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According to a user on X, Huawei’s Kunpeng 930 was available for sale on a website. A user then bought the chip and disassembled it. The Kunpeng 920, Kunpeng 930’s predecessor, is listed on Huawei’s website, indicating that it relies on British design house Arm’s architecture and was manufactured with 7-nanometer technology.
Although Huawei has not officially listed the Kunpeng 930 on its website, benchmark tests suggest its presence. Huawei launched the Kunpeng 920 in 2019 and aimed to release the 930 in 2021. However, US restrictions that prevented reliance on TSMC’s high-end 7-nanometer processes delayed Huawei’s progress. In 2019, a Geekbench 6 benchmark reportedly featured the Kunpeng 930.
An X user named Jukan claims to have found video evidence of an electron microscope ‘cutting open’ the Kunpeng 930. A used Kunpeng 930 was listed on a Chinese trading site and then purchased for investigation. Jukan notes that the chip’s packaging date suggests it featured SRAM with characteristics similar to TSMC’s N5 process technology family.
Jukan concludes that Huawei might be using TSMC’s technology, which first entered production in 2020, implying significant lag behind Western chip technologies. However, data shows that an N5 bitcell is 0.021µm, similar to the size of an N3 bitcell. In SRAM terminology, a bitcell measures module density; thus, the Kunpeng 930’s SRAM would not face any comparative disadvantage in terms of density.
Since the Kunpeng 930’s manufacturing technology remains unclear, it cannot be conclusively compared to Western counterparts. A benchmark from last year placed the chip’s performance at par with AMD chips from 2020, indicating ongoing US sanctions on Huawei.
A tweet by Jukan explains: “On the Chinese second-hand trading site 闲鱼, Huawei’s latest server processor, the Kunpeng 930, was listed and someone bought it. They cut it open with an electron microscope and uploaded a video showing where the chip was made.”
