The HiSilicon Kirin 970 SoC is Huawei’s upcoming flagship processor, and some details regarding this SoC have just surfaced. According to a new rumor, this chip will be built using TSMC’s manufacturing process, and will pack eight cores, four ARM Cortex-A73 cores, and four ARM Cortex-A53 cores. According to the provided info, the chip will be able to run at a maximum frequency of 3.0GHz, and will be equipped with a category 12 LTE. In addition to all this, this will, based on this info, be Huawei’s first SoC to use the 10nm manufacturing process.
Now, the Kirin 970 is expected to be announced in the first quarter of 2017, and will probably enter mass production soon after that, maybe a month or two after it gets announced. The company’s recently introduced Huawei Mate 9 flagship phablet is fueled by the Kirin 960 SoC, Huawei’s current-gen flagship SoC which is quite powerful, and the upcoming Huawei P10 flagship will probably ship with the Kirin 960, though it is possible the company could opt for the Kirin 970 instead, presuming Huawei will manage to both introduce the Kirin 970 and push it to mass production by March or April when the Huawei P10 is expected to launch. The Kirin 960 is actually able to compete with the best out there in some areas, and this SoC had managed to surprise quite a few people, so expectations are quite high for its successor.
It is also worth mentioning that some rumors surfaced quite recently saying that the Kirin 970 could launch later than expected, but a report from Taiwan denied that, and said that the chip is coming just in time. Now, if all of these rumors are accurate, the Kirin 970 could enter mass production in early Q2 2017, and the Huawei P10 will most likely arrive in April, so it is possible we’ll see that chip built into the company’s new flagship, though as we already mentioned, that is not the most probable outcome, but the Huawei Mate 10 will almost certainly ship with the Kirin 970. Huawei and its subsidiary, Honor, are the only two companies who use Kirin chips in their smartphones, but that could change soon if some previous rumors are to be believed, a number of China-based smartphone manufacturers are allegedly considering utilizing Kirin chips in their devices, but it remains to be seen how accurate are those rumors. In any case, 2017 could be a really interesting year for Huawei and the company’s processors.