A report has revealed that Huawei, the Chinese tech giant has started making Kirin 980 chips through the 7nm manufacturing process. The production is to start soon. The company usually releases its new chipset in the Mate series first.
Huawei has been making in-house HiSilicon chips for quite some time and has been quite successful. They started from K3V2(quad-core A9 chipset) and now the company’s latest chipset is the Kirin 970 which is present the current flagship of Huawei, the P20 Series as well as the Mate 10 series. Huawei has been making in-house powered chips for the past 5 years. This is the first news dropped regarding the new Kirin 980 chips.
The company is using the 7nm manufacturing process for the Kirin 980 chips which is smaller compared to the 10nm process used to make the Kirin 970 chips. The production of the chips is expected to start from this quarter. The 7nm manufacturing process is much faster and cheaper, these chips take less battery consumption.
Huawei launches its chipsets in the second half of the year. The chipset then gets used in the following year’s P-series handset as well as in Mate series.
The Kirin 980 will have core upgraded to 8 cores while Huawei’s Neural Processing Unit (NPU) would probably get a tune-up as well. Huawei wouldn’t be the only chipset manufacturer using the 7nm process. Samsung has also been reportedly developing 7nm chips six months ahead of schedule, with Qualcomm tipped to be a major customer.