In the smartphone wars, the chip inside powering the devices is becoming ever more important. Raw performance plus accelerators are pushing the boundaries of what we used to think was possible. Huawei’s unique selling point is that it designs its own chips for its smartphones, based a lot on Arm’s reference cores. Today, Huawei will be announcing its next generation SoC to the world.
As proudly declared on stage at the Honor launch event yesterday, with Honor’s own upcoming Magic 2 smartphone having it inside, Honor’s CEO George Zhao proudly declared that Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei CBG, will be announcing the Kirin 980 today.
Huawei’s current flagship SoC is the Kirin 970, which sits inside the Mate 10, P20, P20 Pro, and Honor’s Play, Honor 10, and Honor View 10. All of Huawei’s chips are made by their internal design house, HiSilicon, and the Kirin 970 was announced last year at IFA, so it makes sense that this year we would see the next generation, the Kirin 980, around this time.
Huawei has a long tradition of being a primary Arm partner, often using its latest design options where possible to get the edge of the competition. The Kirin 980, as with the silicon before it, aims for the highest echelons of performance in order to set it apart from the competition. You can also expect the Kirin 980 to be promoted alongside Huawei’s other ‘features’, such as GPU Turbo.
As for the internals of the Kirin 980, we’ve had a pre-briefing and can’t tell you much until the actual presentation. We went into a lot of detail with Huawei’s Benjamin Wang about the new chip design, and suffice to say that it follows in Huawei’s tradition to be a large number of ‘firsts’.
| HiSilicon High-End Kirin SoC Lineup | |||
| SoC | Kirin 980 | Kirin 970 | Kirin 960 |
| CPU | POWER* | 4x A73 @ 2.36 GHz 4x A53 @ 1.84 GHz |
4x A73 @ 2.36GHz 4x A53 @ 1.84GHz |
| GPU | TURBO* | ARM Mali-G72MP12 746 MHz |
ARM Mali-G71MP8 1037MHz |
| LPDDR4 Memory |
SOME* | 4x 16-bit CH LPDDR4 @ 1833 MHz 29.9GB/s |
4x 16-bit CH LPDDR4 @ 1866MHz 29.9GB/s |
| Interconnect | YES | ARM CCI | ARM CCI-550 |
| Storage I/F | NO DOUBT* | UFS 2.1 | UFS 2.1 |
| ISP/Camera | SMILE* | Dual 14-bit ISP | Dual 14-bit ISP (Improved) |
| Encode/Decode | FAST* | 2160p60 Decode 2160p30 Encode |
2160p30 HEVC & H.264 Decode & Encode 2160p60 HEVC Decode |
| Integrated Modem | IF YOU INSIST* | Kirin 970 Integrated LTE (Category 18/13) DL = 1200 Mbps 5x20MHz CA, 256-QAM UL = 150 Mbps 2x20MHz CA, 64-QAM |
Kirin 960 Integrated LTE (Category 12/13) DL = 600Mbps 4x20MHz CA, 64-QAM UL = 150Mbps 2x20MHz CA, 64-QAM |
| Sensor Hub | AFFIRMATIVE* | i7 | i6 |
| NPU | 8-BALL SAYS YES* | Yes | No |
| Mfc. Process | ??? | TSMC 10nm | TSMC 16nm FFC |
| *May be subject to change | |||
Huawei's keynote is today at 2pm CEST (8am ET), which will be live blogged if the data allows. Our full Kirin 980 information reveal is half-an-hour later, at 2:30pm CEST. It's going to be a lot of fun. Stay tuned.
Related Reading
- HiSilicon Kirin 970 - Android SoC Power & Performance Overview
- HiSilicon Kirin 960: A Closer Look at Performance and Power
- HiSilicon Announces New Kirin 950 SoC
- The Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Performance Preview
- The Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Performance Preview
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