Huawei has announced its newest Kirin chipset, due to make an appearance in the company’s as-yet-unannounced next flagship phone.
Revealing the Kirin 960 in Shanghai, the company today outlined how it intends to use the processor to improve audio, performance, camera technology and security.
The new octa-core chip makes use of four 2.4GHz ARM Cortex-A73 CPUs and four low-power 1.8GHz Cortex A53 cores, the new Mali-G71 MP8 graphics processor, and UFS 2.1 storage technology. Huawei claims the eight-core Mali GPU offers a 180% increase in graphics performance over its predecessor, the Mali-T880, and consumes 20% less power. It also supports the Vulkan graphics API, which Huawei says will give mobile gaming a shot in the arm.
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Name-dropping Pokémon Go, representatives from the company talked up the chipset’s ability to optimise power usage when playing energy-demanding augmented-reality games. The Kirin 960’s “smart” low-power plan can, Huawei says, reduce power consumption by up to 70% compared with previous Huawei chips.
The chip has a new ISP (image signal processor) that has been built to make the most of dual camera technology, supporting colour-to-monochrome “real-time fusion” processing, a technique aimed at helping a phone’s camera to capture more details in the lighter and darker areas of a photograph.
As for sound, the Kirin 960’s Hi6403 audio processor comes with a host of tricks and tweaks, from active noise-cancellation tech to cut background hubbub, to a low-power mode that lets users listen to music for longer.
Other features include beefed-up security, with features aimed at blocking pseudo base stations that may send the user fraudulent calls and junk messages. The Kirin 960’s payment technology has been approved by both the China Financial National Risking Authentication (CFNRA) and Union Pay.
The full specifications of the new chip are below, and we’ll have more to say about tech from Huawei in the coming weeks.
Kirin 960 Specifications
| CPU | 4 x 2.4GHz Cortex A73; 4 x 1.8GHz A53 + i6 + HiSEC V100 |
| GPU | GPU Mali G71 MP8, with Support for Vulkan 1 |
| Manufacturing process | TSMC 16 nm FinFET Plus |
| Storage support | UFS 2.1 |
| Communication specifications | Cat.12 downloads, Cat.13 uploads, peak download speed of 600 Mbits/sec, and peak upload speed of 150Mbits/sec |
| Sound | Audio 2 – includes HD Voice+, VoLTE and VoWiFi) |
| Mobile data bands | GSM/UMTS/CDMA/TDS-CDMA/TD-LTE/LTE FDD, 330 MHz to 3.8 GHz frequency bands, Mode/Frequency band, dual SIM |
| ISP | Color-monochrome dual camera technology, hybrid focusing, 4K video stabilisation |
| Audio | Hi6403 core, supporting active noise cancelling technology, reducing noise to -117 dBV, embedded DSP with support for 32-bit 192kHz and DSD lossless formats |
| Security | HiSEC V100 security core, supporting CRT-RSA, RSA, DES/3DES, AES encryption |
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