Qualcomm has signed an agreement to use key Huawei patents, including the Chinese company's LogicFolding semiconductor manufacturing technology, Reuters reported on the 5th local time. Analysts said the deal shows that technology Huawei developed on its own has won recognition in overseas markets despite U.S. restrictions on China's chip industry.
Huawei said it had concluded a multiyear cross-licensing agreement with Qualcomm, according to Reuters and Bloomberg. The agreement covers 5G devices, artificial intelligence services, near-package and co-packaged optics, and network technologies.
Notably, the agreement includes patents tied to LogicFolding, the technology Huawei unveiled recently. LogicFolding is a new design and manufacturing approach that China developed to improve chip performance after its access to advanced lithography equipment was curtailed.
Huawei believes the approach — which raises performance by speeding up data transfers and improving the efficiency of connections inside a chip — can narrow the gap with leading manufacturers such as Taiwan's TSMC at the most advanced process nodes. Bloomberg said the Qualcomm agreement "could serve as a kind of validation of Huawei's chip technology."
Export controls imposed by the U.S. have left China unable to import extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines from the Netherlands' ASML. EUV equipment is essential for producing chips at 7 nanometers — a billionth of a meter — and below. To compensate for that constraint, Huawei has focused on advanced packaging, new chip architectures and technologies that optimize data transfers.
LogicFolding was developed specifically to raise performance and transistor density without EUV. The method stacks circuits vertically and links them through a high-density interconnect network, shortening the distance signals travel inside a chip to improve processing efficiency rather than shrinking transistor line widths. Huawei said the technology increased transistor density by more than 50%.
Huawei is applying LogicFolding to its in-house Ascend line of AI chips to strengthen their competitiveness. The company's latest application processor, the Kirin 9050 Pro, scored higher than Apple's A17 Pro in the Geekbench 6 multicore test, according to the South China Morning Post. Geekbench 6 is a widely used benchmark for comparing smartphone and PC chips, and its multicore test measures processing capacity when several CPU cores are used at once. The Kirin 9050 Pro is believed to be mass-produced on a 7-nanometer-class process. Huawei has fitted the chip in the Mate XT2, its new trifold smartphone.
Qualcomm and Huawei have had close ties in the past. Huawei sourced some of its smartphone chips from Qualcomm until the U.S. tightened sanctions on the company during Donald Trump's first administration. After Washington restricted Huawei's access to advanced foreign-made semiconductors, the company rapidly expanded the share of chips it designs and produces domestically.
Huawei holds one of the world's largest patent portfolios, centered on wireless communications. It has recently moved aggressively to license those patents to foreign companies, turning intellectual property into a new revenue stream.
The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The two companies plan to file for review under the U.S. Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, which applies to transactions valued at more than $133.9 million, or about 180 billion won. Huawei said the cumulative value of all its patent licensing agreements, including the Qualcomm deal, would exceed $6.9 billion, or about 9.28 trillion won.
