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The Backup Strategy
In early 2018, Hua Zheng from HiSilicon’s Shanghai Research Institute attended the department’s Spring Festival symposium, where a summary of the past fiscal year was presented, listing the revenue of various departments and projects. He discovered that an optical communication chip project generated only a negligible amount of income. Such chips are used in backbone switches, where demand is extremely low, but R&D costs are exceptionally high. “From our perspective, it seemed meaningless. This project must have incurred huge losses—a single tape-out alone costs over 20 million yuan,” Hua Zheng said, noting that a chip typically requires 3–4 tape-outs before entering mass production.
Reflecting on it now, Hua Zheng realizes that these seemingly high-investment, low-return projects played a critical role during emergencies.
Since HiSilicon President He Tingbo sent the “backup” email, whether HiSilicon has backups and can withstand external bans has become a focus of external attention. According to information gathered by AI Finance, HiSilicon indeed began preparing very early.
Under the conventional international industry chain division, a company does not need to do everything. However, the ZTE and Huawei incidents changed this. HiSilicon is intensifying the R&D of key chips. HiSilicon employee Guan Weidu recently learned that the company specifically established an analog chip department in Beijing not long ago. Analog chips represent the largest gap between China and the United States, with the focus on the radio frequency front-end. The PA amplifier in the RF front-end is a major challenge.
Since the fourth quarter of last year, mainstream RF companies like Avago and Qorvo from the United States have promoted a module solution containing PA, switches, filters, etc. However, Huawei’s P30 and P30 Pro separated the PA. This move indicates Huawei’s conscious effort to avoid PA supply risks, as other components in the module can be supplied by Japan and domestic sources. Huawei has also been advancing its self-developed PA. It is reported that HiSilicon shipped 50–60 million self-developed mid-to-low-end PAs in 2018.
Figure/Visual China
In fact, HiSilicon has also developed mixed-signal chips, such as high-speed digital-to-analog converters (DACs). Hua Zheng found that although Huawei barely used them, a team has been working on them continuously. He participated in the review of this project, concluding that HiSilicon’s DAC specifications were only slightly behind the latest indicators of the American giant ADI.
Meanwhile, HiSilicon’s Turing business unit has been developing a fully independent intellectual property CPU for several years, with a team of several hundred people.
Pan Kewei worked on a memory chip project at HiSilicon. At that time, the supplier demanded exorbitant prices, so HiSilicon formed a team of three to four people who worked for a year and a half. The tape-out was usable, but by then, overseas suppliers had lowered their prices. All documents for this product were eventually archived and sealed.
Information from various sources indicates that Huawei was not entirely unprepared for the current situation; internal preparations began far earlier than the 2017 ZTE incident. As early as 2012, Huawei and ZTE faced scrutiny from the United States. Compliance and strategic security issues prompted Ren Zhengfei to seek independence from external dependencies.
At the 2012 Lab symposium that year, Ren Zhengfei said: “Even if (the chip) is temporarily unused, we must continue developing it. Once a strategic vulnerability appears in the company, the loss would not be tens of billions of dollars but hundreds of billions. Our company has accumulated so much wealth, and all of it could be jeopardized by that one point, letting others hold us back until we perish. This is the company’s strategic banner and must not waver.”
Considering strategic issues and supply chain security, Huawei conducted assessments and research: If only Americans could produce something, the risk level was highest; if both Americans and Europeans could produce it, the risk level would be much lower. Since the aforementioned optical communication chips were mainly produced by North American companies, Huawei had to follow up even at a loss.
HiSilicon even has internal rules to protect the interests of neglected departments. At Huawei, project team bonuses depend on project profitability, meaning non-profit departments receive minimal bonuses. However, chip development is a business with high investment, high risk, and long return cycles. To support chip R&D, Huawei also balances internal allocations.
Guan Weidu, who has worked at HiSilicon for ten years, recalls that the meter-reading chip did not turn a profit for five years after development. Huawei eventually transferred the team to the Consumer Business Group (CBG), a highly profitable department more generous than the 2012 Lab. Through such coordination, Huawei ensured that neglected positions received decent bonuses.
HiSilicon also shows some tolerance for the success or failure of new projects, with certain inclinations under Huawei’s strict performance evaluation system. Pan Kewei remembers that his first project at HiSilicon was research-oriented, with performance guaranteed not to be rated as C for the first three years—at Huawei, a C rating not only means no bonus but also potential dismissal.
