Recently, Huawei released its Kirin 990 chipset which features a 7 nm processor and came with a built-in 5G modem. It used a 7nm Fin Field Effect Transistor (FinFET) plus ultraviolet lithography process. The chipset contained a Da Vinci NPU which is meant for running machine learning models. It was featured in the Mate 30 smartphones by Huawei.
Huawei didn’t stop with Kirin 990 though; sources in the chip manufacturing industry suggest that Huawei is testing yet another chipset called the Kirin 1000 processor which uses a 5nm process for manufacturing. It is expected to be released in late 2020.
Some expected features of the Kirin 1000 processor are:
New EUV Technology
Until recently, it was believed by experts that a 5nm process will break Moore’s law as the quantum tunneling effect occurs in a small space. But, Huawei has certainly proven it wrong by testing its 5nm chips in the Kirin 1000. The process is possible due to the Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV) technology that has developed in recent years.
Cortex A77 Architecture
Some sources suggest that the Kirin 1000 will have the Cortex A77 architecture from an ARM which ensures good performance. The current Kirin 990 chipset uses anA76 CPU architecture. There is still no official announcement about this though.
Mali G77 GPU
The upcoming Kirin 1000 processor may use the Mali G77 GPU from ARM. Huawei has used the latest Mali GPUs for its flagships and there is no reason for it not to use the latest Mali G77 GPU from ARM in its Mate 40 Pro flagship. The Mali G77 comes with a 40% increase in graphics processing capability than its predecessor -Mali G76.
The first smartphones with this new chipset will be the Huawei Mate 40 which is also expected to be announced in late 2020. Huawei will announce the Mate 40 in the third quarter of 2020, shortly after the release of the Kirin 1000 processor. In other news, Samsung is also looking forward to releasing its 5 nm low power chipsets in 2020.
Currently, the Huawei Mate 30 smartphones are seeing a strong sales performance despite being released without any Google apps and features due to the Huawei ban in the USA. It has already sold a million units in its first week before the international sales begin.