Huawei and SMIC quietly rolled out a new Kirin 9000C processor.
Chinese foundry SMIC may have broken the 5nm process barrier, as evidenced by a new Huawei laptop listed with an advanced chip with 5nm manufacturing tech — a feat previously thought impossible due to U.S sanctions.
That's the only reason I think there's going to be a gap. If they had their own machines already I'd be saying 2 years until 2nm.
I'm a bit more cautious given they're using an entirely novel process. Once you get below 10nm things start getting difficult.
On the other hand they've gone from nothing to 10 years behind state of the art in 3 years so...