Kirin 980 SoC gets detailed with 2.8GHz clock speed & custom GPU

The new processor, which will be known as the HiSilicon Kirin 980, looks set to boast an octa-core setup, as is typical these days. This will be formed by four Cortex-A55 cores that will handle simple tasks that require only small amounts of processing power, and a separate four Cortex-A77 cores, which will be clocked at 2.8GHz and will take over whenever high levels of performance are necessary. Interestingly, though, the Cortex-A77 cores don't presently exist, so it's worth taking this with a pinch of salt. In any case, all of this will be coupled with a new in-house GPU that is said to outperform Qualcomm’s Adreno 630 – used by the Snapdragon 845 – by up to 50%, and an improved neural processing unit. On one final note, it’s worth noting that the new Kirin 980 is largely expected to be manufactured by TSMC on the new 7nm process, thus providing improvements to the levels of efficiency in addition to the overall performance.

Overall, with the Kirin 980 on the inside, it’s clear that both the upcoming Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro will provide some significant performance improvements over the current Mate 10 duo which ship with the Kirin 970 chip inside. However, with Apple expected to debut its A12 chip in September alongside the 2018 iPhone lineup, and Qualcomm also set to unveil the Snapdragon 855 by the end of the year, it’ll remain to be seen how Huawei’s offering stacks up against its rivals.

source: ITHome (translated) via: GSMArena