Thomas Bartlett and Val Quinn are waxing lyrical over the new heights set by the camera functionality of the Huawei P30 and P30 Pro. But a lot of that has to do with the Kirin 980 super chip.
The Kirin 980 is a late 2018 processor first seen in the Mate20/Pro and now in the new 2019 Huawei P30/Pro. Technically it is more of a direct competitor to the 2018 Qualcomm SD845 and its sibling Samsung Exynos 9810 found in Australian versions of the Galaxy S9 and Note9.
Interestingly both Huawei and Samsung design their silicon (as Apple does with its A-series) and can design in features no one else has. They can also highly tune their devices to Android – so their expertise counts. It also means they have better control of the supply chain.
The Kirin 980 has a GeekBench score of 3390/10318 for single/multi-core. The later Exynos 9820 (remember it is a Qualcomm SD855 sibling) has a GeekBench score 4510/10253 in single/multi-core.
By comparison, the Kirin 970 in the P20 and Mate 10 is 1866/6600, and the Exynos 9810 found in the S9 and Note9 has 3718/9026. That shows just how far we have come in a year!
Apart from huge performance increases the main addition – let’s call it the secret sauce – to the Kirin 980 is two NPU (neural processing units) and two ISP (image signal processors).
This is in comparison to the Exynos 9802 single units. Simply put, the Kirin has more capacity to use AI to post-process images. Huawei has the edge in AI power.
The Exynos 9820 has a twelve Execution Unit Mali-G76 GPU (Kirin 980 has ten but at a higher Mhz rate), UFS 3.0 storage (the S10 series uses 2.1 – same as the Kirin), and a higher video capture rate.
The Exynos also has Wi-Fi 6 (AX) – although in practice users would not see much difference until AX VHT80/160 routers are available. These processors are neck and neck.
We understand that the Kirin 980 in the P30/Pro may be more highly tuned so actual performance specs may be a little higher. We won’t know until we have the units on review and run throttling tests.
Specifications – Kirin 980 and Exynos 9820
| Spec | Exynos 9820 | Kirin 980 |
| CPU Core | ARM Cortex | ARM Cortex |
| CPU Config |
2x 4th gen custom @2.73GHz 2x Cortex-A75 @2.31Ghz 4x Cortex-A55 @1.95Ghz |
2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.6GHz 2x Cortex-A76 @ 1.92GHz 4x Cortex-A55 @ 1.8GHz |
| GPU |
Mali-G76 MP12-core 600Mhz |
Mali-G76 MP10-core 750Mhz |
| AI | NPU | Dual NPU |
| Memory | LPDDR4X-3600 | LPDDR4X-4266 |
| Storage | UFS 3.0 (2.1 used in GS10) | UFS 2.1 |
| Process | 8nm FinFET | 7nm FinFET |
| ISP | Single | Dual |
| Video capture | 8K@30fps or 4K@150fps | 4K @ 30fps |
| Video playback |
8K 30fps or 4K 150fps, 10-bit HEVC(H.265), H.264, VP9 | 4K @ 60fps |
| Modem |
2000 Mbps down 316 Mbps up |
1400 Mbps down 200 Mbps up |
| Wi-Fi |
AX BT 5.0 |
AC BT 5.0 |
GadgetGuy’s take
Kirin 980 is a flagship processor that works so well in the Mate20 and now in the P30. I can’t wait to see what the Kirin 990 does in the Mate30 later this year.
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