Huawei Kirin 980 parameters exposed, may come with self-developed GPU

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Taiwan media DIGITIMES recently revealed the specifications of Huawei's new generation flagship Kirin 980 processor, including the use of 7nm process technology, and the CPU frequency can reach 2.8GHz. DIGITIMES said that the Kirin 980 processor will be equipped with 4 A77 + 4 A55. In terms of GPU, Kirin 980 may be equipped with Huawei's self-developed graphics processor, which has a performance of about 1.5 times that of Adreno 630 equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 845. If the revelation is true, the appearance of Huawei Kirin 980 will bring great encouragement to the domestic chip design industry.

First of all, from the perspective of technology, if Huawei Kirin 980 really uses the 7nm process, then it may become the first product in the mobile SoC field to adopt this new process. Because it is said that Huawei will launch this flagship at this year's IFA, and according to convention, Apple will also launch the A12 using the 7nm process in September. As for the specific announcement, it depends on the arrangements of both parties.

From the perspective of CPU architecture, if Kirin 980 adopts ARM's Cortex-A77+Cortex-A55 big and small core architecture, it can compete with Snapdragon 845 (Kryo 385 architecture, customized based on Cortex-A75 plus Cortex-A55) in the CPU part. According to the current product planning of both, Huawei's products launched in the second half of the year are generally competing with Qualcomm's flagship products launched in the first half of the year.

In terms of big cores, according to Arm's latest plan, there is no A77 product line, but Cortex-A76. Maybe this leak is talking about this architecture? If it is true. According to previously published information, compared with the previous generation A75, the biggest change of the new generation architecture is the upgrade from 3-issue to 4-issue. The back end is still similar to A76, but the ALU is strengthened (into 3). The original 2X128mul+add/equivalent 1X128FMA is expected to be upgraded to 2X128FMA. Since there is no mention of values ​​such as ROB and scheduler entries, from the perspective of front-end decoding and back-end execution units, it tends to increase vector floating point by 100% and scalar performance by 15-20%, which is another new improvement.

Developing its own GPU will be a new breakthrough for Huawei.

When it comes to mobile phone SoC, Apple and Qualcomm, who are ahead, have their own GPU cores, which not only help them create differentiated product designs, but also greatly improve performance compared to the public version designs provided by Arm or Imagination. Frankly speaking, Huawei has also suffered a lot in the GPU field before. If Kirin 980 can really make a new breakthrough in GPU, it will be another milestone for the Kirin series after the NPU of Kirin 970.

According to netizens, Huawei's GPU was developed with NVIDIA, and the cooperation model is similar to that between Huawei and Leica. According to them, Huawei's GPU performance has been greatly improved, even surpassing Qualcomm Adreno 630. As for the specific situation, we will have to wait for the official announcement.

Looking back at the development of Huawei's integrated circuits, from the establishment of Huawei Integrated Circuit Design Center in 1991 to the establishment of HiSilicon Semiconductor in 2004, Huawei has been steadily advancing in the field of integrated circuits and has achieved good results in many fields. According to Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, basic research such as chips cannot be rushed, and the gap between domestic and international leading companies is still very obvious. Huawei will continue to increase investment in basic research and promote product development, and the Kirin series of products is another masterpiece of theirs in the field of integrated circuits.

Since the launch of K3V1 in 2009, which was not put into practical use, Huawei did not launch the first K3V2 chip adopted by Huawei mobile phones until 2012. However, due to various reasons such as GPU selection, K3V2 was criticized by netizens. Later, Kirin 920 became a hit, and then Kirin 970 became the industry's first mobile phone chip with NPU implanted. Huawei is consolidating its foundation step by step. Will Kirin 980 achieve the conjecture at the beginning? Let's wait and see.

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