Huawei has unveiled its flagship chipsets, the Kirin 990 and Kirin 990 5G. The latter processor comes packed with a 5G modem and offers a speed increase.
At IFA 2019, the China-based company said the 5G variant, which features a 7-nm processor with EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography), will feature a modem capable of offering download speeds up to 2.3Gbps and upload speeds up to 1.25Gps.
Android Central reported that the series’ CPU octa-core, with two substantial (high-performance) Cortex A76 cores, two mid-performance A76 cores and four low-power A55 cores.
Huawei indicated that using this single chip should make its phones “much more power-efficient” instead of requiring a processor and a separate modem.
The HUAWEI Kirin 990 5G is the industry’s first and only all-in-one flagship 5G chipset. #RethinkEvolution #HuaweiIFA2019 #IFA19 pic.twitter.com/ewlQt6E0Jf
— Huawei Mobile (@HuaweiMobile) September 6, 2019
The announcement comes a few days after Samsung also unveiled its 5G chipset called the Exynos 980. Similar to this chipset, Huawei’s Kirin 990 5G won’t support mmWave 5G because the specific technology is used mainly in the United States.
Android Central noted that the Kirin 990 series would allow phones to feature better performance in terms of artificial intelligence, graphics and photography, especially compared to the company’s previous chipset the Kirin 980, which is currently used in the P30 series.
The chipsets will also have a variation of a new “big-plus-tiny NPU (neural processing unit) configuration,” this, Huawei says, will help double the AI number-crunching power that current chips are capable of.
Huawei also indicated that the chipset will power the Mate 30, the next release in its Mate Series set to be announced on September 19th.
The Verge noted that the chipset intends to rely on ARM’s chip designs for its CPU and GPU elements. It’s worth adding that Huawei has a strained relationship with the British chip designer after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order that banned Huawei from working with any U.S. companies.
Due to the lack of a 5G network in Canada, our variant of the Mate 30 will likely utilize the 4G Kirin 990 processor. The 4G Kirin 990 will also feature a 7nm processor built on the same technology as the Kirin 980.
Additionally, two of its Cortex A76 cores clock at 2.09GHz, while its four Cortex A55 cores clock at 1.86GHz. Further, the neural processor will sport a single big core and a tiny core, instead of two large cores and one small core like the Kirin 990 5G.
Otherwise the 4G and 5G variants are quite similar.
Source: The Verge, Android Central