HiSilicon’s backup strategy ensures it is not helpless when facing challenges, but this does not mean Huawei can cover everything. Sun Yun, who worked at HiSilicon for over ten years, says HiSilicon’s previous chip R&D strategy focused on the highest-value or most technically demanding parts, such as the main chip, because it is the area with the strongest control. However, a smartphone contains over 2,000 components, and no single company can achieve self-sufficiency. “Samsung Semiconductor’s scale is about ten times that of HiSilicon, yet even Samsung Semiconductor cannot be fully self-sufficient. In fact, Huawei’s product range is far less diverse than Samsung’s,” Guan Weidu said.
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In reality, for Huawei to build a technologically self-reliant supply chain system, it not only needs its own backups but also requires the overall strength of the domestic semiconductor ecosystem. Sun Yun says Huawei’s previous chip procurement strategy was largely technology-driven, opting to collaborate with world-renowned chip companies. While globalization helped Huawei grow into a first-class company, it also led to a lack of support for domestic small and medium-sized enterprises, and even an aloof attitude toward domestic small suppliers. Sun Yun observes that after the ZTE incident, Huawei changed its strategy, diversifying its supply choices.
The Rise of "Little HiSilicon"
“Establishing HiSilicon was Ren Zhengfei’s determination to make a push in the chip industry; before that, it was all experimentation,” Guan Weidu said.
When Guan Weidu joined in 2005, HiSilicon had only a few hundred employees. In October 2004, Huawei spun off personnel from the original Central Research Basic Department to establish an independent wholly-owned subsidiary—HiSilicon.
A few years earlier, the State Council issued Document No. 18—"Several Policies to Encourage the Development of the Software and Integrated Circuit Industries." This document provided tax incentives for integrated circuit enterprises, fueling the chip boom at the time. Hundreds of companies emerged, and after over a decade of natural selection, the current landscape of China’s chip industry took shape.
Informed sources reveal that around HiSilicon’s establishment in 2004, it was managed by Xu Wenwei (internally known as “Big Xu”), who also spearheaded Huawei’s first dedicated chip. However, Xu soon took charge of the European market. HiSilicon’s early focus was on expanding external markets, including set-top box chips, security chips, and mobile phone baseband chips, which began development at that time, leading to a relatively high-profile marketing approach.
After Xu Zhijun (internally known as “Little Xu”) took over HiSilicon, he repositioned it to serve Huawei’s internal product lines effectively. As for externally sold chips, profitable ones were retained, and unprofitable ones were cut. HiSilicon’s style shifted to low-key operations, becoming quite mysterious externally.
However, Huawei’s chip R&D did not begin with HiSilicon’s establishment. Xu Wenwei, now a Huawei Group director, and others developed Huawei’s first dedicated chip in 1991 for use in expensive switches at the time.
Huawei initially developed such chips not only to reduce switch costs but also to differentiate its products from brands like ZTE.
After HiSilicon’s establishment, it did not have a star product like the Kirin chip in its early days. For the first two years, HiSilicon essentially sought markets for its technology, exploring many products but failing with most. The surviving surveillance and set-top box chips were largely unrelated to Huawei’s core telecom business and needed external sales.
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Within HiSilicon, externally sold chip businesses are collectively called “Little HiSilicon,” while internally used chips like the Kirin mobile phone chip, Tiangang base station chip, and Kunpeng server chip are termed “Big HiSilicon.” HiSilicon’s early buzz largely belonged to Little HiSilicon.
Like other domestic chip companies starting at that time, HiSilicon initially knew nothing about chip business operations. A group of engineers went through a process of working behind closed doors. Zhuo Yi joined HiSilicon in 2004 to work on video codecs. He found that after the chips were made, it was unclear where to use them. Many attempts were made, including video phones, video doorbells, and IPTV, before discovering that security surveillance was a large market. Today, HiSilicon’s chip projects are typically initiated by business departments proposing requirements and securing budgets, with HiSilicon teams implementing them.
Guan Weidu recalls that HiSilicon did not achieve break-even until around 2011, with some products gradually gaining traction in the market. For example, HiSilicon developed power line carrier chips early on, hoping to enter the State Grid. However, the State Grid preferred self-sufficiency and established a joint venture chip company, Zhixin Microelectronics. Unfortunately, Zhixin Microelectronics struggled for years without success, even collaborating with France’s Thomson. Today, Zhixin Microelectronics purchases chips from HiSilicon, assembles them into modules, and sells them to the State Grid, indirectly integrating HiSilicon chips into the State Grid system.
