Inside Huawei's Kirin 9020: The Power Behind the Mate 70 Series

Huawei has launched the Mate 70 series but kept details about the chipsets under wraps. Initial rumors suggested a “Kirin 9100” with ARM Cortex cores, but recent information from Weibo indicates otherwise. A leaked image from one of the Mate 70 devices reveals the chipset as the Kirin 9020, a logical follow-up to the Kirin 9010.

Kirin 9020 Arrives as a 12-Core CPU

The hardware info app reveals that the Kirin 9020 features a 12-core CPU setup. It has two prime cores clocked at 2.5GHz, six mid cores at 2.1GHz, and four efficiency cores at 1.6GHz. However, there’s a twist—hyperthreading is enabled on some cores. Hence, there are two logical cores per physical core, but not all cores use this feature.

The previous Kirin 9010 used a 1+3+4 configuration with hyperthreading on the big and mid cores. The small ones didn’t use the tech. So, it had a logical core arrangement of 2+6+4. The Kirin 9020 seems to follow this same pattern, suggesting a similar design approach.

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This implies that HiSilicon’s Taishan CPU cores are likely used for the prime and mid clusters. This diverges from ARM’s architecture. Meanwhile, the four efficiency cores are probably Cortex-A510. Therefore, their actual specs are consistent with earlier Kirin 9000-series processors.

Maleoon 920 GPU

Huawei’s new GPU, the Maleoon 920, is a custom design that reaches speeds of up to 840MHz, outperforming the Maleoon 910 from the Kirin 9010, which peaked at 750MHz. Specific details about the GPU’s architecture and compute units haven’t been disclosed yet.

Internal testing shows that the Kirin 9020 delivers around 40% better overall performance than its predecessor, used in the Pura 70 series. However, it seems the standard Huawei Mate 70 might still use the older Kirin 9010, while the more advanced Kirin 9020 is reserved for flagship models like the Mate 70 Pro, Pro+, and RS Ultimate. It’s also likely that the Mate X6 will include the new chipset.

As of now, Huawei has not confirmed these details officially. We expect more details to surface as the phone starts to reach consumers. Unfortunately, due to the ban Huawei has been keeping most of the technical details a secret.

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