IFA 2018: Huawei Announced Kirin 980, First 7nm SoC Chipset

Chinese tech giant Huawei introduced Kirin 980, the world's first 7nm process mobile phone SoC chipset. It is the first chipset based on cortex-A76 architecture and also the first one to support LTE Cat.21. The Kirin 980 combines several technological innovations to improve mobile performance powered by artificial intelligence.

New Huawei chipset brings several advantages compared with its predecessor. It integrates 6.9 billion transistors in an area of less than 1 square centimeter which is a 1.6x fold increase in density. The chipset is the first Cortex-A76 based in the world and has a 75% improvement in single core performance. The Kirin 980 also includes the world’s first commercial use Mali-G76 GPU performance is improved by 46%.

The LPDDR4X memory operates at speeds up to 2133 MHz. The fourth-generation ISP utilises a multi-pass noise reduction to capture quality images and preserve important details. This ISP also has a dedicated video pipeline to effectively improve video clarity and reduce shooting delays by 33% compared with Kirin 970.

7nm process technology, compared with the 10nm process, improves performance by 20%, power efficiency by 40% and the overall energy efficiency of the Kirin 980 increased by 58%. The Mali-G76 GPU has also increased its energy efficiency by 178%.

The Kirin 980 is built with a 3 energy efficiency architecture which has 2 super cores, 2 large cores and 4 small efficiency cores. It also uses the Flex-Scheduling intelligence mechanism to allow the CPU to adapt in heavy, medium and light-load scenarios by reducing its power consumption and giving users a longer battery life while still achieving an overall higher performance experience.

Kirin 980 can quickly adapt to AI scenes such as face recognition, object recognition, object detection, image segmentation and intelligent translation with the power of a dual-core NPU achieving 4500 images per minute which is an improved 120% recognition speed. Object detection capabilities can also accurately identify a variety of objects. Kirin 980 sets the foundation for future AI capabilities by providing complete framework support and rich tool keys for App developers.

It has built in LTE Cat.21 which supports the fastest downlink at 1.4 Gbps and offers a stable connection in congested areas like subways or high-speed rails. With the Hi1103, it supports a theoretical peak download speed of 1.7 Gbps and 160 MHz bandwidth, which is 1.7x the industry level. The GPS is supported by L1 + L5 dual frequency positioning to give a more accurate target location when using map navigation.

Users will be able to see Kirin 980 in action by the end of the year. It will power brand new Mate 10 smartphone as well as Honor Magic 2, device built by its sub-brand.