It’s finally out. Huawei CEO Richard Yu officially announced the company’s newest flagship SoC’s the will run the upcoming Mate 30 series – the Kirin 990 and its 5G version.
Huawei Mobile on YouTube
The Kirin 990 series is designed to deliver elevated performance, efficiency, AI capabilities, and photography, taking the user experience to the next level for a more extensive group of 4G smartphone users.
World’s First Flagship 5G SoC to Bring Ultra-fast 5G Connectivity
Kirin 990 is the world’s first 5G SoC, and supports the industry’s most compact 5G smartphone solution. Built on a 7 nm+ EUV manufacturing process, the Kirin 990 packs an integrated 5G modem and is now even smaller and more efficient than ever. It’s also the first to support both non-standalone and standalone architectures, as well as TDD/FDD full frequency bands.
The 5G variant of the SoC is based off the Balong 5000’s excellent 5G capabilities, and boasts a peak downlink rate of 2.3 Gbit/s and an uplink peak rate of 1.25Gbit/s, delivering an unmatched 5G experience.
Innovative NPU Architecture for Robust AI Computing Power in the 5G Era
Kirin 990 (5G) is armed with a dual NPU built on the Da Vinci architecture which employs large and tiny NPU cores. The large cores are for achieving high-performance and high efficiency in heavy computing scenarios, while the tiny core structure is for ultra-low power consumption applications.
Premium Performance and Energy Efficiency Sets an Industry Benchmark for Faster 5G Experience
Kirin 990 uses a three-level power efficiency structure that’s composed of two ultra large cores, two large cores, and four small cores, with a dominant frequency of 2.86GHz. It’s equipped with a 16-core Mali-G76 GPU and a new system-level Smart Cache for intelligent flow distribution, which in turn can save bandwidth and reduce power consumption.
The 5G variant supports the upgraded Kirin Gaming 2.0 that enables efficient collaboration between hardware infrastructure and solutions, delivering a smooth and fast gaming experience.
Newly Upgraded ISP 5.0 for Wonderful Photography Experience
Kirin 990 (5G) is equipped with a brand-new ISP 5.0, incorporating block-matching and 3D filtering (BM3D) professional-level hardware noise reduction (NR) for brighter and sharper images in low-light. It’s also the first to use dual-domain video NR for more accurate noise processing for videos. Moreover, the real-time video post-processing and rendering can adjust the image color frame by frame for truly cinematic quality.
“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, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group (CBG)
The Huawei Mate 30 Series will be powered by the Kirin 990 series, and are expected to launch this September.
Emman has been writing technical and feature articles since 2010. Prior to this, he became one of the instructors at Asia Pacific College in 2008, and eventually landed a job as Business Analyst and Technical Writer at Integrated Open Source Solutions for almost 3 years.
