The strange case of the SK hynix chipset in the new Huawei smartphone: it should not be there but it is

While the new SoC of Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro is being commented on in the West with great curiosity and a bit of concern, one case is still present in Asia: How did the SK Hynix storage and memory chips end up on this smartphone?

the Disassembly by TechInsightsor opening the device to see the interior, highlighted not only the mysterious Kirin 9000s, but also the presence of memory chips from the South Korean company SK hynix: how did they end up there though? Export restrictions decided by the US against Huawei in 2020?

Good, The company itself also requires thiswhich he started Official investigation To understand how LPDDR5 and NAND flash memories are located inside the phone, even though no products have been sold to Huawei since it was blacklisted in 2020, the Chinese company accounted for about 10% of its sales.

“SK hynix has no longer done business with Huawei since the restrictions were imposed The Americans are against the company and we have opened an investigation into the matter to find out more details“Tell Bloomberg SK Hynix representative. The spokesperson added:SK Hynix strictly adheres to restrictions policies Export requirements set by the United States government“.

The Mate 60 Pro teardown shows the presence of 176-layer 4D NAND flash memory from the UD310 range, with a 512GB RAM (HN8T25DEHKX077) is able to guarantee sequential read and write speeds of 2050MB/s and 1700MB/s respectively. from the memory LPDDR5 However, not much is known, and it is not clear how Huawei acquired it.

Among the possible explanations There is thatbarren. Yes, because Huawei may have officially stockpiled large amounts of NAND or LPDDR5 memory before US export restrictions actually take effect. SK Hynix announced the UD310 NAND flash in 2020, around the time Huawei was blacklisted.

In this case, it is not clear how many chips the Chinese company has and how many the Mate 60 Pro will be able to bring to the market, at least without profoundly changing its specifications. It is clear that someone thought of the so-called “parallel streets“, that is, someone bought the memory and then sent it to Huawei. On the other hand, there is a saying that says “The law is made, the deception is found.” In short, it remains a strange and mysterious fact so far that someone today, perhaps, will find an explanation .