Understanding Huawei’s Kirin Chip Evolution

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Recently, Huawei’s Kirin 9000 mobile platform won the “Most Loved 5G Flagship Chip of 2021” award from the Communication World. As a chip released in 2020, the Kirin 9000 achieved an impressive feat of “one generation defeating three generations”, and it holds its ground well against the newly released Snapdragon 8 Gen1.

Unfortunately, due to well-known reasons, it’s hard for the Kirin chips to iterate again before the successful mass production of advanced domestic lithography machines. Even Huawei’s latest products, including those soon to be released, have to rely on Snapdragon chips.

As a light of domestic innovation, what historical significance does the Kirin chip hold? Let’s briefly review the development history of the Kirin chips to find out.

Players in the Mobile SoC Field

There aren’t many players active in the “heart” SoC field of smartphones; counting them, we have only Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek, Huawei HiSilicon, and Unisoc. Even extending the timeline only adds a few like NVIDIA (Tegra), Texas Instruments (OMAP), and Xiaomi (Surge).

As the “ceiling” of industrial manufacturing, chip design, especially SoCs for mobile phones, has always been a culmination of cutting-edge technology, and those who can achieve results in this field are truly the elite.

We are glad to see the rise of the HiSilicon Kirin series mobile platforms, which have consistently ranked at the flagship level of the Android ecosystem since the Kirin 950. The latest generation, Kirin 9000, is indeed the strongest in the Android ecosystem of 2020, and its specifications remain relevant even viewed through the lens of 2022.

The Beginning: The Predecessor of Kirin

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. was founded in 1987. Four years later (1991), Huawei established its ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) design center, marking the beginning of its journey into self-developed IC design.

In 2004, based on the ASIC design center, Huawei founded Shenzhen HiSilicon Semiconductor Co., Ltd., marking the start of HiSilicon’s legendary journey.

K3V1: Saved by Low-End Devices

Initially, HiSilicon did not participate in the competition for mobile processors but instead practiced with peripheral chips for network devices to gain experience. It wasn’t until 2009 that the first mobile processor under HiSilicon was officially born, but it was not the familiar “Kirin”, rather a chip called K3, internally codenamed Hi3611, and because it was the first version, it was colloquially known as “K3V1”.

As the debut of HiSilicon’s mobile chips, K3V1 adopted an ARM9 core design, with a clock speed of 360MHz to 460MHz. It was unable to compete with contemporaries like Qualcomm and Texas Instruments and was limited to niche Microsoft Windows Mobile systems, leading to a lack of interest.

Fortunately, HiSilicon caught a rare historical opportunity—an era when low-end domestic devices (shanzhai phones) were rampant!

Because the HiSilicon K3V1 integrated numerous functional modules including telephony, EDGE (2.75G), Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, FM, and CMMB, and HiSilicon could assist clients with all backend aspects of mobile phone development, clients only needed to focus on software differentiation, user interface development, and design.

Many high-copy HTC WM system models at that time used the HiSilicon K3V1 platform.

Sound familiar? Yes, the HiSilicon K3V1 also adopted a similar “turnkey” model as MediaTek, allowing mobile phones to be developed from concept to mass production in just 2 to 3 months with minimal engineering resources.

Thus, HiSilicon reinvested the profits into further R&D, embarking on a virtuous cycle of chip iteration.

The Unchanging K3V2

Starting in 2010, smartphones entered the era dominated by iOS and Android. After Yu Chengdong returned from Europe to lead Huawei’s consumer business and established the 2012 Lab, HiSilicon increased its investment in chip R&D and released the K3V2 (Hi3620), touted as the world’s smallest quad-core Cortex-A9 architecture processor, along with the Ascend D1 series phones at the 2012 Barcelona Mobile World Congress (MWC2012).

K3V2 was built on a 40nm process, with a clock speed of 1.4GHz to 1.5GHz, using a 64-bit memory controller (contemporary Tegra 3 quad-core processors were still 32-bit), integrating a Vivante GC4000 GPU with 16 computing units, which was actually decent.

Unfortunately, the GC4000 GPU had certain compatibility issues at the time, and heat control was not ideal. Competitors subsequently introduced quad-core processors using 28nm + Cortex-A15 architecture, causing K3V2 to gradually shift from a temporary lead to a comprehensive lag.

Ascend P6 and Benchmark Comparison with Contemporary High-End Phones

The K3V2 had a lifecycle of two years, powering low-end Honor 2 to high-end Mate 1 and Ascend P6. For a long time, whenever people saw the processor information of Huawei/Honor phones, they would exclaim: it’s the unchanging K3V2 again! K3V2 eventually became the biggest bottleneck restricting the sales of Huawei’s high-end models.

K3V2 later spawned K3V2E, which mainly added communication modules and improved the GPU, but performance improvements were minimal.

