Volume shipments of world's first 7nm mobile chipset to begin next quarter
A new report states that volume shipments of the world's first 7nm chipset, Huawei's Kirin 980, will start next quarter. The chips are expected to power the upcoming Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro. The SoCs will reportedly be produced by TSMC using the latter's FinFET process. Other chip makers are planning to start shipping their own 7nm chipsets during the three month period from October through the end of this year. One research firm sees such chips accounting for 18% of total mobile based Application Processors delivered during the quarter, exceeding shipments of 10nm AP chips for mobile devices during the same period.
The Kirin 980 will supposedly feature four Cortex-A77 cores for complex tasks (some sources are calling for the Cortex-A76) and four Cortex-A55 cores for light housekeeping. It includes the 24 core Mali-G72 GPU, and supports LPDDR4X DRAM memory. The Kirin 980 includes a second generation Neural Network Processing Unit (NPU) for AI. Since it is designed and manufactured using the 7nm process, the Kirin 980 will be more powerful and energy-efficient than previous Kirin chipsets.
An early listing of the Mate 20 revealed a list of specs that show the device with a 6.3-inch AMOLED display, 6GB/8GB of RAM and 128GB/256GB of native storage. A triple camera setup adorns the back, and a 20MP front-facing selfie snapper is included. The huge 4200mAh capacity battery keeps the lights on for a long time, and Android 9 Pie is pre-installed with EMUI 9 running on top. The phone could retail for $999.
The Kirin 980 will be unveiled at the IFA trade show, which runs from August 31st through September 5th.
source: Digitimes
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