Huawei Kirin 960 chipset now official

Just as expected, Huawei has officiall unveiled its latest SoC this morning. According to multiple rumors, the new HiSilicon Kirin 960 chip will power the upcoming Huawei Mate 9 phablet. This chipset uses eight cores, including the brand-new Cortex-A73, next to ARM Mali-G71 MP8 graphics accelerator.

Huawei claims the Kirin 960 is the first chip to use the quad-core ARM Cortex-A73 architecture. They paired the four Cortex-A73 chips with for Cortex-A53 ones that are used when lower amounts of processing power are required, thus conserving energy. The Kirin 960 also integrates the ARM Mali-G71 MP8 GPU, the same that Samsung is expected to use inside the next-gen Galaxy S8 flagship.

When compared to the Kirin 950, the new chip offers CPU improvements of 15 percent, while the graphics performance is now 180 percent higher, but the GPU is also 20 percent more efficient than its predecessor. The new SoC also features support for LPDDR4 memory, UFS 2.1 storage, LTE Cat. 12/Cat. 13 connectivity, but it can also handle CDMA to be used in markets where this aging standard is still popular.

Huawei Mate 9 is expected to launch in early November as the first handset powered by the HiSilicon Kirin 960 chip.