Kirin 990 confirmed to sport built-in 5G modem, will be fabbed on TSMC's 7nm FinFET Plus EUV process

While it is common knowledge that Huawei is planning to launch the flagship Kirin 990 SoC at IFA 2019 on September 6, it was not clear whether the SoC would implement an on-die 5G modem or rely on an external solution like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855/855 Plus. Now, Huawei has a penchant for trying to be the first in everything it does and looks like it will be no different this time.

A user by the name Nicolas La Rocco (@roccetry) has posted some pictures on Twitter of the Kirin 990 announcement banner from the IFA 2019 venue. The banner clearly indicates that a 5G modem will be an integral part of Kirin 990 and that the SoC is fabbed on TSMC's improved 7nm Plus EUV lithography process — another first in Huawei's list.

Details about the Kirin 990 are still unknown, but we do know that this will be the first SoC to sport the ARM Cortex-A77 cores and the Mali-G77 GPU. Unconfirmed reports say that the Kirin 990 could boast up to 50% improved power efficiency (thanks to the new GPU) and will also be the first to be able to record native 4K 60 fps video. 

At the moment, we aren't quite sure if the integrated 5G modem would be the Balong 5000 or something else. Teardowns of the Huawei Mate 20 X 5G revealed a fairly large Balong 5000 modem so we speculate the Kirin 990 to integrate something smaller. The Kirin 990 is expected to power upcoming phones such as the Mate X foldable phone and the Mate 30 series. We will be knowing more details in just a couple of days, so stay tuned.