Is SMIC N+3’s Metal Pitch Smaller than Intel 18A’s?
SemiAnalysis Twitter · SemiAnalysis (@SemiAnalysis_) · 2026-06-14
SemiAnalysis's new STEEL teardown lab reveals that SMIC's N+3 node in Huawei's Kirin 9030 achieves a 32.5nm minimum metal pitch — tighter than Intel 18A's 36nm — but reaches TSMC N6-class density only through costly DUV multi-patterning that leaves it behind on efficiency, maturity, and overall chip performance.
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Extraction
Topics: semiconductor-manufacturingprocess-nodessmicexport-controlschip-teardown
Claims
- SMIC N+3's minimum metal pitch of 32.5nm is approximately 10% tighter than Intel 18A's 36nm, making the headline comparison technically accurate but cherry-picked.
- SMIC N+3 reaches TSMC N6-class logic density but requires far more aggressive DUV multi-patterning, incurring higher cost, complexity, and process risk.
- The Kirin 9030 Pro performs comparably to three-year-old Android flagships and trails current flagship SoCs from Apple, Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Samsung significantly.
- Export controls have not halted SMIC and Huawei's progress but have forced a more complex, less efficient path in the absence of EUV lithography.
- SemiAnalysis has launched the STEEL (Teardown Engineering & Evaluation Lab) in Oregon, positioning it as a credible competitor to TechInsights.
Key quotes
SMIC N+3 reaches the density of TSMC N6 through aggressive DUV multi-patterning and design-technology co-optimization (DTCO), but it pays for that in complexity, efficiency and process control.
Export controls have not stopped Huawei and SMIC from shipping advanced silicon, but they have forced a different path.
The headline is true, but incomplete cherry picked metric.