Huawei today officially unveiled its new flagship Kirin 2019 990G single-chip platform at IFA 5. The key feature of the novelty is the built-in 5G modem, which is reflected in the name, but in addition, Huawei promises high performance and advanced features associated with artificial intelligence.
The Kirin 990 5G single-chip platform is manufactured using an improved 7nm process technology using EUV lithography (7-nm+ EUV). At the same time, the novelty is one of the most complex processors for smartphones, which has 10,3 billion transistors.
First of all, Huawei focuses on the fact that the Kirin 990 5G is the world's first single-chip smartphone platform that has a built-in 5G modem. In current 5G smartphones, manufacturers use an SoC with a built-in 4G modem and a separate 5G modem. Of course, such a bundle consumes more energy (up to 20%) than a single crystal, and has a 36% larger area.
The modem in the Kirin 990 5G is capable of receiving and transmitting data at speeds up to 2,3 and 1,25 Gbps, respectively. 5G NSA and SA modes are supported. In addition to 5G networks, support for previous generations of cellular communications has also been preserved.
The new neuroprocessor module NPU is responsible for the functions of artificial intelligence. It consists of two "large" and one "small" blocks. The first are made on the Da Vinci architecture and are designed to perform "heavy" tasks. The "small" core, in turn, has high energy efficiency. Overall, the Kirin 990 outperforms the Apple A12 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 in terms of AI, while consuming less power.
Kirin 990 has eight processor cores, divided into three clusters. The “large” cluster includes two Cortex-A76 cores with a frequency of 2,86 GHz, the “medium” one also includes two Cortex-A76 cores, but already with a frequency of 2,36 GHz, and the “small” cluster includes four Cortex-A55 cores with a frequency of 1,95 .980 GHz. Actually, compared to the Kirin 990, the structure has not changed, but the frequencies have increased. According to Huawei, the Kirin 5 855G processor outperforms the Snapdragon 10 by 9% in single-threaded tasks and 12% in multi-threaded tasks. At the same time, the Chinese novelty is 35–855% more energy efficient than the Snapdragon XNUMX.
But the graphics processor has undergone much more significant changes. If the Kirin 980 used a 10-core Mali-G76, then the new Kirin 990 already has a 16-core version of the Mali-G76. As a result, in terms of graphics performance, Kirin 990 outperforms Snapdragon 855 by 6%, while consuming 20% less power.
Also note that Huawei has equipped the new processor with a "smart" cache, which provides a performance boost of 15%. And Kirin 990 also received a new Dual ISP image processor, which is 15% faster and more efficient, and also reduces noise in photos and videos by 30% and 20%, respectively.
Interestingly, Huawei will also release the Kirin 990 processor without a built-in 5G modem. This chip will also differ in the lower frequencies of the "medium" and "small" clusters - 2,09 and 1,86 GHz, respectively, and its NPU will consist of only one "large" and one "small" core.
The first smartphone based on Kirin 990 will be the flagship Huawei Mate 30, which will be presented on September 19 at a special event in Munich.
Source: 3dnews.ru