Kirin 970: have details for Huawei’s next flagship chip leaked?

Earlier this week, we reported on claims that Huawei’s HiSilicon Kirin 970 processor, expected to be used in the Huawei Mate 10 (and probably the P11), had started mass production.

Now, a Weibo user (via GSMArena) has posted what could be the specs for Huawei’s new flagship chip. So what should you expect?

The user’s post purportedly reveals that the Kirin 970 will pack an octacore arrangement that’s similar to the Kirin 960. So that means four heavy-lifting A73 cores and four lightweight A53 cores — no next-gen A75 and A55 cores here. But the chip is apparently built on a 10nm process, which should mean better battery life and better sustained performance, if true.

The tipster does however suggest that the Kirin 970 will feature ARM’s new Mali G72 graphics chip in an octacore layout. This is pretty telling, given earlier reports that Huawei could be marketing the chip for its AI prowess — ARM claims the Mali G72 offers 17% better machine learning performance.

Update: Huawei has sent out teasers for an event on 16 October, complete with a “10” in the background. I guess we’ll find out more then.

What kind of AI improvements could we expect from Huawei? We take a deep dive into the topic here.

Featured image: Huawei Mate 9