Over two years following the crackdown on Huawei, speculations are now rife that the tech giant is gearing up to reintroduce its chipsets. To accomplish this, Huawei appears to be partnering with its local semiconductor foundry, the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC). Unnamed sources have hinted at this strategic alliance, fuelling the ongoing buzz about the comeback of Kirin’s chips.

Speculations were further enhanced as images surfaced, purportedly indicating the expected specifications of the Kirin chips under question. Rumors suggest that the first setup may have two Cortex-X3 prime CPU cores, two Cortex-A715 performance cores, and four Cortex-A510 cores for efficiency and performance. It might also feature an Arm Immortalis-G715 MC16 GPU. The second setup is rumored to include two Cortex-X1 prime CPU cores, three Cortex-A78 performance cores along with three Cortex-A55 efficiency cores and a probable Arm Mali G710 MC10/6 GPU. These potential configurations may also signify separate stock keeping units or SKUs.

It has also been hinted that Huawei may opt to use SMIC's advanced 7nm (N+2) node architecture to manufacture these chips. Certain speculations also suggest Huawei could pursue a different technique, that is, stacking two 14nm chips together to achieve close-to-7nm performance. The significant benefit of this latter approach would be a dramatic reduction in power consumption, potentially as low as seven watts.

Further speculations speak about a tiered release of multiple SKUs. The initial models being spoken about are the Kirin 720 and the 830, both rumored to debut within this year. These could be followed by the Kirin 9100, a model likely to be a flagship product, and speculated to be the power source for the upcoming HUAWEI P70 phone.

If these conjectures hold water, this would indeed mark a significant milestone in the Kirin chipset series. Huawei's most recent smartphones featured a Kirin chipset and was marked as the game changer. It was innovative in being the first 5nm chip with an inbuilt 5G modem.