Compared to powerful central state-owned enterprises, HiSilicon’s breakthrough in the security market is more representative. Zhuo Yi says this success was due to the “wolf-like” marketing of Little HiSilicon, with employees constantly on the move, spending few days in the office each month. At the time, the main player in the security market was the American chip giant Texas Instruments (TI). However, HiSilicon found that TI’s chips used a DSP architecture with mediocre cost-performance and provided customer support that was not user-friendly—for example, customers had to pay a 500,000 yuan licensing fee to obtain the development kit. Only a few well-resourced domestic manufacturers like Hikvision and Dahua could use them effectively.
Huawei targeted TI’s weaknesses by offering a full-hardware solution that could be used directly without further development, was cheaper, provided quick service response, and charged no licensing fees, which appealed to small companies. “Once small companies started using it, if large companies didn’t, they would lose their competitive advantage,” Zhuo Yi said. HiSilicon quickly captured market share, snatching business from foreign competitors.
In 2007, HiSilicon secured a contract with Dahua for 200,000 video encoding chips, marking its first major external chip sales contract in the true sense. In 2010, HiSilicon finally secured the world’s largest security camera manufacturer—Hikvision.
Zhuo Yi reveals that Hikvision later considered developing its own chips, which would have significantly impacted HiSilicon. HiSilicon rushed to communicate with Hikvision, presenting calculations showing that developing chips in-house was less cost-effective than using HiSilicon’s ready-made, mature, and affordable solutions. Today, Hikvision still relies heavily on HiSilicon for chip supply.
This also highlights Ren Zhengfei’s foresight. While persuading others to abandon self-development, Huawei invested in self-developed chips for areas closely related to its business, such as mobile phone chips and base station chips. At the time, both Qualcomm and MediaTek could provide complete and mature mobile phone chip solutions, but Huawei chose to persist with self-development, gradually occupying the upstream of technological innovation and gaining momentum for sustained development.
By 2008, Texas Instruments had gradually begun to withdraw. Interestingly, in 2013, Huawei acquired TI’s OMAP business in France and established an image research center based on it.
While security chips began yielding results, HiSilicon also made breakthroughs in another area—set-top box chip business. One of HiSilicon’s earliest competitors in set-top boxes was Thomson, a French company more renowned than HiSilicon. Three of Guan Weidu’s colleagues even left to join Thomson. However, Thomson’s products and technology were subpar, and coupled with its parent company’s debt crisis, it sought acquisition by HiSilicon around 2007. After evaluation, HiSilicon deemed Thomson’s assets worthless, and no acquisition agreement was reached. Guan Weidu’s colleagues at Thomson were eventually laid off.
HiSilicon’s later competitors in set-top box chips included Broadcom and STMicroelectronics, the latter being Europe’s largest semiconductor company at the time, jointly founded by the French and Italian governments. A former HiSilicon marketing employee told AI Finance that HiSilicon defeated Broadcom primarily due to market strategy: Broadcom focused on set-top box manufacturers, but HiSilicon analysis found that operators ultimately paid for set-top boxes, so it targeted operators. Operators specified chip requirements, and ultimately, only HiSilicon’s chips were the best fit.
A Broadcom set-top box chip employee recalled to AI Finance that the key to HiSilicon’s victory was price—”it was simply too cheap,” not in the same league as Broadcom. Broadcom eventually decided to withdraw from the Chinese set-top box market, focusing its efforts on European and American markets.
Around 2011, when HiSilicon began turning a profit, surveillance and set-top box chips had gained a firm foothold. Some network chips and wireless base station chips were developed from scratch, and wireless baseband chips sold successfully in Europe’s data card business.
The Bittersweet History of Kirin
On June 6, 2014, the mysterious HiSilicon held its first press conference in Beijing for its mobile phone chip, the Kirin 920. The event was hosted by Ai Wei, HiSilicon’s second-in-command and a Huawei Fellow. In contrast, international chip giants had already begun “shutting down, merging, or transferring” their mobile phone chip businesses. Just four days before the press conference, American Broadcom officially announced the sale of its mobile baseband business. Thus, mobile phone chip suppliers could be counted on one hand, and those surviving had their own unique strengths.
Dramatically, HiSilicon’s mobile phone chips were initially unwelcome. Ren Zhengfei once believed mobile phones were not Huawei’s main track and considered selling Huawei’s terminal company in 2008. The 3G mobile phone chip originally belonging to HiSilicon was also transferred to the terminal company to be packaged and sold with the mobile phone business for a good price. However, due to the 2008 global financial crisis, buyers’ acquisition intentions significantly diminished, and the matter was dropped. No one could have predicted that the once-marginalized Huawei mobile phones and HiSilicon chips would become Huawei’s most successful business in the past decade, generating substantial cash flow for the group.