This is the pain that all growing companies must endure. Directly purchasing solutions from chip manufacturers like Qualcomm indeed saves time and effort, but in the long run, it leads to a loss of core competitiveness and the constant risk of being “choked”. The cost of self-developing SoCs is calculated in hundreds of millions or even billions of yuan, and if the developed product does not generate enough sales to amortize the costs, the iterative update gears cannot be turned.

Fortunately, Huawei weathered the most difficult period, and K3V2 eventually achieved commercial use in the millions. HiSilicon was about to welcome its glorious era as it arrived.

Where Kirin Appears, Auspiciousness Follows

The Kirin we are familiar with was born in 2013. From the initial Kirin 910 to the dominating Kirin 9000, it witnessed the rise and transformation of the domestic smartphone industry. Next, let’s review the members of the Kirin family.

Kirin 910: Initial Attempt

At the end of 2013, Huawei officially released the Kirin 910. This chip used TSMC’s 28nm HPM process, addressing the heating and high power consumption concerns of K3V2. The combination of ARM’s standard Cortex-A9 CPU and Mali-450MP4 GPU performed well in both performance and compatibility. Most importantly, the Kirin 910 integrated Huawei’s proprietary Balong 710 baseband for the first time, showcasing Huawei’s expertise in communication and thus becoming the world’s first quad-core “SoC”.

The Kirin 910 was used in Huawei Ascend P6s, Huawei Ascend Mate 2, Honor X1, Honor 3C LTE version, Huawei MediaPad M1, and Honor X1. The subsequently derived Kirin 910T (with a clock speed boosted to 1.8GHz) was used in Huawei Ascend P7.

Kirin 920: Gradually Improving

If the primary task of the Kirin 910 was to restore the reputation lost during the K3V2 era, then the Kirin 920’s mission was to help Huawei (Honor) devices expand their territory. The Kirin 920 was first launched with the Honor 6 phone; it used an octa-core big.LITTLE architecture based on Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7, integrating a Mali-T628MP4 GPU, audio chip, video chip, ISP, and Balong 720 baseband supporting LTE Cat.6 networks, balancing performance, power consumption, and network capability better.

The Kirin 920 later spawned the Kirin 925 and Kirin 928, which increased the small core frequency while integrating a dedicated i3 coprocessor for lower power consumption when managing various sensors, such as maintaining battery life while always-on step counting. The Kirin 925 was used in Huawei Mate 7, which sold over 7.5 million units globally, successfully helping Huawei enter the high-end market.

Kirin 620: Testing the Waters

After the Kirin 920 firmly established itself in the high-end market, HiSilicon customized a new Kirin 6 series chip for the mid-range market, with the Kirin 620 being its debut. Its biggest feature was the adoption of a 64-bit Cortex-A53 octa-core architecture, which surpassed the older Kirin 910 in overall performance and helped Huawei create the Honor Play 4X, which sold over ten million units.

Kirin 930: Bridging the Gap

To cater to the “64-bit era”, HiSilicon released the Kirin 930 in early 2015, which can be viewed as a 64-bit version of the Kirin 920. Its most significant change was the adoption of a dual-cluster Cortex-A53 octa-core architecture, but the GPU remained the Mali-T628MP4, leading to Huawei/Honor phones being dubbed as “forever Mali-T628MP4” during this period.

Relatively speaking, the “Sky Pass” feature introduced by the Kirin 930 had a greater impact on the user experience. From this generation onward, HiSilicon gradually strengthened the chip’s signal interference resistance and connectivity experience under weak signals, enhancing the phone’s ability to receive better signals and call quality in dead zones like garages and basements. The perception that Huawei brand 4G phones had better signals began to take root.

Kirin 950: Standing Firm in the High-End

Although the Kirin 930 had a good reputation, it was not powerful in terms of performance, especially compared to its contemporaries regarding GPU performance. In November 2015, the Kirin 950 was officially launched. This chip was the second mobile processor after Apple’s A9 to use TSMC’s latest 16nm FinFET Plus advanced process, achieving a qualitative leap in performance with the latest Cortex-A72 microarchitecture and Mali-T880MP4 GPU.

At the same time, the Kirin 950 upgraded its coprocessor to a Cortex-M7 architecture i5, integrating a self-developed image ISP core, significantly improving photo quality. The chip-level intelligent positioning allowed for more accurate navigation in complex environments like indoor settings or elevated bridges.

The timing of the Kirin 950’s release was excellent, coinciding with the decline of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 due to heating issues, and a quarter before the release of the next flagship Snapdragon 820, making it the best flagship chip in terms of overall performance and experience during that period.

