The Huawei owned fabless semiconductor company HiSilicon is reportedly working on the Kirin 980 SoC which will have a new CPU, NPU, and GPU. It will be found in the next Android flagship, which is likely to be the upcoming Mate 20 series, which will no doubt include the Mate 20 Pro variant as well.
This isn’t the first time the triple camera system will be seen on a Huawei phone as the company’s P20 Pro also has a three-lens imaging system but the performance and battery life benefits that you will experience with the Kirin 980 will be unlike any device touting the Kirin 970 will be able to provide.
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Kirin 980 Was Earlier Rumored to Feature Its Own Custom GPU That Would End up Being 1.5 Times Faster Than the Adreno 630 Running in Snapdragon 845
The news was broken by the well-known leakster Ice Universe. The source also added that the upcoming Kirin 980 will be made using TSMC’s 7nm process node. This is in line with similar comments made in recent months by other industry insiders. The new GPU running with the SoC could be ARM’s Mali-G72 MP24, which will be a massive upgrade over the Mali-G72 MP12 that was a part of Kirin 970 and fueled the Mate 10 and P20 series.
Second half
iPhone: 7nm, new CPU, GPU, Camera
Huawei: 7nm, new CPU, GPU, NPU, 3-Camera
Note9: SoC and camera are the same as the S9+— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) August 1, 2018
It was earlier reported that Kirin 980 will have an octa-core CPU with a high-performance quad-core cluster which clock speeds up to 2.80GHz and Cortex-A77 for performance delivery, though it can be said that the leak might have been a typo and in actuality, the Cortex-A76 cores are actually found in the Kirin 980. Details about the new NPU are sparse but the chip will most likely cater to complex AI computing. The NPU inside the Kirin 970 was capable enough to be used inside autonomous cars so it will be interesting to see what Huawei has up its sleeves this year.
Huawei is expected to reveal the Kirin 980 at IFA 2018 which will take place at the end of this month in Berlin, Germany. The chip will most likely end up powering the P30 series and Honor 11 in addition to the Mate 20 range. Huawei is currently rumored to developing its own GPU but the project is apparently still in its preliminary stages. Until the product is ready, the Chinese tech giant will have to continue sourcing its GPUs from ARM.
Source: Twitter (Ice Universe)
