Huawei To Announce Kirin 980 Today at IFA
by Ian Cutress on August 31, 2018 1:45 AM EST- Posted in
- SoCs
- CPUs
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Trade Shows
- Kirin
- IFA 2018
- Kirin 980
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, Huawei rarely disappoints on this front, but everyone will have to stay tuned for the official announcement to see just what's in store for their new SoC.
| 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. It's going to be a lot of fun. Stay tuned.
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boozed - Friday, August 31, 2018 - link
I should hope they're subject to change!Valantar - Friday, August 31, 2018 - link
Well, I would hope the Encode/Decode stays "fast", at least :DBut sure, some more detail would indeed be nice.
Lord of the Bored - Friday, August 31, 2018 - link
Man, I'm hoping it really is a POWER CPU. That'd shake the handheld PC market up somethin' fierce.LiverpoolFC5903 - Friday, August 31, 2018 - link
Making an educated guess, I assume it will be a Cortex A76 based setup, probably a 4+4 setup with A55 cores (obviously) and a Mali Gpu of some sort. I also assume the g76 is the latest Mali ip available for implementation so expect Huawei to adopt that, probably in a 10-12 core configuration. Memory should be standard (2*32 or 4*16).Interested in seeing how the A76 cores compete with Samsungs M3 cores in terms of single threaded performance. Very high clocks could see this exceed the Exynos 9810s performance...
vladx - Friday, August 31, 2018 - link
GPU will be a Mali-G72MP24 configuration, thanks to the advantages of 7nm fab node they managed to cram more cores for little extra power usage.LiverpoolFC5903 - Friday, August 31, 2018 - link
Thnks for the info. So that 25% faster than the Exynos 9810, assuming similar clock speeds and perfect scaling. Impressive i have to say. Battery life might take a hit, despite the process node. My S9 drains a lot of battery fast when using emulators (PSP, PSX and Neo geo), compared to my older V20 which lasts much longer.tmnvnbl - Friday, August 31, 2018 - link
Although this article now does not contain any real information, I really like the recent additions of jokes in anandtech's content!SydneyBlue120d - Friday, August 31, 2018 - link
Please ask if there is L5 frequency support for both GPS and Galileo, thanks.Lodix - Friday, August 31, 2018 - link
I am waiting to see what the Kirin 980 brings.By the way... ads are getting TOO intrusive lately on Anandtech. It makes reading much uncomfortable...
tipoo - Wednesday, September 5, 2018 - link
LOL at the table, at Power and Turbo, Turbo was a real thing of theirs so I thought Power was the CPU-side alternative, and then I started reading the next down.