The Kirin 970 is one of the most powerful processors out there at the moment, and according to the newly-surfaced info, mass production of the Kirin 980, its successor, is set to begin by the end of this quarter. According to the provided info, now only will mass production for the Kirin 980 start soon, but the chip will be made using TSMC’s (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) 7nm manufacturing process.
As most of you probably already know, Kirin chips belong to Huawei, they are Huawei’s proprietary processors, and have been for quite some time now. The Kirin 970 is their flagship SoC, and it fuels a number of high-end devices at the moment, ranging from the Huawei Mate 10, Mate 10 Pro, and the PORSCHE DESIGN Mate 10, all the way to the company’s all-new P20 series of devices, and the PORSCHE DESIGN Mate RS. The Kirin 980 is expected to fuel the Huawei Mate 11, or Mate 20, whatever the company ends up calling the device, and other high-end devices the company ends up releasing at the end of this year, and also in the first three quarters of next year. The Huawei Mate 10, and its siblings, were announced back in October last year, so chances are that its successor will arrive in the fourth quarter of this year, and it will probably be the first phone to ship with the Kirin 980.
The Kirin 980 will probably have a dedicated NPU, just like the Kirin 970, though other than the fact that it will be made using a 7nm manufacturing process, we do not really have any info about this chip. We’re probably looking at quite a powerful GPU here, and the Kirin 980 will probably include eight cores, and support Bluetooth 5.0, though that’s only a guess on our part. The Kirin 970, for comparison’s sake, features four Cortex-A73 and four Cortex-A53 cores, while the Mali-G72 MP12 GPU is included in the package as well. That chip supports UFS 2.1, and it is made using TSMC’s 10nm manufacturing process. More info regarding the Kirin 980 is expected to surface soon, especially if the provided info is accurate, and the chip is going into mass production soon.