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.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k566SwWDlc
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)
