Nov 24, 2016 08:02 AM EST By Noi Ramirez, UniversityHerald Reporter

The recently launched Kirin 960 flagship mobile processor might already have a successor in the works over at Huawei, aptly called Kirin 970.

Given its growth pace, Huawei is rumored to be coming up with a successor to its flagship mobile processor line in the Kirin 970 that is based on a 10nm process. The unit is based on the current Kirin 960 16nm FinFET. The smaller architecture at 10nm is believed that the Next processor is going to flaunt significant improvements in performance and efficiency, reported ubergizmo.

The Kirin 970 is reportedly an octa-core chip built on the 10nm process and will support global LTE, according to PhoneArena. Spurned by announcements of Qualcomm and Samsung who are said to be coming up with their respective 10nm processors the Snapdragon 835 and the Exynos 8895 respectively, this prompted Huawei to come up with one on their own in the Kirin 970.

The current Kirin 960 is composed of a quad-core Cortex-A73 chip and another quad-core Cortex-A53 chip with a Mali-g71 GPU. The Kirin 960 is, however, built on the 16nm process which provides excellent CPU performance but limits GPU in performance capacity. The decision, therefore, to shift to a 10nm process is for the unit to reduce heating and allow for the full extraction of the GPU performance.

Even Apple might introduce their own 10nm chipset in their rumored A11 slated to be launched next year. Initial leaks, however, suggest that Apple might introduce a 10nm process chipset first in the A10, but suppliers for the Cupertino company wasn't ready for mass production so the project for the 10nm process A10 was postponed.

Finally, the upcoming Huawei P10 is rumored to be the first smartphone to employ the Kirin 970 SoC. Like its predecessor, the P10 will carry Leica brand dual cameras. It is also expected that the P10 will sport a curved display similar to that of the Huawei Mate 9.

Below is a video of Huawei's Kirin 960

See Now: Covert Team Inside Newsweek Revealed as Key Players in False Human Trafficking Lawsuit