Based on the previous generation chip found in Huawei’s new laptop, U.S. restrictions on exporting advanced semiconductors to China are slowing down the Chinese tech industry. Huawei’s MateBook Fold laptop, which was released in China last month, uses a Kirin X90 chip, first introduced in 2023, according to semiconductor research firm TechInsights.
Before news of this vintage chip, the MateBook Fold seemed to be a step forward for Huawei. Industry observers noted that the new laptop is the first built with Chinese hardware, and the Harmony OS operating system is Huawei’s own OS (the device can also run Windows 11). The Chinese tech industry—responding to government directive—is working to gain greater independence from Western sources, and the MateBook Fold is a prime example: full-stack computing, OS development, and in-house hardware integration.
Th MateBook Fold is sold as a high end laptop: it sports a 18-inch OLED screen that folds down to a 13-inch size. It includes a virtual keyboard and a kickstand for an array of usage styles, and offers an impressive 1TB or 2TB of SSD storage and a vapor chamber for cooling.
Given its advanced specs, analysts and laptop buyers were curious about the chip driving the computer. For the last five years, since restrictions on chip exports to China were put in place by the Biden administration, Huawei has used domestic chips. The company turned to China-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), a partially government-owned company that has become an increasingly important Chinese vendor in light of chip restrictions.
Huawei in 2023 used the advanced SMIC 7nm (N+2) to power its Mate 60 Pro advanced smartphone. For the 2025 Matebook Fold, there was anticipation that it would include the next-generation SMIC 5nm-equiavalent (N+3) process chip.
But no, the new laptop contains the same 7nm (N+2) that Huawei used back in 2023. “Almost two years later, SMIC’s 5nm (N+3) process node remains elusive,” noted TechInsights in its report.
The bottom line: The Chinese semiconductor industry remains a few steps behind chips used by U.S. vendors. “With the device still manufactured using its N+2 process, this likely means that SMIC has not yet achieved a 5nm equivalent node that can be produced at scale,” TechInsights wrote.
In other words, as impressive as the Matebook Fold is, it is several generations behind the Apple M3 and M4 chips, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips, and AMD’s Ryezen 8040 line of semiconductors. Looking ahead, Intel, TSMC and Samsung will fabricate 2nm chips in the next 1-2 years, a development that will place China even further behind.
Earlier this month, Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei claimed in an interview with Chinese state media that Huawei’s chips are just one generation behind those of U.S. vendors, and that the company was using technologies like cluster computing—the integration of multiple CPUs within a single chip—to catch up.
But in the wake of DeepSeek, which indicated that the Chinese AI sector was gaining on the U.S. AI sector, it’s not likely that chip restrictions will be lifted anytime soon. Among the most significant restrictions, the U.S. currently blocks the export of NVIDIA’s next-gen chips to China, and also exerts influence with the Netherlands to block Dutch manufacturer ASML from selling its advanced chip-making systems to China.
