THE CRUNCH
Huawei has introduced its first desktop PCs running on its own silicon and operating system: the Qinyun HM650 and HM650g, powered by the company's Kirin X90 processor and HarmonyOS Enterprise Edition. Huawei claims the machines are built entirely from components manufactured in China, a point that matters for domestic supply chains under Western sanctions. The claim, reported by the South China Morning Post, is broadly plausible but comes with significant caveats.
The Kirin X90 is a 10-core, 20-thread system-on-chip built around Huawei-designed Armv8 Taishan cores in a 4+4+2 arrangement, all supporting simultaneous multithreading. It also integrates a Maleoon graphics unit and a dedicated neural processing unit for AI workloads. Huawei has not officially disclosed how the chip is made, but a teardown by TechInsights found it is fabricated by SMIC on its 7nm-class N+2 process, a notable feat for domestic manufacturing even though it trails the leading-edge nodes of Intel, TSMC and Samsung.
The machines carry 16 GB of LPDDR5 memory, likely from China's CXMT, and 256 GB or 512 GB SSDs, probably from Chinese flash maker YMTC. Huawei says the processor, memory, storage, power supply and wireless connectivity are all domestically manufactured.
Whether the systems are truly 'entirely domestic' is an open question. While the main chips are fabricated in China, they are produced using foreign manufacturing equipment from the Netherlands, the US and Japan, materials from Japan, Arm IP from the UK, and EDA design software from the US and partly China. Domestic certification does not mean the semiconductor supply chain behind the machine is fully Chinese.
HarmonyOS Enterprise Edition does reduce dependence on foreign software: unlike earlier HarmonyOS versions that incorporated Linux components, it uses Huawei's own kernel and architecture. The trade-off is compatibility, as the machines cannot rely on the Windows software ecosystem that many enterprise customers depend on.