But the Kirin chip was not an overnight success; it took over a decade of persistence to see the light. A HiSilicon expert told AI Finance that the turning point for the Kirin chip was the Kirin 920, which earned HiSilicon internal acclaim. By the Kirin 950, HiSilicon could basically match the industry’s leading level.
Tracing back, Huawei initiated mobile phone baseband chip development as early as 2003, signing an authorization agreement with ARM the following year. The first mobile phone SoC (System-on-Chip), the K3V1, was launched in 2008. K3 is a peak in the Himalayas with an elevation of 8,051 meters.
At the time, due to cost considerations, the K3V1 and later K3V2 used a GPU from a small American company. It was cheap but had poor compatibility. As a result, other major manufacturers did not want it, and Huawei internally did not use it either. Thus, the K3V1’s only customers were the ubiquitous山寨 phone manufacturers in Shenzhen. Hua Zheng recalls a phone imitating the iPhone that used the K3V1 chip but did not run iOS internally. This phone sold for less than 1,000 yuan. Ai Wei revealed that the K3V1 ultimately achieved shipments in the millions.
However,山寨 phones did not make money for HiSilicon and damaged its reputation. Customers were scattered, prices were low, and extensive adaptation work was required. Moreover, the chip’s工艺 was outdated, using 110nm technology while mainstream chips were already using 65nm or even 45nm.
When it came to the K3V2, there was significant internal debate at Huawei about whether to use it in its own phones. Concerns that the chip’s adoption would lower the industrial standard of the P6 phone released that year led to strong opposition.
But by then, profound changes had occurred inside and outside Huawei. Huawei established the Consumer Business Group (CBG) in 2011, beginning to explore mobile phones as a core business. Yu Chengdong当时喊出了 the slogan that Huawei would capture one-third of the future mobile phone market, earning him the nickname “Yu Dazui” (Big Mouth Yu).
Supporting its own chips became a strategic issue—it could reduce costs, enable differentiation, and serve as a marketing selling point. For example, “at that time, HiSilicon’s chipset was about 600 yuan cheaper than Qualcomm’s,” which was a huge incentive for profit-sensitive Huawei.
Yu Chengdong insisted, against opposition, on using HiSilicon’s K3V2 in Huawei’s high-end phones. Sun Yun told AI Finance that this was a key factor in Kirin’s development. Yu Chengdong had already proven the self-developed chip path when he was responsible for Huawei’s wireless business.
Without the support of Huawei’s terminal company, the Kirin chip would not be where it is today. HiSilicon’s chips performed unsatisfactorily at the time; the K3V2 had severe overheating, unstable performance, and poor internal and external reputation. Huawei terminal staff also suffered. Zhuo Yi gave a vivid analogy: originally, with Qualcomm chips, Huawei terminal company needed only two people to manage; with MediaTek chips, three people; but with HiSilicon chips, even eight people couldn’t handle it.
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Zhuo Yi still recalls that when Huawei phones did not sell well, the company would issue one to each employee at year-end and deduct it from the bonus pool, equivalent to internal consumption to support development.
“Kirin” did not officially enter the public eye until 2014. At the time, Yu Chengdong revealed on Weibo that Huawei would launch the K3V3 dual quad-core processor in the second half of 2013. However, what the outside world eventually saw was not the K3V3 but the Kirin 910, the first to use 28nm process technology, integrating the application processor (AP) and baseband processor (BP)—the previous two chips were only application processors without basebands.
This persistence paid off. “The breakthrough in mobile phone chips significantly propelled HiSilicon to the industry forefront, as mobile phone chips—whether in terms of process, performance, low-power technology, or analog—are all at the cutting edge of the chip field,” Sun Yun said.
Looking back, the rise of Kirin was not only due to the firm strategic choices of Huawei’s top management but also the hard work of countless engineers and researchers. The earliest person in charge of Kirin chip R&D was Wang Jin, but he collapsed at his post in 2014 due to health reasons.
“Wang Jin contributed immensely to the Kirin chip’s strong competitiveness today,” Yu Chengdong once commented on Weibo, mourning Wang Jin. Huawei’s culture does not promote heroism but emphasizes group operations, with individuals rarely exposed.
