Huawei's Kirin 970 is official: high-power, AI-enabled mobile SoC

The chipset has been developed in conjunction with Huawei's subsidiary HiSilicon, and is built on a 10nm process, which enables it to deliver up to 20 percent better performance over the 960. But what's more interesting, is that the CPU will be paired with a new 12-core powerful GPU, as well as a dedicated NPU (Neural Processing Unit), which will be solely dedicated to handling AI tasks on the device. Huawei's vision of the future involves the deep integration of AI in every smartphone, and not only on a software level.

Huawei plans to employ its on-device AI to perform a multitude of tasks, such as, but not limited to, memory allocation, UI rendering, camera image processing, load balancing, and task scheduling. These on-device tasks will be handled by the NPU and software, which will also work in conjunction with Huawei's Cloud AI to deliver the full experience the company is envisioning, Yu said on stage.

Here's what you can expect from the Kirin 970 at a glance:

The first phones to take advantage of Huawei's new SoC will be the Huawei Mate 10 and M10 Pro, which will be launching on October 16th. To get up to speed with all the rumors surrounding the upcoming phablet, head over to our Mate 10 rumor review.