We may never know how Huawei was able to pull this off considering the sanctions and the company's placement on the entity list along with SMIC. This prevents both firms from accessing their U.S. supply chain without obtaining a license. But various benchmark tests run on the 7nm Kirin 9000s and the previous chip that Huawei used for the Mate 40 series, the 5nm Kirin 9000 (which also is a 5G chip), reveal that the older chipset is a better component overall than the newer chipset.

Huawei's 2020 Kirin 9000 outperforms the new Kirin 9000s in head-to-head battle comes via ChinaTechNews.com.