HiSilicon Kirin 990 5G vs HiSilicon Kirin 820

HiSilicon Kirin 990 5G

The HiSilicon Kirin 990 5G is an ARM based high-end octa-core SoC for smartphones and tablets, which was introduced with the Huawei Mate 30 Pro in late 2019. It integrates eight CPU cores in three clusters. The performance cluster contains two Cortex-A76 cores with up to 2.86 GHz, the balanced cluster contains also two Cortex-A76 cores but with only up to 2.36 GHz and finally the power saving cluster contains four small ARM Cortex-A55 cores with up to 1.95 GHz. Furthermore, the SoC integrates a neural processor (2 + 1 cores) for AI tasks and a ARM Mali-G76 MP16 GPU clocked at up to 700 MHz. Compared to the 4G version, the 5G Kirin 990 integrates a Balong 5G modem and is slightly higher clocked (2 of the 3 clusters and the GPU).

The Kirin 990 5G is produced in the modern 7nm (7FF+ with EUV) process at TSMC, the 4G version is still produced in the slightly older 7nm process as the Kirin 980.

HiSilicon Kirin 820

The HiSilicon Kirin 820 is a ARM-based mid-range Octa-Core-SoC for Android based smartphones and tablets. It was announced mid 2020 and contains 8 processor cores. One fast ARM Cortex-A76 core with up to 2.36 GHz, three addition A76 cores at up to 2.22 (as the old Kirin 810) and four efficiency Cortex-A55 cores at up to 1.88 GHz. Furthermore, the SoC integrates a 5G modem and a fast mid-range ARM Mali-G57 MP6 graphics card. For AI acceleration, the Kirin 820 integrates a DaVinci NPU.

The performance of the CPU part in our tests was slightly higher than the old Kirin 810 (thanks to the fast performance core). Huawei advertises 27% performance advantage for the CPU. The NPU and GPU have bigger performance gains with 73% and 38% more power.

The chip should also integrate Bluetooth 5 and WiFi 6.

The SoC is manufactured in the modern 7nm process at TSMC and therefore should be very energy efficient.