Huawei might launch a 3 nm Kirin SoC next year

While Huawei struggles to keep its mobile division relevant without any licensing deals with Google and Qualcomm, the Chinese brand is also working on covering its software and hardware needs with in-house solutions. However, while the launch date of the company's HarmonyOS is set for June 2, it will take roughly one year for the 3 nm Kirin SoC currently labeled "9010" to hit the market.

According to a report that recently surfaced on the Chinese website MyDrivers, Huawei has applied for the registration of the "Kirin Processor" trademark on April 22. While this piece of information does not seem relevant, Huawei Central claims that what is beneath the surface of this news report "suggests that Huawei is developing the next generation of smartphone chipset, named Kirin 9010 (tentatively)."

On the other hand, the Kirin 9010 could also be just a stop-gap internal design and the model to hit the market in 2022 could be the Kirin 9020. The design of this upcoming chip is expected to be complete before the end of 2021. However, manufacturing could be a problem because Huawei cannot print any new designs using third-party manufacturers and even TSMC's 3 nm technology is not mature yet. 

For now, the most potent chip made by Huawei's Shenzhen-based fabless semiconductor company HiSilicon is the Kirin 9000, a flagship product made using the TSMC's 5 nm process and used for the Huawei Mate 40 and Mate X2. It will probably be found in the upcoming P50 series as well.

For now, we should take all the above with a grain of salt and wait for the next round of official news and next month's HarmonyOS launch event could shed some light on Huawei's next-gen mobile processors.

Buy the Huawei Mate 40 Pro 5G (International Version) on Amazon