IFA 2019: Huawei launches Kirin 990 5G chipset

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei on Friday launched its latest Kirin 990 (5G) flagship chipset with an integrated 5G modem at the IFA 2019 here.

"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," Richard Yu, Huawei's consumer business CEO said in a statement.

Kirin 990 (5G) is the first full-frequency 5G SoC to support both non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) architectures as well as TDD/FDD full frequency bands, enabling it to accommodate hardware requirements under diverse networks and networking modes.

It is the first flagship SoC that packs a dual-core NPU built on the Da Vinci architecture, which comprise large and tiny NPU cores.

The large cores achieve high performance and power efficiency in heavy computing scenarios, while the tiny core structure, first in the industry, empowers ultra-low power consumption applications, fully tapping into the intelligent computing power brought by the innovative NPU architecture.

For gaming experiences, Kirin 990 (5G) supports an upgraded Kirin Gaming+ 2.0 that enables efficient collaboration between hardware infrastructure and solutions, offering industry-leading smooth and fast gaming experience.

The Kirin 990 5G features better dual-image signal processor (DISP) for better photo-taking capabilities than on the Kirin 980.

Compared to the Snapdragon 855, Huawei claims that the Kirin 990 5G offers a 10 per cent and 9 per cent single-core and multi-core performance advantage, The company has launched its new processor just a few days after South Korean tech giant Samsung launched a 5G chipset of its own, the Exynos 980.