Huawei recently introduced industry’s first commercial 7nm SoC, the Kirin 980 equipped with AI capabilities offering best-in-class performance, efficiency, connectivity features, and Dual NPU AI processing power. The world’s first 5G ready chipset is manufactured with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturer Company’s (TSMC) that enables quicker app launch times, better multi-tasking and a smoother user experience.
The cutting edge TSMC 7nm process technology enables Kirin 980 to pack 6.9 billion transistors within a 1cm2 die size, 1.6 times of the previous generation. Compared to the 10nm process, the 7nm process delivers 20 percent improved SoC performance and 40 percent improved SoC power efficiency.
The Kirin 980 is also the first SoC to embed Cortex-A76 based cores, which are 75 percent more powerful and 58 percent more efficient compared to their previous generation. The Kirin CPU subsystem uses an intelligent Flex-scheduling mechanism that creates a 3-level energy efficiency architecture consisting of two super-big cores based on Cortex-A76, two big cores based on Cortex-A76, and four little cores Cortex-A55.
Compared with the traditional big.LITTLE design, this solution designates the large high-performance cores to handle immediate, intensive workloads; the large, high-efficiency cores to provide sustained performance; and ultra-efficiency cores to tackle every day, light activities with extreme power efficiency. Running at higher clock speeds compared to the prior generation, Kirin 980 enables quicker app launch times, better multi-tasking and a generally smoother user experience.