Huawei launches Kirin 710 for next-gen mid-range smartphones

Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon has officially unveiled its latest mid-range smartphone chip. The new Kirin 710 is an octo-core design based on ARM's microarchitecture. In this application, four higher power Cortex-A73 cores clocked at 2.2GHz are joined by four lower power Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.7GHz. The end result is a substantial performance boost over the Kirin 659, the chip that it has replaced in HiSilicon's lineup.

According to HiSilicon, the four high performance cores deliver 75 percent faster performance than the equivalent cores in the 659, while the lower power cores are 68 percent faster. It has been fabricated on TSMC's 12nm fabrication process, which while not cutting edge, is still a solid basis for a mid-range chip. Graphics performance is provided by an ARM Mali G6 GPU that should offer a big shot in the arm for gaming performance -- a boost of up to 130 percent can be expected.

The first phone to be powered by the Kirin is new Huawei Nova 3i, which is expected to ship on July 28.

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