On August 29th, Huawei introduced the Mate 60 Pro, seemingly out of nowhere. The business did not host a launch celebration of any kind.
The gadget was merely listed on VMall, a first-party online retailer, and its official website. This contrasts with Huawei, a telecom firm known for lavish events, particularly in support of its high-end goods.
The fact that the smartphone supports 5G connectivity shocked me even more. However, neither the name of the chipset within the phone nor support for 5G are mentioned by the manufacturer.
Since the Mate 60 Pro’s formal release one week ago, Huawei has sold more than a million of them. At least 12 million smartphones are anticipated to be shipped in total.
Over the past few days, a number of videos and articles—including our own—about the product have surfaced online. Based on the information at our disposal, we have put together a single article that addresses the most important inquiries on the chip that powers the Huawei Mate 60 Pro.
Which chip powers the Huawei Mate 60 Pro?
The HiSilicon Kirin 9000s chip is found inside the Huawei Mate 60 Pro. It is the first brand-new smartphone processor from Huawei in three years.
The SoC’s ability to support 5G connectivity is crucial. Since the limited-edition Mate 40 series from late 2020, the Mate 60 Pro is also the first Huawei 5G phone in a very long time.
Who manufactures the Huawei Mate 60 Pro’s HiSilicon Kirin 9000s chip?
HiSilicon chipsets have historically been produced by TSMC for Huawei. However, the telecom giant was unable to continue doing business with the most sophisticated semiconductor manufacturer because of US sanctions.
As a result, the new Kirin 9000s SoC is produced by SMIC in China. According to TechInsights’ research, SMIC’s 7nm (N+2) technology is used to manufacture the chipset.
The TSMC-produced Kirin 9000 chip, which has a surface area of 105 mm2, is 2% smaller than the 107 mm2 Kirin 9000s. Interestingly, although being built on a less sophisticated fabrication method, the most recent chipset even has bigger critical dimensions (CDs) than its predecessor.
A Chinese chip company has accomplished a huge feat with this. But for some reason, SMIC has not made papers on its most recent breakthrough available to the public.
What is the architecture of the Huawei Mate 60 Pro’s HiSilicon Kirin 9000s chip?
The HiSilicon Kirin 9000s is an ARM-based mobile chip, just like every other chip on the market. But Huawei has chosen to use specialized cores like Samsung’s Mongoose rather than solely relying on the standard ARM cores that are available off-the-shelf.
An octa-core CPU is a feature of the Kirin 9000s. Since the CPU enables hyper-threading (up to 12 threads), some user or review benchmarks showed 12 cores. As a result, the Kirin 9000s is the industry’s first ARM chip to allow CPU hyper-threading.
The proprietary Taishan core, with a clock speed of 2.62 GHz, is the primary core among the eight CPU cores. Additionally, the median cores are once more a group of three specifically designed Taishan cores running at 2.15 GHz. Four stock ARM Cortex-A510 cores are grouped together to form the efficiency cores.
The Maliang 910 GPU, clocked at 750 MHz, manages the graphics. The DaVinci NPU, ISP, and Baron modem are also included in the SoC in updated versions.
How powerful is the Huawei Mate 60 Pro’s HiSilicon Kirin 9000s chip?
The HiSilicon Kirin 9000s processor trails the current-generation Android leader, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, in benchmark tests (AnTuTu and Geekbench).
On AnTuTu, the SoC is capable of earning roughly 7,00,000 points. on contrast, it can score roughly 1,300 and 3,300 points on the single-core and multi-core tests on Geekbench, respectively.
These results put the Kirin 9000s’ performance in the same range as the Snapdragon 888’s. In the Android market, the processor is therefore two generations behind.
Does the Huawei Mate 60 Pro’s HiSilicon Kirin 9000s chip support 5G?
The Huawei Mate 60 Pro is the company’s first 5G smartphone in almost three years, as was indicated at the beginning. With its newly created Baron modem, the HiSilicom Kirin 9000s can support fifth-generation mobile communication technologies.
Sadly, little is known about this enigmatic modem. Anyway, the device enables satellite connectivity in addition to 5G.
The Huawei Mate 60 Pro actually supports satellite calling for the first time on a commercial smartphone. Like the iPhone 14 range, the Mate 50 Pro was only capable of sending SMS.