Recently, I received some leaked information that Huawei is going to use 7nm chipset on their next-gen smartphone. Why is this news a news, you might ask? The answer is simple. If Huawei uses a 7nm Chipset (suspected to be Kirin 980), they will be the first in the World to use this technology.
I hesitated to write this information without further confirmation. Recently, Android Authority has confirmed that Huawei is, in fact, using a 7nm Kirin 980 Chipset on their next flagship model, the Huawei Mate 20 series.
7nm chipset? What?
Who cares what is inside the smartphone, right? And who cares what is 7nm chipset. To put to perspective, here are some interesting thing you will see or can do with a 7nm chipset.
15 to 20 years or more ago, the Semicon Industry was talking about 0.20um chipset (or 200nm). Fast forward to the present, we are talking about 7nm.
What is 7nm?
The smaller the number means it requires a more complex manufacturing process. BTW, 7nm means the width between nodes.
A hair is about 75um (or 75,000nm). This might be an easier explanation on how small the content inside this chipset is.
This improvement will improve the smartphone’s overall performance, including power saving abilities and operation efficiencies.
You might know that the Snapdragon 845 chipset and the Kirin 970 are using the 10nm chipset. And the recent Samsung Galaxy Note9 is using the Snapdragon 845 chipset.
Leaked Information
If you are not into complex specs, you might want to skip this section.
The information I received states that Huawei started the cooperation on the development of 7nm chipsets with TSM (a Taiwan computer) earlier in 2015 that takes the two companies three years on optimizing the chipset to be stable enough and work at its best, under Huawei’s industry-leading strict standards.
Another information is that Huawei will adopt to the 4 x A76+4 x A55 multi-core design. If true, it will be the current most advanced microarchitecture of ARM Holdings.
This microarchitecture is a nearly 150% enhancement comparing with Snapdragon 845 in GPU performance.
On top of that, Huawei recently announced the GPU Turbo which will drive the overall performance to a new level (I think).
And it seems that Huawei will be debuting a new generation of NPU (Neural Processing Unit) powered by AI capabilities this year.
Some tidbits information
Leakage from a third party shows Apple will also get the 7nm chipset for their ready for their new A12 this year. Heard that they might be debuting with 3 different sizes of iPhones.
If all the above are true, it seems that Samsung has not made the progress to advance their technology to the next stage.
Don’t get me wrong. It doesn’t mean that not having the latest technology is a problem. The overall performance of the smartphone is the real factor of success.
If you think that my information is flawed, please let me know. Peace!
(source)