Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) began mass production of the Kirin 710A processor developed by HiSilicon (a division of Huawei).
The HiSilicon line already has a Kirin 710 chip. It combines eight cores: this is the ARM Cortex-A73 quartet with a clock frequency of up to 2.2 GHz and the ARM Cortex-A53 quartet with a frequency of up to 1.7 GHz. The graphic processing is assigned to the ARM Mali-G51 MP4 controller. The Kirin 710 is manufactured by TSMC; this is a 12-nanometer technology.
The Kirin 710A processor is manufactured with 14-nanometer FinFET technology. The configuration seems to have been adopted from the Kirin 710.
Network sources say that the partnership between Huawei and SMIC can be expanded. This will allow Huawei to partially discontinue TSMC’s services for mobile processor manufacturing.
We add that HiSilicon does not have its own manufacturing facilities. Therefore, the company is forced to use the capacities of contract manufacturers.