Huawei at IFA 2018: Kirin 980 SoC is the new powerhouse with lots of AI

Huawei has introduced a new processor that will power future Honor and Huawei flagship phones. Here’s all you need to know about Kirin 980 SoC.

Huawei’s Kirin 980 chipset is said to house the world’s first modem to support LTE Cat.21 with a peak download speed of 1.4Gbps. (HT Photo)

After LG and Sony, Huawei kicked off its IFA 2018 announcements with a big focus on deep-rooting Artificial Intelligence to its future mobile hardware. On Friday, the company announced the Kirin 980 system on chip.

Huawei's Kirin 980 is also touted as the world's first 7nm-based commercial SoC manufactured by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturers Company (TSMC), which is also a key supplier to Apple. The smaller process allows the chipset to cram 6.9 billion transistors into it. Huawei claims that its new 7nm-process chipset helps delivers 20% improved SoC performance and 40% efficiency.

It is also said to house the world's first modem to support LTE Cat.21 with a peak download speed of 1.4Gbps.

Huawei says it has integrated the Mali-G76 GPU into the Kirin 980 to deliver an enhanced gaming experience. The new GPU is said to deliver 46 per cent greater graphics processing power at 178 per cent, besides improved power efficiency over the previous generation.

"The Kirin 980 is also the first SoC to embed Cortex-A76 cores, which are 75 per cent more powerful and 58 per cent more efficient compared to their previous generation. In an octa-core configuration, the CPU in Kirin 980 comprises two high-performance Cortex-A76 cores, two high-efficiency Cortex-A76 cores, and two extreme efficiency Cortex-A55 cores," said Huawei.

As said earlier, the new processor bets big on Artificial Intelligence. Huawei says its new chipset comes with a dual neural processing unit. For instance, the Kirin 980 SoC can recognise 4,600 images per minute, 120 percent higher than the previous generation.

There's also fair bit of focus on improving the photography experience.

"In addition to a 46 per cent increase in data throughput compared to its predecessor, the new ISP provides better support for multi-camera configurations as well as an all-new HDR colour reproduction technology that can manipulate picture contrast to highlight objects on various parts of an image," said Huawei.

Huawei Mate 20 series will be first phones to run on Kirin 980 processor.