Huawei unveils Kirin 950 SoC based on TSMC's 16nm FinFET technology

[Shawn Knight]

Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon recently unveiled its next generation mobile processor at a media event in Beijing. The Kirin 950 sounds awfully impressive on paper, no doubt leaving rival chipmakers feeling a bit uneasy.

The new octa-core SoC consists of four Cortex A72 chips clocked at 2.3GHz and four 1.8GHz Cortex A53 chips in a big.LITTLE configuration using TSMC’s 16nm FinFET manufacturing process. With it, Huawei becomes only the second vendor to produce a chip based on TSMC’s new manufacturing process (Apple's A9 was the first). ARM’s Mali-T880 GPU ticking along at 900MHz, meanwhile, should result in impressive gaming performance.

Other noteworthy specifications include dual 32-bit hybrid memory controllers that work with either LPDDR3 or LPDDR4 chips, a new i5 co-processor powered by an ARM Cortex M7 core as well as support for Category 6 LTE with speeds of up to 300Mbps.

In related news, GSM Arena came across a “leaked” benchmark showing what is believed to be the Huawei Mate 8 powered by the Kirin 950. It scored 1,710 on the single-core test and 6,245 on the multi-core test. If accurate and representative of final production hardware, it’s quite an impressive score. What we do know for a fact, however, is that the Kirin 950 turned out a score of 82,945 in the AnTuTu benchmark.

All things considered, the chip looks quite good although how well that translates to the real world – inside a small smartphone enclosure with limited cooling – remains to be seen.

The Kirin 950 is expected to show up in Huawei’s upcoming flagship handsets due out before the end of the year.

Image courtesy Android Headlines

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https://www.techspot.com/news/62687-huawei-unveils-kirin-950-soc-based-tsmc-16nm.html

 

[cliffordcooley]

They'll have digital fingernails before long.

 

[Mech918]

Can they say heat, heat and more heat. It use to be that, input/output means, was the limiting factor on devices. Now they are pushing limits on smaller size and faster speeds without too much concern of heat removal. These chips can usually perform faster in bench marks like this, but throw in throttling control by manufactures to prevent the devices from burning up or eating batteries or external memory, and the numbers change drastically. For years gamers have been pushing the threshold of speed. But they know all too well the end result. HEAT. And the whole market of course cooling emerged. Starting with processors, then to video controllers and memory. Going as far as to run water cooling systems in their CPU towers. Imagine buying electronics filled with liquid so they don't melt. And with devices the article is talking about their is no room for air and your adding heat generated by discharging batteries and voltage controls. You will quickly have a device that will be too hot to handle and that will chew up batteries and micro SD cards. We all know how much lithium batteries love heat. I have done test on dual and quad core phones and tablets. It's quite easy to push even those devices into near meltdown Temps. I've hit Temps that kill
micro SD cards every time and serious damage performance and life of lithium cells. Cooling methods need to start becoming a priority of these manufactures. Trying to use thin Tin shields and the device shells to dissipate heat is no longer a viable solution. The person that creates the micro cooling system it the one that will push the micro tech into the next level. After all keeping things cool improves performance, reliability, safety and longevity. If you want the perfect device here is the recipe. Components that all run at the same voltage and speeds.
Better heat shielding between internal Components. A sound Cooling system. We have proven we can make things smaller. So now let's make them right. Do that and you have the attention of every technology manufacturer on the planet. It may be a pipe dream but I know we can get closer to such a device then we are.

 

[cliffordcooley]

I've hit Temps that kill micro SD cards every time

If you are saying one chip gets hot enough without damage, and the heat burns out another chip. I don't want to listen to anything else you have to say on the topic.

That's the equivalent of saying the fire won't burn a stick, but the rock three feet away will.

 

[Mech918]

If you are saying one chip gets hot enough without damage, and the heat burns out another chip. I don't want to listen to anything else you have to say on the topic.

That's the equivalent of saying the fire won't burn a stick, but the rock three feet away will.

haha wow I'll have to reread my post. You missed my point. But the fire has to start somewhere right. When a processor runs faster does that not cause more heat. It's a combined effort that causes the overheating of components. Let's put a 440Hp engine in a subcompact car. Which component fails first. Not the engine. It performs as it should. Well until the cooling is overwhelmed. Run you devices using monitors and tell me heat doesn't rise in relation to CPU Speed. The SD cards fail as the heat expands and contracts the hair thin traces on the boards. The SD card failure using do to its usage. In fact the SD card isn't being used or accessed. But the device chipset and battery sure are being use and getting the faster the device runs. Don't keep increasing the speed until there us somewhere for the heat to go is my entire point. Forget I even mentioned the SD card it's just one of the first to suffer a catistrafic fail. Battery life and performance are next. The display will follow that. So no the processor will run at those speeds but the heat generated by pushing those speeds won't kill the processor first.