Foreign media: Huawei’s new Kirin chip will lead Qualcomm to release the world’s first integrated 5G baseband chip

According to foreign media reports, at an event held on September 6, Huawei will release a new generation of Kirin chips, and this time they will completely lead Qualcomm by launching the world’s first integrated 5G baseband chip, and also May be the first ARM A77 architecture.

According to the information disclosed by Huawei officials, this new processor is very likely to bear the title of Kirin 990. From the naming point of view, this is not a small upgraded version of Kirin 980. At the same time, the inside story given by the industry chain shows that Huawei This time it will lead Apple and become the world’s first manufacturer of commercial 7nm+ technology.

Kirin 990 more details

In the latest news, it is mentioned that the 5G baseband that Huawei will integrate on the Kirin 990 this time may be the smallest 5G baseband in the world. It will also use 7nm+ process technology, which is more power-consuming than the Barong 5000. Better (more friendly to battery life), and the baseband will also be backward compatible with 4G, 3G and 2G networks, and may still support NSA and SA networking.

Regarding the performance of this new Kirin processor, the news also mentioned that it will be the first to commercialize ARM’s A77 architecture (Kirin 980 is the first to A76 architecture). The new architecture will further improve while maintaining the excellent energy efficiency and smaller core area of ​​the A76 architecture. The performance is improved by at least 20%, and this architecture will also be used on the next-generation version of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 series.

In addition, Kirin 990 will also use TSMC’s second-generation 7nm process. Compared with the first-generation, the new process has added EUV ultraviolet lithography technology. With the introduction of this new technology, the new 7nm process will no matter the power consumption. The performance is still 20% higher than the previous version.

HiSilicon fully hits Qualcomm’s high-end market

In addition to the Kirin 990, Huawei officials also showed a chip named Kirin 985 in the slides of a previous event, which will continue to be paired with the Barong 5000 baseband. Subsequently, the industry chain revealed that Huawei is launching an impact on Qualcomm’s high-end mobile processors with its strong 5G technical reserves.

The revelation also mentioned that Kirin 985 and Kirin 990 will be two different chips, and the difference is that Huawei will have such a processor. The former does not integrate 5G baseband, and it will not use the latest 7nm+ technology to increase the main frequency and improve performance. Higher than Kirin 980, the latter integrates 5G baseband, uses TSMC’s latest technology, and will also replace the latest Da Vinci as the core architecture, which can greatly enhance the processor’s AI capability and become more intelligent.

Why is Huawei’s chip developing so fast?

Compared with other mobile phone manufacturers, after entering the 5G era, Huawei’s advantages are more obvious. They can develop their own processors and 5G basebands, and at the same time cooperate with their own 5G base stations to quickly test the new phones and then commercialize them. Some people in the industry said before that Huawei has at least half a year ahead of Qualcomm on the 5G baseband.

Regarding the rapid development of HiSilicon chips, Huawei’s rotating chairman Xu Zhijun said that the reason why Huawei’s chips have developed rapidly in recent years is because “there is no shortage of money, and the decision-making is simple.” For example, the Da Vinci architecture and AI chip projects are not Top-down, but bottom-up.

The industry chain also revealed that Huawei is advancing another thing, which is to increase the proportion of Kirin processors used in its own phones. Its goal is to increase the target to more than 60%, that is, it hopes that more than 150 million Huawei phones will be processed by Kirin. Device. At present, Huawei’s mid-to-high-end mobile phones use their own processors.