pro entered the world with China-made processors. Huawei even tied up with ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Yangtze Memory Technologies Corporation (YMTC) to take supplies of DRAM and NAND processors.

Nova 13 Pro uses CXMT DRAM and YMTC NAND chips. Thus, TechInsights expected Huawei to use the native processors for its newly launched flagship models.

“… as we expected Huawei to use memory devices from CXMT for DRAM and YMTC for NAND.” – said TechInights senior analyst Jeongdong Choe.

Even though the SK Hynix chips found in Mate 70 models aren’t much advanced, the implementation hints that Huawei is still facing challenges to overcome chip tech problems. The 14nm chips are still reliable and have higher production yields in the market. Thus, it offers significant performance in all aspects.

Huawei Mate 70 runs on SK Hynix chips instead of China-made options (Image Credits: Huawei)

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