Wang Jin was a technical backbone at Huawei. He joined Huawei in the same year as HiSilicon President He Tingbo, and their career paths were very similar, starting as frontline engineers and becoming core forces in Huawei’s R&D.
A person familiar with Wang Jin revealed that he had a good temper and was always smiling, but because of a software issue with the multi-mode chip he was responsible for, it frequently disconnected during external testing.
This test result greatly dissatisfied the terminal company. At this critical moment, HiSilicon’s failure triggered a chain reaction. The terminal company informed Yu Chengdong, who complained to Ren Zhengfei, who then passed it to He Tingbo for handling. He Tingbo eventually swapped the positions of Wang Jin and Hu Bo, who was responsible for network chip R&D. Hu Bo was then a third-level department head, equivalent to a demotion for Wang Jin.
The aforementioned person recalled that this bug was an accident; everyone lacked experience with multi-mode chips. Later, another department worked overtime for over 20 days and quickly resolved the issue. However, relevant HiSilicon supervisors were penalized, receiving zero annual bonuses that year.
In fact, before his death, Wang Jin was no longer working on mobile phone chips but was reassigned to network chips, which led him to leave Beijing for Shanghai. On the evening of July 26, 2014, around 10 p.m., Wang Jin suddenly felt unwell during a company meeting and ultimately collapsed on the way to the hospital.
It is poignant that the chip Wang Jin was leading the development of at that time was the Kirin 920, used in the Honor 6. The upgraded Kirin 925 was used in the Huawei Mate 7. These two models became the turning point for Huawei mobile phones from uncertainty to prosperity. From then on, Huawei entered a glorious era of joint success for Kirin chips and Huawei mobile phones.
From 28nm to 16nm, to 10nm, to the latest 7nm, looking at the most recent generations of technology, HiSilicon has been among TSMC’s first customers for each advanced process. Because consumers can directly perceive it, Kirin chips have brought a reputation effect to HiSilicon. The success of Kirin chips has also put pressure on competitors. A classmate from Qualcomm China once complained to Guan Weidu that work there was relatively relaxed before, but with the rise of Huawei’s mobile phone chips, “overtime became much more intense.”
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HiSilicon’s Revelations
In Huawei’s organizational structure, HiSilicon is a second-level department under the 2012 Lab. For many initial years, due to consistent lack of profitability, employee待遇 were relatively low. Employees who joined Huawei in the same period received twice the bonuses in the terminal company compared to HiSilicon. This is an awkward situation chip businesses may face in any enterprise. A顺口溜 once circulated at Huawei: “Divine Terminal, Sacred Wireless, Hai* Si.” HiSilicon, now revered as divine, once held a low status within Huawei.
“Employee待遇 were 20–30% lower than those at good external companies,” Guan Weidu said, adding that even domestic chip design company Spreadtrum offered higher待遇 than HiSilicon at the time. In 2007, a large number of people left HiSilicon—“at least one-third”—choosing to go to foreign companies like Nortel and AMD. At that time, many products were unsuccessful, the company was unprofitable, and employee morale was low.
“But Ren Zhengfei was supportive and determined to push forward,” Guan Weidu said.
In 2014, when Kirin chips became one of the selling points of Huawei’s high-end phones, HiSilicon experienced significant development. “Actually, HiSilicon employees have improved rapidly in recent years.” This also gave Ren Zhengfei greater ambitions. A senior person from Shenzhen Capital Group told AI Finance that Ren Zhengfei once said that when HiSilicon’s headcount reaches 20,000, Huawei could produce a large portion of the world’s chips.
There were hundreds of chip startups contemporaneous with HiSilicon, with varying fates. The first Chinese company listed in the US, Vimicro, has delisted. Currently, only HiSilicon and Unisoc have revenues exceeding 100 billion yuan. Looking back at HiSilicon’s development history, can its growth experience be replicated? What experiences and lessons are worth pondering?
From the perspective of HiSilicon employees and industry experts, first, it is essential to have both a global competition and open mindset, as well as a crisis awareness of technological self-reliance. Huawei’s rise benefited from global competition and an open mindset. However, under circumstances like the US Entity List and embargoes, companies must also have a crisis awareness of cultivating self-reliant ecosystems.
Recent US actions against Huawei have shown little regard for rules and fair competition. According to overseas media reports, US Senator Marco Rubio, who has repeatedly criticized China’s intellectual property, recently submitted a bill to not protect Huawei’s patent rights in the US, preventing Huawei from seeking damages in US courts. If passed, this would mean that nearly 20% of 5G patents held by Huawei in the US market would be unprotected.
