According to media reports, Huawei is expected to launch the Kirin 820 chip in the middle of this year. From the report, ASE Holdings will handle the main packaging and testing of the Kirin 820 chip. This will be from the latter stages in its development.

As of now, there is no information on the integration of 5G baseband on this chip. In addition, there is also no specific information on the manufacturing process. Nevertheless, there are speculations that this chip may use TSMC’s 6nm process. Industry insiders said that Kirin 820 may be mass-produced as soon as May or June this year, and TSMC’s 6nm plan is to ramp up at the end of the year.

There is currently no precise information on whether this chip uses 6nm or 7nm. It was previously reported that TSMC’s 6nm process entered the risk production stage at the beginning of this year. Industry insiders believe that no matter the process (7nm, 6nm or 5nm process), the difference in the packaging of the mobile phone application processor (AP) will not be too great, so the final design of the Kirin 820 is still in doubt.

Kirin 820 speculations

Architecturally, the Kirin 820 may be upgraded to Cortex A77 large cores; while we still have no data on the GPU and NPU used yet. In addition, this chip is likely to integrate 5G baseband and support dual-mode 5G networks; a better technology as opposed to NSA-only 5G support.

This chip will be mass-produced in the second quarter of this year, but it is still unknown when it will hit the market. We will probably see the next chipset on the next Nova series and later on the Honor 10X series. Nevertheless, the Kirin 820 is still possible for mass production and commercial use in the middle of this year. According to Huawei’s pattern, it will be launched by the Nova series, which is worth looking forward to.