At 8:00 Beijing time last night, Huawei held an online launch of the Mate 40 flagship machine. After an hour-long press conference of various new products, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei’s consumer business, summed up the current Huawei situation in a few simple sentences:
“Huawei is in a very difficult time right now, and we are going through the third round of the US government’s ban, which is extremely unfair and puts us in a difficult situation.”
“We’ve had the best reputation for cybersecurity and privacy protection over the past three decades, and we’ve led the industry in communications technology as well as consumer technology.”
“No matter how difficult Huawei’s situation is, we are committed to continuing to carry out technological innovations to bring consumers, improve people’s lives, and improve everyone’s work efficiency. We will keep our promises, thank you.”
Like a hard-working child who expressed his grievances at the last moment, but there is no grievance to speak of in the adult world. At the China Information Technology Hundred People’s Conference a few months ago, Yu Chengdong revealed that “the Kirin 9000 chip on the Mate 40 will be the last generation of Huawei’s Kirin chip.”
For such a swan song, Yu Chengdong is still the same as the previous conferences, and he is familiar with the various performances of the chip.
How strong is the Kirin 9000?
There is no doubt that the Kirin 9000 chip is the most powerful chip in Huawei’s history. It adopts a 5nm process technology. According to Yu Chengdong, the Kirin 9000 is also the world’s first 5G mobile phone SoC with a 5nm process. It integrates 15.3 billion transistors, which is 30% more than the A14 chip released not long ago.
The chip integrates an eight-core CPU, which is 1 3.13GHz Cortex-A77, 3 2.54GHz Cortex-A77*3, and 4 2.05GHz Cortex-A53, making it 10% faster than other flagship SoCs. With a 24-core GPU (Mali-G78), the GPU computing speed is 52% faster than that of the Snapdragon 865+.
Yu Chengdong said at the press conference: “The GPU is sometimes more important than the CPU, because when playing mobile games, the ability of the GPU is often called.”
In addition, the NPU AI processor of the Kirin 9000 is 2.4 times faster than the Snapdragon 865+, and the AI Benchmark score reaches 148008.
In terms of energy consumption, the CPU, NPU and GPU energy consumption performance of Kirin 9000 is 25%, 150% and 50% higher than that of Snapdragon 865+, respectively.
Compared with Apple’s just launched the first-generation 5G flagship phone, Huawei’s 5G phone is already the third generation. The Mate40 series is equipped with the third-generation 5G mobile communication chip. In the current network test, compared with V55+Snapdragon 865+, the uplink speed of Kirin 9000 is 5 times that of other 5G mobile phones, and the downlink speed is twice as fast.
In the Kirin 9000, Huawei’s most advanced ISP technology is integrated. Compared with the previous generation Kirin 990 5G chip, its throughput is increased by 50%, and the video noise reduction capability is optimized by 48%.
At the same time, the Kirin 9000E was launched together with the Kirin 9000, which is also a powerful 5G SoC. The Kirin 9000E also uses a 5nm process. In addition to its leadership in CPU, GPU, and NPU, the chip also integrates Huawei’s communication chip and ISP.
For Huawei and Huawei users, the Kirin 9000 is of great significance and limited in number. Before the U.S. ban took effect on September 15 this year, Huawei did its best to rush to increase its chip inventory. According to existing analysts and media reports, the stocking of Kirin 9000 chips is roughly around 10 million, which may last for about half a year.
However, according to a set of data shared by Yu Chengdong before, the previous generation of Huawei Mate 30 was launched 60 days ago, and the global shipment volume reached 7 million units. Now that Huawei’s popularity is constantly improving, and if 10 million pieces are to be supported for half a year, it seems that Lei Jun’s hunger marketing method has to be adopted.
Now the birth of Kirin 9000 is only 11 years after the first mobile phone chip of Huawei HiSilicon, K3V1. According to statistics, from its establishment in 2004 to the break-even period in 2014, HiSilicon spent a total of more than 160 billion yuan on Huawei. For the Kirin 980 chip alone, HiSilicon’s research and development costs were as high as 2 billion yuan. . If the Kirin 9000 will be out of print as Yu Chengdong said before, it will be a huge number and a protracted battle in terms of lower-level technology and talent investment in the future.
conference other
In addition to the Kirin 9000, which makes people feel different, the launch of Huawei’s Mate 40 series is the same as usual, showing Huawei’s all-round upgrades in smartphones. The following will list other highlights of the conference:
Appearance: Both the Mate 40 and Mate 40 Pro are available in two materials, including a plain leather material and five colors, bright black, glaze white and secret silver. The plain leather is available in yellow and green. The Mate 40 Pro+ is available in Ceramic White and Ceramic Black.
Screen: The Mate 40 is a 6.5-inch OLED screen, and the Mate 40 Pro is equipped with a 6.76-inch screen, both with a 90Hz refresh rate. The 88-degree super-curved ring screen is equipped with in-screen fingerprint technology.
In terms of charging: Huawei has increased the wired charging power to 66W. The Mate 40 Pro also supports 50W wireless charging. And supports charging under ultra-low temperature and cold conditions.
In terms of shooting: Huawei Mate 40 and Mate40 Pro are equipped with four rear cameras; while Huawei Mate40 Pro+ is equipped with a rear five-camera configuration, which adds an 8-megapixel 10x optical zoom periscope lens.
In terms of price: Huawei Mate40, 8+128, 899 euros, about 7100 yuan; Huawei Mate40 Pro, 8+256, 1199 euros, about 9470 yuan; Huawei Mate40 Pro+, 12+256, 1399 euros, about 11050 yuan; Huawei Mate40 RS , 12+512, 2295 euros, about 18130 yuan.
write at the end
Looking back at Huawei’s core-making history, Huawei successfully made its first chip, an ASIC chip used to reduce costs on C&C08 switches, at the end of 1993. In 1994, more than 30 chips had been successfully designed, and the most complex chip at that time could accommodate more than 10 million transistors.
From the early days when there were only a few dozen people in the team, Huawei began to specialize in chip technology and made breakthroughs in design step by step. In books about Huawei’s history, it is mentioned that core making is the core step to break through foreign monopoly. But now that we have a deeper understanding of the word “core”, more deadly technologies such as materials, equipment, and design tools have been strangling our throats, which makes a country proud of the “bottom” of the bottom core of the world. Where exactly?
In 2011, HiSilicon’s sales reached 6.67 billion yuan, far higher than the second place Spreadtrum’s 4.288 billion yuan, making it the number one player in Chinese chip companies. A few months ago, HiSilicon was among the top 10 semiconductor suppliers by global sales in the first quarter released by IC Insights. The way Huawei works miracles is to fall and get up again. If there is really a kind of “heroism” in the Chinese chip circle in the future, it will be the birth of the Kirin 10000 and the reappearance of HiSilicon on this top ten list.
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