Huawei’s ambitions to create more powerful chips for artificial intelligence and smartphones have hit major snags because of U.S. sanctions, stalling a major Chinese effort to match American technology.
Huawei is designing its next two Ascend processors, its answer to Nvidia’s dominant accelerators, around the same 7-nanometer architecture that’s been mainstream for years, people familiar with the matter said. That’s because U.S.-led restrictions prevent Huawei’s chipmaking partners from procuring state-of-the-art extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography systems from ASML Holding.
That means its marquee chips will be stuck at aging technology till at least 2026, the people said, asking to remain unidentified discussing a sensitive project. Huawei’s smartphone processors, for the Mate lineup, face similar constraints, one of the people said.
