At IFA 2018, which runs from August 31 to September 5 in Berlin, Huawei introduced its new flagship processor for smartphones. Kirin 980 was the first commercial “system-on-chip” based on 7-nanometer technology.
7-nanometer process technology from TSMC allowed to mark up the chip 6.9 billion transistors at the area of the substrate in one square centimeter. This is 1.6 times more than last generation. Compared to the 10-nm process technology, 7 nm provides increased chip performance by 20% and efficiency by 40%.
Kirin 980 also got the first Cortex-A76, which is 75% more productive, and 58% energoeffektivnee compared to the previous generation. Chip included two productive core Cortex-A76, two energoeffektivnyih Cortex-A76 and two ultra-low-cost Cortex-A55.
As integrated graphics uses Mali-G76, she is 46% better performance, and 178% more economical than the previous generation. Also it uses AI to determine the problems of the game and optimize the resources under them.
If last year’s Kirin 970 was the first chip with its own module neural computing (Neural Processing Unit), Kirin has been used for dual 980 NPU for better possibilities of artificial intelligence. As a result, Kirin 980 is able to recognize up to 4 600 images per minute, 120% more results predecessor.
Chip got a modem supporting LTE Cat.21, which provides download speeds up to 1.4 GB/s.
The first smartphones based on Kirin 980 should be a series of smart phones Huawei Mate 20, whose announcement is scheduled for October.