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The US recently also added five Chinese companies and institutions to the Entity List, including companies ranking high in the latest Top500 supercomputer list. Therefore, while坚持全球化, the意识 of supporting the domestic ecosystem must not be diluted. “Should many domestic system manufacturers reflect on the practice of ‘rejecting companies that are not among the world’s Top3 chip companies’?”
Second, the strategic persistence of entrepreneurs. Over the 32 years since Ren Zhengfei founded Huawei, through market ups and downs, he gradually developed unique strategic vision, a strong style, and an indomitable spirit. This has given Huawei far greater resilience and determination than other companies in a series of events.
HiSilicon was unprofitable for many years in its early stages, yet Huawei坚持 invested over 10% of its revenue into R&D for consecutive years. HiSilicon employees recall that HiSilicon投入 3 billion yuan annually. And this was only the早期投入; it has long since increased significantly.
“Now, Xiaomi throws in a bit of money and gets impatient, completely disregarding the laws of chip development and R&D, thinking they can produce a product in随便 three months—it’s a joke,” Hua Zheng compared Xiaomi’s attitude toward chip R&D. In his view, Pinecone poached a rare young and dynamic team from Datang Telecom, only to have it wasted. “Xiaomi simply has no mind for chip R&D.”
HiSilicon is fortunate to have had Huawei as a natural “mine.” Back then, domestic chip design companies complained most that domestic manufacturers did not trust domestic chips, preferring to spend more on mature foreign chips. At that time, similar家电 companies and通信 companies also established semiconductor companies, but because chips could not yield quick results, top management experienced strategic wavering, leading to落后 today in innovation levels. Huawei’s strategic support for HiSilicon, especially the并肩 growth in the mobile phone chip business, ultimately put the chip business on a virtuous cycle. HiSilicon grew stronger through stumbling and also brought Huawei to new heights of innovation, achieving mutual success.
Ren Zhengfei’s strategic persistence also includes not chasing trends and maintaining a pragmatic心态. A government official recalled to AI Finance that when his metropolitan city wanted to develop the chip industry, they specifically sought out Ren Zhengfei. However, Ren refused the合作 project, believing it lacked a good mechanism and would not succeed. In recent years, some internet companies and startups have entered the chip industry during the semiconductor investment boom,抱着抢风口,抬股价,拿政府投资的心态. But according to historical experience, this can only lead to a mess.
Third, management. “Where Huawei is stronger than other companies is in management,” Guan Weidu said. When Huawei was first established, its technology was very ordinary, but because management was到位, its technology accumulated and optimized through iteration.
At the end of 1995, Ren Zhengfei明确提出 that company management must fully align with international standards. He特别提到 that only with an R&D management system aligned internationally could products capable of competing with international giants be developed. Ren Zhengfei believes that competition between enterprises ultimately is not about market expansion能力, not about product R&D能力, but about management水平.
After leaving HiSilicon, Guan Weidu worked at two other semiconductor companies. Although both implemented MPD (Project Engineering Management), he felt management did not value it and did not do it well.
HiSilicon’s management strictly follows development processes and rules, with each person’s responsibilities clearly delineated, and individuals are expected to fill their assigned boxes.
“External companies can’t even draw the boxes clearly, making work more difficult,” Guan Weidu said. Most companies have管理混乱 issues, lacking documentation and processes. He even encountered a situation at one company where, after completing a product and nearing tape-out, some product specifications were found missing, requiring much work to be redone.
But HiSilicon is not without危机 today. Hua Zheng worries that previously, HiSilicon needed to compete with external opponents; Huawei’s business departments could choose to use it or not, based更多 on market selection. Now, with the US supply cut-off, it means that whether HiSilicon’s chips are good enough or not, they must be used. In the long term,脱钩 from the outside world will affect HiSilicon’s competitiveness.
Pan Kewei believes that HiSilicon has not allocated enough time to some core technologies, especially the analog chips it currently aims to攻克. Unlike digital chips that can be produced rapidly, analog chips are known in the industry as “an art,” with some US companies often spending decades on a single technical point.
Ren Zhengfei has一直强调 the need to thank Trump for重新激发 Huawei people’s fighting spirit. Now, the challenge for Huawei is how to maintain this斗志 without impatience, keep communicating with the world, and rebuild a self-reliant ecosystem.
(Hua Zheng, Guan Weidu, Pan Kewei, Sun Yun, and Zhuo Yi in the text are pseudonyms.)
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