Mass production of the HiSilicon Kirin 970 SoC (System-on-Chip) has begun, according to a new report out of Taiwan. Leaks about the new Huawei-made flagship chipset have been emerging for months now, and one recent rumor suggested that it would launch at some point in Q3 this year, ahead of the Huawei Mate 10 flagship smartphone that will reportedly be the first to use it. Therefore, the latest report citing sources close to Taiwan’s industrial chain and stating that it’s heading for a commercial debut is timely, as it’s rumored that the Mate 10 could be unveiled at IFA Berlin 2017 in September before hitting the market in October.
Previous leaks have suggested that the HiSilicon Kirin 970 SoC is being developed on the 10nm process node, and will be clocked at between 2.8GHz and 3GHz. Some speculation has also pointed to the Kirin 970 supporting an enhanced GPU (graphics processing unit) and Cat. 12 LTE baseband. While previous rumors tipped an octa-core CPU entailing four ARM Cortex-A53 cores and four Cortex A-73 ones, there have also been later leaks suggesting that Cortex A-75 cores might be utilized by the upcoming SoC. While Huawei hasn’t provided too much in the way of confirmed details, the company has indicated that its next-generation chipset will be the first in the world featuring some kind of artificial intelligence technology.
The Mate 8 was the first smartphone to use the Kirin 950 SoC two years ago and the Mate 9 was the first with the Kirin 960 last year, so it certainly makes sense that the Huawei Mate 10 will be the first to pack the Kirin 970. Previous leaks have suggested that the upcoming smartphone from the Shenzhen-based OEM will have a bezel-less design and feature a dual camera setup at both its front and back, a 5.8-inch display panel with QHD resolution, memory configurations ranging between 6GB RAM and 8GB of RAM, an iris scanner, and a fingerprint recognition sensor embedded into its screen. It’s anticipated that the Mate 10 will be running Android 8.0 with Huawei’s proprietary user interface on top, although the Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer has yet to officially confirm any of its specifications.