Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5G vs HiSilicon Kirin 9000

Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5G

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5G Mobile Platform is a high-end SoC for smartphones that was introduced in late 2020 and manufactured in 5 nm at Samsung. Integrates one “Prime Core” based on a ARM Cortex-X1 architecture clocked at up to 2.84 GHz. Three more performance cores are based on the A78 but clock up to 2.42 GHz. Furthermore, four energy saving cores are integrated that are based on the ARM Cortex-A55 architecture and clock at up to 1.8 GHz. In addition to the processor cores, the SoC integrates a WiFi 6e modem, a Hexagon 780 DSP (up to 26 TOPS of AI performance) and a Spectra 580 ISP. The integrated memory controller now supports faster LPDDR5 memory with up to 3,200 MHz. 5G is now included in the chip with the Snapdragon X60 modem.

The performance of the processor cores should be around 15% better than the old Snapdragon 865+. The integrated Adreon 660 GPU should make a bigger jump by 35% (most likely compared to the SD 865).

HiSilicon Kirin 9000

The HiSilicon Kirin 9000 is an ARM based high-end octa-core SoC for smartphones and tablet, which was introduced with the Huawei P40 Pro. It integrates eight CPU cores in three clusters. A single high performance ARM Cortex-A77 cores with up to 3.13 GHz for fast single core performance. Three more performance cores (same Cortex-A77 architecture) with up to 2.54 GHz and four efficiency cores based on the ARM Cortex-A55 architecture with up to 2.05 GHz. All 8 cores can be used at once (big.LITTLE).

The integrated graphics card is using the Mali-G78 architecture and features all 24 cores (G78MP24).

For AI acceleration (NPU), the Kirin 9000 integrates the Da Vinci Architecture 2.0 (2 * Ascend Lite and 1 * Ascend Tiny). Huawei specifies 8 MB of system cache (most likely shared for CPU, GPU and AI) and can access LPDDR4X and LPDDR5 main memory. The integrated 5G modem supports SA&NSA, Sub-6G and mmWave. WiFi 6 including VHT160 and Bluetooth 5.2 are also integrated in the chip.

The CPU performance is in the top tier of mobile SoCs of 2020 and slightly above the Snapdragon 865+ and on a level with the older Apple A13 Bionic SoC.

The Kirin 9000 is produced at TSMC in the modern 5nm process.