Comprehensive Overview of Huawei’s Chip Industry: History, Major Product Lines, and Future Directions

The article provides a comprehensive review of Huawei’s semiconductor portfolio, tracing its origins from the early 1990s to the present and summarizing the major product families that now define the company’s chip strategy.

Huawei’s chip efforts began in 1991 with the SD502 and SD509 ASICs for switches; a central research department was created in 1995, and HiSilicon (Huawei’s semiconductor arm) was founded in 2004, initially focusing on digital security chips and later launching the K3V1 mobile solution in 2009.

Today Huawei offers five core series: the Kirin mobile SoC, the Kunpeng server/PC CPUs, the Ascend AI processors, the Balong and Tianang communication chips, the Boudica and Lingxiao IoT/Wi‑Fi solutions, and the Honghu video/display chips, each targeting distinct market segments.

Kunpeng series: Starting from the embedded Hi1380, the line progressed through Kunpeng 912 and 916 to the flagship Kunpeng 920/920s, built on ARM V8, 64 cores, 2.6 GHz, 7 nm process, 8‑channel DDR4, PCIe 4.0, and delivering up to 930 SPECint scores with 30 % better energy efficiency than competing x86 solutions.

Ascend series: Ascend 310 (edge) achieves 16 TOPS INT8 and 8 TFLOPS FP16 at 8 W, while Ascend 910 (training) reaches 512 TOPS INT8 and 256 TFLOPS FP16 at 310 W, featuring a proprietary Da Vinci architecture; future road‑maps include Ascend 610, 320, and 920.

Kirin mobile SoC: After early K3V1/K3V2 attempts, Kirin 910 (2013) became the world’s first quad‑core 28 nm SoC with Mali‑450MP4 GPU and Balong 710 modem. Subsequent generations (920, 925, 928, 930, 935, 950, 960, 970, 980, 990/990 5G) moved to 16 nm, 10 nm, and 7 nm+ processes, integrated NPU, and introduced the industry‑first 5G‑integrated SoC.

Communication chips: Balong 700 (TD‑LTE, 2010) broke Qualcomm’s monopoly; Balong 5000 (2019) supports 5G and legacy networks with 4.6 Gbps Sub‑6 GHz and 6.5 Gbps mmWave speeds. Tianang, the first 5G base‑station core, offers 2.5× compute, 200 MHz bandwidth, and significant size, weight, and power reductions.

IoT and Wi‑Fi chips: Boudica series (NB‑IoT) launched the commercial Boudica 120 in 2016, followed by Boudica 150 and planned Boudica 200, achieving millions of units shipped. Lingxiao Wi‑Fi chips (e.g., 5651, 1151) power Huawei routers and were later released as Lingxiao WiFi‑IoT for smart‑home scenarios.

Video/display chips: Honghu series targets smart‑display markets; the Honghu 818 (2019) uses a dual‑A73 + A53 CPU and 4 × Mali‑G51 GPU, supporting 4K decoding, HDR, and advanced audio processing, with over 40 million units shipped.

In summary, Huawei’s five chip families have achieved breakthrough performance across computing, AI, mobile, communication, IoT, and video domains, illustrating a successful transition from a modest start in 1991 to a leading position in the global semiconductor ecosystem and underscoring the strategic importance of the “China‑chip” initiative for future industry growth.