Not too long ago, Huawei officially unveiled its latest chipset, the Kirin 970. While the new SoC isn’t drastically different from its predecessor, it does feature a number of interesting features.
The main focus of the Kirin 970 is definitely its AI capabilities. According to Huawei, the 970 is the first of its kind to come with a dedicated NPU, which stands for Neural Processing Unit. Basically, the NPU allows the Kirin 970 to “perform the same AI computing tasks faster and with far less power.”
Aside from that, the Kirin 970 comes with the same CPU architecture as its predecessor. It has four Cortex-A73 cores and another four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 2.4GHz and 1.8GHz respectively. The 970’s GPU, on the other hand, sees an improvement: its Mali-G72 GPU – the latest GPU from ARM – is said to be 20% faster and 50% more power-efficient.
Given the fact that many premium-tier chipsets are now 10nm SoCs, it’s really a given that the Kirin 970 is also built on the 10nm process. This, in turn, should translate to better battery life. For the sake of comparison, the Kirin 960 is a 16nm chipset.
The Kirin 970 is expected to make its debut on the Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro; both devices are expected to be unveiled on 16 October.
(Source: Huawei)
