IFA 2019: Everything You Need To Know About The 5G-Enabled Kirin 990 Chipsets

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Huawei has finally unveiled the company's new in-house flagship Kirin 990 series chipsets at the-most anticipated IFA keynote for the Chinese tech giant, i.e. IFA 2019 at Berlin, Germany. For the first-time ever, the company has unveiled two variants of the Kirin 990 SoC- the 4G variant for the markets that are still evolving and the Kirin 990 5G chipset for the 5G ready markets.

 

Huawei Kirin 990 5G

The all-new Kirin 990 5G flagship chipset is the world's first truly unified design SoC to support 5G networks on both non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) architectures as well as TDD/FDD full frequency bands. Kirin 990 chipsets are integrated with a 5G modem to achieve a smaller area and lower power consumption. The new chipsets will power the upcoming Mate 30 series smartphones, which are scheduled to launch on September 19, 2019.

Huawei Kirin 990 SoCs bring some massive improvements over the Kirin 980 chipsets. Backed by the latest core designs, the new chipsets bring faster connectivity, better AI performance, enhanced photography and better graphics performance. Here's everything you need to know about the new flagship processors from Huawei.

Huawei Kirin 990 5G and Kirin 990 (4G) SoC Architecture
 

Huawei Kirin 990 5G and Kirin 990 (4G) SoC Architecture

The Kirin 990 5G chipset is built on the TSMC's latest 7+ manufacturing process. The CPU features 2x Cortex-A76 cores clocked at 2.86Ghz, 2x Cortex-A76 cores clocked at slightly lower frequency of 2.36Ghz and 4x Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 1.95GHz. For graphics, the Kirin 990 5G SoC is aided by first-of-its-kind 16-core Mali-G76 GPU. The Kirin 990 5G also gets a NPU unit with 2x Big cores + 1x Tiny Core. The SoC supports 2G/3G/4G/5G modems and UFS 3.0 and UFS 2.1 storage.

The 4G counterpart of the Kirin 990 chipset differs in the clock frequency. It features 2x Cortex-A76 cores clocked at 2.86Ghz, 2x Cortex-A76 cores clocked at a lower frequency of 2.09Ghz and 4x Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 1.86GHz. The GPU unit remains the same; however, the NPU gets 1x Big cores + 1x Tiny Core. The SoC supports 2G/3G/4G modems and UFS 3.0 and UFS 2.1 storage.

Over 10.3 Billion Transistors And Da Vinci Cores

Over 10.3 Billion Transistors And Da Vinci Cores

Kirin 990 series is engineered with over 10 billion transistors. The SoCs feature 10,300,000,000 transistors and feature the very first dual-core NPU built on the Da Vinci architecture with all-new tiny core. The combination of big-cores and tiny cores handle most powerful AI computations and ultra-low power AI computations respectively. Huawei mentioned that the Kirin 990 5G scored 10% better performance in single-core test and 9% better scores in the multi-core tests as compared to the competition.

Faster Data Speeds Than Competition

Faster Data Speeds Than Competition

The new Kirin 990 chipsets utilize Balong 5000's 5G connectivity. The Kirin 990 (5G) is claimed to provide a peak downlink rate of 2.3 Gbit/s and an uplink peak rate of 1.25 Gbit/s. The company also mentioned that the new chipsets will reduce the power consumption by 44% at light data loading. Kirin 990 5G-enabled devices are also claimed to be 20% efficient during 5G high-speed data consumption tasks.

20 percent better Graphics performance

20 percent better Graphics performance

The new Kirin 990 series chipsets also feature the world's 16-core Mali-G76 GPU unit. To recall, the Kirin 980 offered a deca-core Mali-G76 GPU. The new graphical processing unit is touted to bring 20 percent better graphics performance to Kirin 990 SoC powered devices.

5th Generation ISP For Better Camera Performance

5th Generation ISP For Better Camera Performance

The upcoming Mate 30 series devices will bring some massive improvements in the camera department. As the new devices will be backed by Kirin 990 SoCs, the smartphones' camera systems will work on the new 5th gen. ISP (ISP 5.0). The new ISP engine is claimed to excel in block-matching and 3D filtering. The duo work to offer professional-level hardware noise reduction (NR) to capture brighter and sharper images in low light environments.

You can also expect big improvements in the video shooting capabilities of the upcoming Mate 30 series devices. The ISP 5.0 engine brings the dual-domain video NR for more accurate noise processing for videos. Importantly, the Mate 30 series handsets will be capable of doing the real-time video post-processing and rendering based on AI segmentation. This will allow the camera setups to adjust the image color frame by frame to bring cinematic quality.

Mobile AI 2.0 Engine

Mobile AI 2.0 Engine

Based on 5G, the Mobile AI 2.0 Engine brings ‘Real-time on-cloud Inference'. The company claims that the new AI engine will reduce the network latency while executing complex AI tasks. With new chipsets, the company is claiming to elevate AI performance 12x in two years. The new Kirin 990 SoCs also support the most number of AI operators covering diversified platforms and models such as HiAI, TenserFlow and Android INN.

New Color Variants Of Huawei P30 Pro Series With Android 10

New Color Variants Of Huawei P30 Pro Series With Android 10

Huawei also used the IFA platform to unveil two new color variants of the flagship P30 Pro smartphone. The new color variants include Mystic Blue and Misty Lavender and will feature Google Pixel like dual-tone finish at the back panel. With the new color variants, Huawei P30 Pro will now be available in 7 different color shades.

The new Huawei P30 Pro devices will run on the EMUI 10 based on the Android 10. You will get to see a system-wide Dark theme, new typography, new gesture-navigations, and some camera enhancements.

For now, the new P30 Pro devices are unveiled in the European market. It remains to be seen if the company will unveil the new P30 Pro variants in the Indian market.

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