Huawei Prepares Laptop Powered by Custom Kirin 5 nm SoC and DDR5 Memory

[AleksandarK]

China's technology reliance on 3rd party companies seems to be getting smaller. One of the leading technology companies in China, Huawei, has designed a laptop powered by a custom 5 nm Kirin SoC with DDR5 memory. Called the Dyna Cloud L420, Huawei has prepared this model for the Chinese market to provide a fully functional laptop that will get the job done, with no risk of the potential security backdoors implemented in the processor. Powered by a brand new Kirin 9006C SoC manufactured on TSMC's 5 nm process, it features eight unknown cores running at 3.1 GHz frequency. We assume that those are custom cores designed by Huawei. This SoC is accompanied by 8 GB of LPDDR5 memory, with 256 GB and 512 GB UFS 3.1 configurations storage options.

When it comes to the rest of the laptop, it rocks a 14-inch 2160x1440 display. I/O options are solid as well, as this machine has an HDMI video output, two USB-A, one USB-C, and Gigabit Ethernet using a mini-RJ45 port. Connectivity is provided by Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 4.2. There is a 56 W/h battery that provides the juice to keep it running when it comes to the battery. And to complete all of that, this laptop officially only supports Huawei's proprietary Kirin OS (KOS) and Unity OS (UOS), with expected support for HarmonyOS in the future. Pricing and availability information is a mistery at the present date.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Nyek]

With no risk of the potential security backdoors implemented in the processor.

Except for the Chinese ones.

 

[Flanker]

Huh how are they getting these chips?

 

[TheLostSwede]

Huh how are they getting these chips?

They pay TSMC a lot of money?

 

[xkm1948]

Wonder what type of OS is on there. If it is based on any type of linux there is a good chance this can be sold worldwide, just need a different OS distro.

 

[Flanker]

They pay TSMC a lot of money?

I thought there is a ban preventing TSMC from making chips for Huawei?

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Huh how are they getting these chips?

Im guessing that even though Taiwan are still under threat of invasion by Big Red. They havent been invaded yet so there is no need to completely break ties with companies who have probably already paid them up front to manufacture and supply them. Unless war were declared, business is business and TSMC isnt an American company so the U.S Administration cant dictate who TSMC does business with.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I thought there is a ban preventing TSMC from making chips for Huawei?

Only if the product contains US technology.
Arm is owned by SoftBank, so it's Japanese/British technology.
I guess technically USB, PCIe, WiFi etc. are all US technology if you want to be really strict, but I don't know where the line is drawn.

 

[silentbogo]

While the idea is palatable, implementation is still a mixed bag of beans and gravel...
1) 9006C is most probably an incremental update to Kirin 990, hence an asterisk near 3.1GHz (e.g. only 1 or 2 high-power cores can run at those clocks, and I think its a 1+3+4 setup)
2) While UOS(Deepin) is fine and all, you may have some issues with third-party distros.
3) In its essence it's a crossbreed of Samsung Chromebook and a Pixel laptop: gets the underwhelming performance like the former, aesthetics and price tag like the latter, and doesn't even have a place to land on the market.
4) If a $1300 price tag is correct and I'm not hallucinating - it's insane. You can get an M1 macbook air for that kind of money, even in China.

Wonder what type of OS is on there. If it is based on any type of linux there is a good chance this can be sold worldwide, just need a different OS distro.

UOS is debian-based distro (based on Deepin). Kirin OS is a bit of a mystery, but I'm just gonna throw a wild guess that it's a heavily-modded ChromiumOS. And HarmonyOS - heavily modded AOSP.
Even if they manage to go worldwide - I'm sure they won't sell that well for 1,300 yankee rubles.

Huh how are they getting these chips?

Technicalities and stockpiling? I've read some writeups when it was still a hot topic, and as far as I understand - this ban prevents TSMC from accepting "new" orders, but does not prevent from fulfilling existing orders. Right before it all went in effect, TSMC got swarmed with a shitload of orders on advanced nodes, which will cover the bases for Huawei at least until 5nm and 7nm become irrelevant.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Im guessing that even though Taiwan are still under threat of invasion by Big Red. They havent been invaded yet so there is no need to completely break ties with companies who have probably already paid them up front to manufacture and supply them. Unless war were declared, business is business and TSMC isnt an American company so the U.S Administration cant dictate who TSMC does business with.

We also don't know when these chips were made and TSMC obviously had some contracts with Huawei that they could've decided to fulfill, since that's what most decent companies do.
After all, it takes a few months from when TSMC is done, until a chip is tested, packaged and shipped to whoever is making a device, the device is tested and then mass produced. For all we know, these chips were made before the September 14th US embargo date.

 

[Wirko]

LPDDR5 is not DDR5 or a variant of DDR5.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Good luck selling these in the US

 

[onemanhitsquad]

Spywei...no thanks

 

[TheEndIsNear]

Huh how are they getting these chips?

Well the way they got so far so fast as soon as greed won in the 90's in the U.S. and they shipped all our jobs overseas. All of a sudden we're friends with a communist government the bunch of scumbag traitors. They stole everything they could. They don't innovate they steal technology and provide cheap labor. Not from just the U.S. From everyone.