On the heels of Kirin 960's debut last month, new rumors are suggesting that Huawei is already working on a next generation processor. Predictably dubbed the Kirin 970, the new chip will reportedly be a big leap in terms of performance from the 960, which was built on the FinFET 16 nm process just like the Kirin 950.

The Kirin 970 is said to be an octa-core chip built on the 10 nm process and will reportedly support global LTE. Huawei's decision to switch to the 10nm process for its next-gen silicon may have been spurned by recent announcements from Qualcomm and Samsung whose next processors, the Snapdragon 835 and the Exynos 8895, will be built on Samsung's new 10 nm process and be able to fit 30 percent more transistors than current 14 nm offerings.

There is no info yet regarding Kirin 970's debut, but it will likely power Huawei's 2017 high-end flagships and come out in time to compete with 10nm offerings from Samsung, Qualcomm, and MediaTek.