Qualcomm has entered a multiyear cross-licensing agreement with Huawei, which includes the purchase of specific U.S. patents related to AI, compute, and networking. This deal marks the first time Qualcomm will pay Huawei for patent licensing, shifting the historical dynamic where Huawei previously paid Qualcomm for such rights.
The agreement covers 5G devices, AI services, and co-packaged optics. It is currently awaiting regulatory approval, including a review by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. The financial terms of the transaction remain undisclosed, though reports indicate Qualcomm will be the net payer.
Central to the interest is Huawei’s LogicFolding chip architecture, used in the Kirin 9050 Pro processor found in the Mate XT 2 smartphone. The design utilizes copper-to-copper hybrid bonding with a 1.5-micrometer pitch and approximately 50 million interconnects, aiming to improve data transmission efficiency.
Technical analysis of the Kirin 9050 Pro reveals two bonded dies with a total area exceeding 240 mm². The architecture places dense compute units on the top die, while the lower die houses cache, I/O, and power management components. Huawei claims this stacking method reduces power consumption by up to 66% for the NPU.
Huawei plans further iterations of this technology, targeting a 1-micrometer pitch for the Kirin 2027 and a 720-nanometer pitch within three years. The company also aims to implement LogicFolding in its Ascend 990 AI accelerator by 2030, continuing its focus on signal delay as a primary scaling metric.