Starting with the Kirin 950, HiSilicon’s subsequent product iterations were timed in the autumn, aligning with the transitional periods of Qualcomm and Samsung’s platforms, leading to the successful launches of annual blockbuster flagship models like Mate 8 and P9 (which featured the Kirin 955, the first collaboration with Leica), firmly establishing itself in the high-end market.

Kirin 650: Four Generations Coexisting

In May 2016, HiSilicon launched the upgraded version of Kirin 620—the Kirin 650, which used a 16nm process and a dual-cluster Cortex-A53 octa-core architecture, integrating a Mali-T830MP2 GPU, and gradually spawned Kirin 655, Kirin 658, and Kirin 659, with the latter achieving a maximum clock speed of 2.36GHz. The competitiveness of this series of chips at launch was quite good, claiming to be the only 16nm mobile processor at the thousand-yuan level available on the market, but its competitiveness gradually declined with Qualcomm’s release of the Snapdragon 660, the “god U”.

Kirin 960: Strengthening 3D Performance

In October 2016, with the release of the Mate 9 series, HiSilicon Kirin 960 officially arrived. It was the first mobile processor in the industry to commercially use Cortex-A73 CPU, Mali-G71 GPU, and UFS2.1 flash storage.

Compared to its predecessors, the Kirin 960 finally shed the label of “forever MP4” (which had a maximum of four computing units for the GPU, such as Mali-T880MP4), as the Mali-G71MP8 with eight computing cores provided better 3D performance. Thus, “gaming phones” were no longer the exclusive domain of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 series, allowing Huawei/Honor high-end phones to enter the consideration list of gaming enthusiasts.

Kirin 970: Leading the Era

Launched in September 2017 with the Mate 10 series, the Kirin 970 held significant historical importance as it pioneered mobile AI computing, being the first SoC to integrate a dedicated AI hardware processing unit NPU (Neural Processing Unit, from Cambricon) using the HiAI mobile computing architecture. It introduced the concept of “AI scene recognition” in the camera app, automatically setting the best shooting parameters based on the current scene and objects, transforming novices into photography masters and laying a solid foundation for Huawei/Honor phones to dominate the DxOMark rankings for years to come.

Moreover, the Kirin 970 continued to strengthen 3D performance, integrating a more powerful Mali-G72MP12 GPU and introducing the “frightening technology” GPU Turbo, with gaming frame rate stability even surpassing Snapdragon 835.

Kirin 710: Struggling to Compete

In July 2018, the HiSilicon Kirin 710 officially took center stage with the release of the Huawei nova 3i phone. It adopted a 12nm process and used the same big-little architecture design as the Kirin 960/970, with the integrated Mali-G51 GPU being of the same lineage as Mali-G71, and also focused on GPU Turbo technology. Unfortunately, the performance of the Kirin 710 was at most on par with Snapdragon 660 and Helio P60, while Snapdragon 670 and Snapdragon 710 were looming above, making it more defensive than aggressive.

The Kirin 710 later also spawned the Kirin 710F and Kirin 710A, with the former adopting a flip-chip packaging process, while the latter was manufactured by SMIC’s 14nm process and used in new phones like Honor Play4T.

Kirin 980: Six Firsts

While the Kirin 970 impressed the world with its independent NPU, the Kirin 980, launched in September 2018 alongside the Huawei Mate 20 series, further solidified its identity as a flagship SoC with “six world firsts”: the world’s first 7nm process SoC, the world’s first ARM A76 architecture CPU, the world’s first Mali-G76 GPU, the world’s first dual NPU (still from Cambricon), the world’s first 1.4Gbps Cat.21 baseband, and the world’s first supporting LPDDR4X-2133 memory. Additionally, the Kirin 980 could also use the Balong 5000 baseband, enabling 5G connectivity for smartphones.

Starting with the Kirin 980, HiSilicon gained a new “skill point”, acquiring the ability similar to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon to “magically modify” the ARM standard architecture. You will notice that the official promotional materials always add the suffix “Based” after Cortex-A.

Kirin 810: Birth of the God U

When it comes to the “God U” in the Android phone realm, many people think of Snapdragon 660, Snapdragon 710, or Snapdragon 730. Indeed, these three chips were the strongest competitors at that time, but after HiSilicon released the Kirin 810 in June 2019, the throne of the God U was claimed.

The Kirin 810’s prowess lies in its adoption of the most advanced 7nm process, Based version of Cortex-A76 + A55 architecture, Mali-G52MP6 GPU, and Huawei’s self-developed Da Vinci architecture NPU unit, which comprehensively outperformed similarly positioned Snapdragon 730G and MediaTek Helio G90T, significantly enhancing the market competitiveness of Huawei/Honor mid-range phones.

