Huawei Kirin chips for smartphones might make a comeback

More than two years after the US trade ban against Huawei, the company is reportedly bringing back its Kirin chipsets.

To make this possible, Huawei is turning to its onshore foundry, the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) according to tipster Revegnus.

In its X post, Revegnus posted an image showing the potential specs of Kirin’s rumored chips. The first configuration consists of two Cortex-X3 prime CPU cores, two Cortex-A715 performance CPU cores. And four Cortex-A510 CPU cores for efficiency, along with an Arm Immortalis-G715 MC16 GPU.

While the second config has two Cortex-X1 prime CPU cores, three Cortex-A78 performance CPU cores, and three Cortex-A55 efficiency cores.

The GPU suggests Arm Mali G710 MC10/6. These configurations could also refer separate SKUs.

Through China’s SMIC, it is said to build the chip using the foundry’s cutting-edge (N+2) 7nm node. While other report 10 (in Chinese) theorizes that Huawei will stack two 14nm chips to get near-7nm performance. To do that, the power consumption is said to be as low as seven watts.

Furthermore, a Weibo post claims that there will be three SKUs. The Kirin 720 and 830—which reportedly debuts this year. And the Kirin 9100—probably a flagship which presumably powers a HUAWEI P70 phone.

Huawei’s last smartphones equipped with a Kirin chipset is the HUAWEI Mate 40 Series. It was the first 5nm chip with 5G built-in modem.