Home Tech Chipsets HiSilicon Kirin 950 Review, Specifications & Phones

HiSilicon Kirin 950 Review, Specifications & Phones

HiSilicon Kirin 950 was announced as a high-end Kirin 950, and it’s a beast. This was when mobile chip developers were lining up their next generation hardware and Huawei’s HiSilicon has announced its new high-end Kirin 950, and it’s a beast.

On November 5, 2015, Huawei showcased its latest smartphone SoC – the Kirin950, during
a press briefing in Beijing. Let’s take a look at what the Kirin 955 preceded.

Process Technology (nm)

The chip moved down to TSMC’s 16nm FinFET manufacturing process, marking another industry first for the Kirin 950. This puts the chip ahead of Snapdragon 810 generation, which was produced at 20nm, and on par with Samsung’s 14nm process. It is also a notable jump from the older Kirin 930’s 28nm design.

HiSilicon Kirin 950 Processor

HiSilicon Kirin 950

Embedded in the Kirin 950 is an octa-core CPU with four ARM Cortex-A72 cores clocked up to 2.3GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores with clock rates up to 1.8GHz in a big.LITTLE arrangement. This makes HiSilicon the second only vendor behind MediaTek to ship a product using A72 cores, and the first to implement them on a current process node running close to its target frequency.

The Cortex-A72 found in the Kirin 950 records an 11% performance boost and 20% reduction in power consumption when compared with an A57.

HiSilicon Kirin 950 Graphics

When we talk of Graphics in the Kirin 950, the graphical rendering capacity of Kirin 950’s new GPU ARM Mali T880 is 100% higher than that of it’s predecessor, and its GFLOPS is also 100% higher than its predecessor.

Performance

Huawei has also done some major revision on task scheduling and additional performance. As many mobile tasks are high demanding in nature, the Kirin 950 employs Heuristic Scheduling Algorithms (HSA) to predict when to boost performance for these type of workloads without causing the chip to overheat. And as a result, HiSilicon boasts that the 950’s boost performance is up by 100% compared with its predecessor, while continuous performance is up by 56%.

Huawei also introduced its own image signal processing technology with this chip. The Kirin 950 supports 14-bit dual ISPs, allowing for a 960MPixel/s throughout, dual 13 megapixel sensors or a single 31 megapixel sensor. The integrated DSP also boasts of a fast facial recognition technology that can detect up to 35 faces in an image.

Connectivity

As 4G LTE is included so is support for VoLTE for enhanced call quality. VoLTE was expected to arrive at China Mobile by the end of 2015, so the Kirin 950 and other chips in the line-up were ready to take advantage. The new RF chip also supports more bands from 450MHz to 3.5G, which satisfies roaming demands.

Huawei has also implemented a new additional co-processor technology on the chip, which it calls the i5. The chip is based on ARM’s high performance Cortex-M7 microcontroller. This extra core can share resources with the main A72 and A53 CPU cores and is designed to quickly power up the main CPU cores when they are needed using an “always-sensing mode”, while also allowing a very low power sleep state.

Overall, HiSilicon estimates that idle power has been reduced by 90%, from 90mA to just 6.5mA. The i5 co-processor can also be used to provide real-time location services, by combining GPS, WiFi and sensor positioning.

Benchmarks (AnTuTu)

Over at AnTuTu, specifically on the version 6, the chip reaches a low of 86735, avg of 91724.3, median of 93767 and max points of 94671.

HiSilicon Kirin 950 Phones

• Huawei Mate 8
• Honor 8

HiSilicon Kirin 950 Full Specifications

Chipset Details

Series Kirin 950
Codenames Cortex A72, A53
Announced 2015
Released 2015
Number Of Cores 8-Cores
Clock Speed 2300MHz
Process Technology 16nm
CPU Octa-core 2.3GHz
Cores 8-Cores
Bit Architecture 64-bit
GPU (Graphics) ARM Mali-T880 MP4
GPU (Cores) 2-Cores
GPU (Frequency) 900MHz
Memory Speed 2666MHz
==> Disclaimer: Specifications, features shown for this chipset was inserted manually. We cannot guarantee that the info on this page is 100% correct. If you think that any information of this particular chipset is wrong or missing, please don’t hesitate to Contact Us.

Mobile Crypto Tech wants to hear from you, don’t forget to share and use the comment box below…

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here