Kirin 990: Integrating 5G

In October 2019, the Mate 30 series brought HiSilicon’s true 5G SoC—the Kirin 990 5G, which is the world’s first mobile terminal chip with over 10 billion transistors, using the industry’s most advanced 7nm + EUV process, directly integrating the Balong 5000 baseband and supporting both SA/NSA 5G networking modes.

It is worth noting that the Kirin 990 4G standard version was also released alongside it, with the difference being that the latter’s process was changed to standard 7nm, with reduced clock speed and a smaller NPU scale, requiring the external Balong 5000 chip for 5G support.

Kirin 820: Maintaining Leadership

Released in March 2020, the Kirin 820 is HiSilicon’s second 5G SoC, inheriting many excellent genes from the Kirin 990 series, such as the Based version of the tri-cluster architecture, Da Vinci NPU, Kirin ISP 5.0, and Balong 5000 baseband module.

In terms of performance, the Kirin 820 can fully outperform Snapdragon 765G, Dimensity 800, and Samsung Exynos 980, with only MediaTek and Xiaomi’s customized Dimensity 820 being able to compete closely, living up to the Kirin 810’s reputation as the “God U”.

Kirin 985: Niche Choice

Alongside the Kirin 820, the Kirin 985 was also launched, which can be seen as a scaled-down version of the Kirin 990 5G, with reduced clock speed, a switch to Mali-G77MC8 GPU, and a smaller NPU scale. The performance of this chip is similar to that of Dimensity 1000L, only slightly better than Kirin 820 and Dimensity 820, making its competitiveness average. Thus, the Kirin 985 was only used in a few phones like Honor 30 and Huawei nova 7 5G, with many consumers preferring similarly priced counterparts equipped with the Kirin 990 series.

Kirin 9000: One Generation Defeating Three Generations

On October 22, 2020, the HiSilicon Kirin 9000 series officially arrived. Thanks to the world’s most advanced 5nm process at the time, it became the world’s first mobile terminal chip with over 15 billion transistors. Since the Kirin 9000 integrated the Balong 5000 baseband, it was also the world’s first and the only 5nm process 5G SoC that year (Apple A14 used an external baseband, thus not meeting the definition of a 5G SoC).

The Kirin 9000 was divided into two models: Kirin 9000 and Kirin 9000E. Their main differences lie in the number of GPU and NPU cores, while the specifications for CPU and other functional modules are completely consistent. Although the Kirin 9000 did not use ARM’s latest Cortex-X1 and Cortex-A78 architectures, the Cortex-A77, which surpassed the 3.0GHz frequency barrier, remained formidable, coupled with the “fully powered” Mali-G78MC24 GPU, achieving respective improvements in CPU, NPU (AI), and GPU efficiency of 25%, 150%, and 50% compared to the current strongest Snapdragon 865+ in the Android field!

Overall, the specifications of the Kirin 9000 are impressive. It leverages the advantages of the 5nm process to push the Cortex-A77 CPU frequency to the limit and max out the computing units of the Mali-G78 GPU, making it undoubtedly the strongest Android chip of 2020, capable of competing even against the Snapdragon 888, Dimensity 2000, and Exynos 2100 that arrived in 2021, as well as the new flagship models of 2022.

In addition to the Kirin 9000, HiSilicon also released the Kirin 990E 5G, which can be viewed as a scaled-down version of the Kirin 990 5G, missing two GPU computing units and one NPU core, which will not be further elaborated here.

From the establishment of HiSilicon in 2004 to the hot sales of the Mate 7 phone in 2014, the Kirin chips took a full decade to make a name for themselves in the mobile processor field. The phrase “Ten Years to Forge a Sword” cannot fully express the hardships HiSilicon faced in its chip development journey. From Kirin 970 to Kirin 9000, each generation of HiSilicon chips has set a benchmark in the smartphone domain, representing the highest achievements of domestic chips.

Huawei Mate Series Phones Witnessing the Development of Kirin Processors

Due to the temporary exit of HiSilicon Kirin, the market share left behind has allowed MediaTek to reap significant benefits. According to the 2021 SoC sales rankings in the Chinese smartphone market released by the well-known statistics agency CINNO Research, MediaTek achieved 110 million chips in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 42.5%, surpassing Qualcomm and becoming the big winner in the Chinese smartphone chip market in 2021. HiSilicon’s sales plummeted by 68.6%, equivalent to a two-thirds year-on-year drop, from 96.2 million units in 2020 to 30.3 million units in 2021, a shocking decline. As the inventory of Kirin chips runs out, HiSilicon’s market share…

In 2020, the IDC report on the second quarter of the Chinese smartphone market showed that Huawei HiSilicon chips once occupied 54.8% of the market share. If it weren’t for the sanctions, the achievements of Kirin today would be unimaginable, and the iPhone would not be the only choice for top-tier phones at the ten-thousand-yuan level.

Looking forward to the rebirth of HiSilicon Kirin!

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