huawei-bringing-back-kirin-chips-report

 Huawei apparently plans to reintroduce its Kirin chipsets for smartphones despite the U.S. ban.

The HiSilicon division of the Chinese manufacturer assisted Huawei in designing its own Kirin chips, which were made by TSMC, before the U.S. made it a point to cripple the company. Up until the U.S. Commerce Department revised a rule in 2020, Huawei was TSMC's second-largest customer after Apple. With this modification, Huawei is no longer permitted to purchase chips from foundries that produce them using American technology. Huawei has been given approval to purchase Snapdragon chips that have been modified to not function with 5G signals.

The Kirin 9000, the first 5nm processor with an integrated 5G modem, was the last Kirin chip manufactured by Huawei. A tweet from @Tech_Reve depicts a two possible setups for a future Kirin chip. The first configuration depicts a chip with two Cortex-X3 cores for performance, two Cortex-A715 cores for performance, and four Cortex-A510 cores for efficiency. The GPU in this setup is an Arm Immortalis-G715 MC16.

The Weibo tipster also revealed a second configuration that has three Cortex-A78 performance cores, three Cortex-A55 efficiency cores, and two Cortex-X1 prime CPU cores. The Arm Mali G710 MC10/6 GPU would be found on this chip.

It's possible that these configurations come from two different chips. Another Weibo article claims that three new Huawei-designed chips—the Kirin 720, Kirin 830, and Kirin 9100—will be released. According to rumors, the first two will launch later this year, while the Kirin 9100possibly the processor that will power the P70 flagship, which is anticipated to launch early in 2019.

You may be asking how Huawei will be able to circumvent American limitations to produce the new Kirin chips. The chip will be manufactured by SMIC, China's top foundry, using their N+2 (7nm) node, according to a tip from @tech_reve posted on X. Another option is that Huawei will stack two 14nm circuits to achieve 7nm performance while still maintaining a low enough power consumption to operate a smartphone without depleting its battery or producing excessive heat.

Before it proved out to be true, Huawei had earlier rejected in 2022 that the Kirin chips would return in time for the P60 series. That denial followed the erroneous suggestion made by the rumor mill that a 14nm Kirin 9100 chipsetwould be the flagship camera-based device in 2023.