If you have been following Huawei lately, you would notice that they reserve their in-house Kirin chips for higher-end products. Mid-range and low-end products normally use MediaTek chips, and even the Chinese tech brand’s top-end products lack 5G support–all because of the effects of the US Trade Ban.

Since being placed on the trade ban, Huawei has no choice but to learn to make its own software–that is HarmonyOS for you–and hardware–chips included. It will not be long before Huawei will be able to resume making its Kirin chips, as a report by DigiTimes confirms this.

In its report, Huawei will resume making Kirin chips as early as 200 by setting up its first wafer fab in Wuhan. This does make sense, as an interview with Nikkei Asia said that HiSilicon is still active in the semiconductor industry and that it still continues to research new chips.

In addition to that, Huawei Senior Vice President and Director of the Board Catherine Chen added that there are no plans of reshuffling or removing staff from the HiSilicon division–and that they can manage for two or three years.

To further support Chen’s statements, she added that HiSilicon has around 7000 workers on its payroll in 2020. As for supply chain partners, Chen also explained that more countries are promoting their own semiconductor industries, which should help them in resuming the production of Kirin chips.

Given that Huawei will officially resume production of Kirin chips in 2022, there’s little chance of any upcoming devices this year to have both a Kirin processor and 5G connectivity. According to current reports and rumors, the upcoming P50 series will reportedly be powered by a 4G-only version of its Kirin 9000 processors––though there is a possibility that Huawei might use a 4G-only version of the Snapdragon 888 given the scarcity of its Kirin 9000 chips.