Huawei announced the release of its flagship system based on a crystal (SoC) – Kirin 980, the world’s first 7-nm chip. Equipped with artificial intelligence possibilities, the new chipset is said to provide 20 percent improved SoC performance and a 40 percent reduction in power consumption. It is noteworthy that Huawei Kirin 980 is the first commercially available chip to be manufactured on the 7-nm TSMC, and will first introduce the cores of the Cortex-A76 processor in ARM and use two neural NPU (Neural Processing Unit) modules. The first device, Hiawilicon Kirin 980, with Huawei technology is planned to be released in October.
Huawei claims that Kirin 980 has 6.9 billion transistors in less than 1 square centimeter. This is a 1.6 times increase in comparison with the 10-nm Kirin 970 process. As a result, the new chipset provides better performance.
The manufacturer notes that the new 7-nanometer product will provide a 20 percent increase in SoC’s performance and 40 percent better energy efficiency. The new Kirin 980 is also the first chipset with Cortex-A76 cores, which are said to be 75% more powerful and 58% more efficient than its predecessor. The new architecture of the core is based on the DynamicQ technology from ARM.
The new HiSilicon chipset has an eight-core architecture, two high-performance Cortex-A76 cores with a clock frequency of 2.6 GHz for difficult tasks, two mid-range Cortex-A76 at 1.92 GHz for everyday tasks and four Cortex-A55 with a 1.8 GHz for a lighter workload. The Chinese OEM has introduced the processor subsystem, as well as the Flex-Scheduling technology, to designate the right cores for the right tasks. Huawei claims that Kirin 980 will consume 33% less power compared to the flagship based on Qualcomm Snapdragon 845.
It is claimed that the new Mali-G76 controller built into the Kirin 980 SoC processor will improve the graphics processing by 46% and increase the energy efficiency by 178% compared to the previous generation of the Mari-G72 in the Kirin 970. Huawei introduced a new coprocessor for photos that is reportedly 46% faster and 23% more efficient than its predecessor. Huawei notes that it will be able to capture a better contrast and finer details, thanks to a new color reproduction technology with a high dynamic range (HDR) and a reduced noise algorithm.
Last year, the Huawei Neural Processing Unit (NPU) made its debut in Kirin 970 SoC. NPU basically allows you to use AI to recognize scenes and objects in the frame. Huawei, having taken a step forward, implemented dual NPUs on the new Kirin 980 processor. With two NPUs, the chipset will be able to recognize up to 4500 images per minute in comparison with the Snapdragon 845 and A11 Bionic chips, which recognize up to 2371 images and 1458 images respectively.
The newest Kirin 980 from Huawei is the first chipset with a modem to support 4G LTE Cat. 21, providing a download speed with a throughput of 1.7 Gbit /s. The Kirin 980 modem reportedly has the fastest Wi-Fi in the world, as well as the maximum download speed at 1,732 Mbps, and the GPS receiver gets support for the dual frequency L1 + L5 for fixing the exact location of the target when navigating through “difficult sections”.
Next month, Huawei plans to introduce a new flagship smartphone, Mate 20, with a new processor. To support it, the Chinese manufacturer will organize an event in London on 16 October. The sub-brand of Huawei, Honor, also showed its new smartphone –Honor 2 Magic with Kirin 980 SoC. However, the company did not disclose the specific timing of the smartphone launch.
