TechInsights identified SMIC’s N+3 manufacturing process in Huawei’s Kirin 9030 in a report published on December 8, 2025. The research firm found density improvements over SMIC’s earlier 7nm-class technology but said N+3 remained significantly less scaled than leading commercial 5nm processes from TSMC and Samsung.
The finding rests on structural and dimensional measurements of a processor from the Mate 80 Pro Max. TechInsights described N+3 as a “scaled evolution” of SMIC’s 7nm-class technology, extending the foundry’s manufacturing capabilities beyond N+2 without extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography.
The firm’s public summary does not specify when the analysis was completed or disclose numerical density comparisons or production-yield figures. Those omissions limit the publicly available detail on the density improvement and manufacturing yields.
Processor variants and CPU details
Huawei announced the Mate 80 family on November 25, 2025. Its official Mate 80 Pro specifications list the Kirin 9030 for the 12 GB RAM version and the Kirin 9030 Pro for the 16 GB RAM version.
TechInsights calls the processor in its Mate 80 Pro Max sample the Kirin 9030 without clarifying whether that designation includes the Pro variant. Huawei’s specification page for the Mate 80 Pro Max does not name its processor, leaving the precise variant unresolved in those documents.
A Geekbench entry for the Mate 80 Pro Max’s SGT-AL10 model, uploaded on November 25, 2025, lists nine CPU cores in a 1+4+4 arrangement. The entry does not specify a thread count or confirm simultaneous multithreading.
