SemiAnalysis Teardown Confirms Huawei Kirin 9030 Pro Uses SMIC N+3 Process, Achieves GPU Performance Jump of 70-79%

According to SemiAnalysis, on June 15, the chipmaker's STEEL lab released a teardown report confirming Huawei's Kirin 9030 Pro processor uses SMIC's N+3 process with a minimum metal pitch of 32.5nm. Through aggressive DUV multiple patterning and DTCO optimization, the process achieves logic density of approximately 113.4 MTr/mm², comparable to TSMC N6.

The Kirin 9030 Pro represents an evolution of the Kirin 9020, featuring increased core configurations—one additional mid-core and GPU CU expanded from 4 to 6—with reduced core area. GPU performance shows a 70-79% improvement over the previous generation, though overall capability still trails current flagship processors from Apple and Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite.