A week ago, a leak revealed that the camera island design for the upcoming Huawei Mate 70 series. The new models are expected to feature a new Kirin chipset and now we have our first glimpse of it.
First glimpse of the HiSilicon Kirin 9100 chip that will be used in the Huawei Mate 70 series
This chip, called the Kirin 9100, will be manufactured on a 6nm node (SMIC N+3). That’s a step up from the 7nm Kirin 9000S chips used in the Mate 60 series, but still behind the semiconductor nodes that other chipset designers have access to.
Telegram user @spektykles posted this image showing the hardware layout of the new chip, codenamed “HiSilicon Baltimore”. It brings the first Cortex-X CPU core to the Kirin family. And interestingly enough, it’s a full ARM design with all CPU cores coming from the Cortex series. This is in contrast to the Kirin 9000S, which used Taishan large and middle cores (designed by HiSilicon) and four Cortex-A510 as the small cores. Here’s a side-by-side comparison
| Kirin 9000S | Kirin 9100 (rumors) | |
|---|---|---|
| Node | 7nm | 6nm |
| CPU, large | 1x Taishan Large @ 2.62 GHz | Cortex-X1 @ 2.67 GHz |
| CPU, center | 3x Taishan Middle @ 2.15 GHz | Cortex-A78 @ 2.32 GHz |
| CPU, small | 4x Cortex-A510 @ 1.53 GHz | Cortex-A55 @ 2.02 GHz |
| GPU | Maleoon 910 MP4 | Maleon 910? |
The GPU is listed as “Mali-TBEX,” but it will likely be a Maleoon design (from HiSilicon), perhaps the same design we saw on the 9000S and 9010, judging by the second image.
The CPU consists of quite old parts. The Cortex-X1 was paired with A78 and A55 in the Snapdragon 888 era, while MediaTek never released a chip with the X1 (the Dimensity 9000 uses the X2, A710, and A510). The node is also not located near the very latest developments, which keeps clock speeds low. In fact, they have barely moved compared to the 7nm chip.
US sanctions are preventing HiSilicon from using newer Cortex designs and more advanced semiconductor nodes, which is holding back the Kirin designs.
The Huawei Pura 70 Ultra with a Kirin 9010 showed itself mid-range performance in our tests and while we expect the 9100 to be a solid boost with its new CPU, it will still lag far behind modern Android chipsets.