HUAWEI just announced Kirin 990 and Kirin 990 5G SoCs at its IFA event as expected. The Kirin 990 is based on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturer Company’s (TSMC) 7nm process, while the Kirin 990 5G that has built-in 5G modem supporting Sub-6 GHz 5G networks on both SA and NSA architectures and uses TSMC’s latest 7nm plus EUV manufacturing, which helps enable a smaller die size offering 36% board reduction, increased transistor density by 18% and 10% improvement in energy efficiency. These have 16-Core Mali-G76 GPU, compared to 10-Core in the Kirin 980 SoC offering 6% improvement in graphics processing performance.
The built-in 5G modem in the Kirin 990 5G offers up to 2.3Gbps download speed and 1.25 Gbps upload speed. Combined with LTE, this will offer up to 3.3Gbps download speed and up to 1.32Gbps upload speed. The SoCs have 2 (Big Core) performance + 1 (Smaller Core) ultra lower consumption Da Vinci-based NPU. The 990 5G promises 20% increase in energy efficiency, and a 40% savings in bandwidth in high-bandwidth scenarios compared to Kirin 980.
Kirin 990 5G adopts new ISP 5.0, the throughput rate is increased by 15%, the energy efficiency is increased by 15%, the video processing capability is improved. It also adopts block-matching and 3D filtering (BM3D) professional-level hardware noise reduction (NR) for capturing brighter and sharper images in low light environments. It is also the first to use dual-domain video NR for more accurate noise processing for videos. In addition, the real-time video post-processing and rendering based on AI segmentation can adjust the image color frame by frame to bring cinematic quality. The new Face AR enables modeling of faces, real-time tracking, expression capture, and analysis of heart rate, respiration rate and other health data.
Highlights of HUAWEI Kirin 990 and Kirin 990 5G SoC
- Kirin 990 5G — Up to 2.86GHz dual-core ARM Cortex A76 CPU + up to 2.36 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex A76 CPU + up to 1.95GHz ARM Cortex A55 GPU
- Kirin 990 — Up to 2.86GHz dual-core ARM Cortex A76 CPU + up to 2.09 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex A76 CPU + up to 1.86GHz ARM Cortex A55 GPU
- 700MHz ARM Mali-G76MP16 GPU
- TSMC 7nm process for Kirin 990 / TSMC’s 7FF+ with EUV for Kirin 990 5G
- LPDDR4X memory, UFS 3.0 and UFS 2.1 storage
- 2 + 1 Da Vinci NPU
- Video: HDR10; 4K at 60fps decoding, 4K at 30fps encoding
- Security Engine
- Integrated Multi-mode 4G LTE Modem for Kirin 990 and 5G modem for Kirin 990 5G
The Huawei Kirin 990 and Kirin 990 5G SoCs will power the Mate 30 series that will be announced at an event in Germany on September 19.
Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group (CBG), said:
Kirin 990 (5G) is the world’s first 5G SoC, and it will enable end users to access superb 5G connectivity experience one step ahead in the first year of 5G commercialization. To meet users’ requirements for enhanced 5G experiences in the 5G era, Kirin 990 (5G) has been fully upgraded in terms of performance and power efficiency, AI computing, and ISP, extending mobile phone experiences to a new level.