HiSilicon Working on 10nm Kirin 970 SoC With Enhanced GPU

Huawei-backed HiSilicon has reportedly begun work on the latest mobile chipset for the company's future smartphones. The Huawei semi-conductor subsidiary apparently wishes to introduce its next-generation mobile chipset that goes by the name of 'Kirin 970,' by the third quarter of this year.

According to a report published by Android Headlines, there have been a lot of rumors regarding the questionable 'Kirin 970' up till now.  The system-on-chip (SoC) has been making a lot of headlines lately. For instance, industry expert, Pan Juitang took to Weibo (China's Facebook) to post his speculations or rather, predictions regarding the upcoming Kirin 970 SoC. According to him, the Kirin 970 SoC is going to be made by TSMC. The latter will be using 10nm nodes.

The chipset's performance is going to be taken care of, too. The company plans on equipping it with an enhanced graphics processing unit (GPU). In fact, there are multiple reports that suggest that the Hi-Silicon Kirin 970 SoC will arrive with a high-end, updated GPU. As can be recalled, earlier this year rumors emerging from China indicated that the company wishes to use graphics processing unit cards built on a modern-day architecture that goes by the name of ARM Heimdallr.

Coming back to what Jiutang posted, he believes that regardless of what it comes packed with, the Kirin 970 will ultimately be mass-manufactured by TSMC. This speculation has led many to believe that a new smartphone is in the offing too. If the chipset is ready by the third quarter of this year then the first smartphone to be powered by it will also be ready by the third quarter of this year. Jiutang hasn't made any comments regarding any new upcoming smartphone.

He hasn't spoken about which smartphone will be adopting the SoC first. Nonetheless, going on the basis of leaks, it is widely believed that the first smartphone powered by Kirin 950 will be Huawei Mate 10. Fans have come to believe this because the earlier versions of the Mate series have been the first of any smartphones to adopt Hi-Silicon's chipsets. Take, for instance, the Huawei Mate 8 was introduced with Kirin 950 SoC back in 2015 followed by Mate 9, which was equipped with Kirin 960 silicon in 2016.