Specs leak for the Huawei Mate 70 and the 6nm Kirin 9100 AP that will power it
Huawei's second and final flagship series of the year, the Mate 70, is due to be introduced as soon as this month. The big mystery is the composition of the Kirin 9100 application processor (AP) expected to power the line. Some reports from earlier this year claimed that Huawei and China's largest foundry SMIC have been able to manufacture 5nm chips without using an EUV lithography machine (which are not allowed to be shipped to China).
Will the Kirin 9100 processor be produced using a 5nm, 6nm, or 7nm process node?
U.S. lawmakers would go apeshit if Huawei and SMIC were able to build a new chip using a 5nm process node. After all, the point of the 2020 U.S. export rule change was to keep advanced 5G chipsets out of Huawei's hands. Thus, any foundry that uses American technology to build semiconductors is not allowed to ship those chips to Huawei.
Alleged specs for the Kirin 9100 AP are leaked. | Image credit-Tech Home
SMIC, which is the third largest foundry in the world after TSMC and Samsung Foundry, nearly helped cause congressional members to have a collective heart attack last year. That's because the foundry was able to provide 5G chips to Huawei and the latter was able to sell a flagship supporting 5G for the first time since 2020's Mate 40 line. Still, at 7nm, the Kirin 9000S was still two generations behind the 3nm A17 Pro that powered last year's iPhone 15 Pro Max. Even so, lawmakers were screaming for an investigation.
A tweet on "X" by a tech enthusiast named Tech Home says that the Kirin 9100 will be built on SMIC's 6nm node. The use of the 6nm node could be a marketing tactic or it could be a real improvement over the 7nm N+2 node used to manufacture the Kirin 9010 AP. The latter chip powered the Huawei Pura 70 Pro model earlier this year. There has been speculation that the Kirin 9100 could be built on an improved SMIC 7nm N+3 node.
Tech Home says that the Kirin 9100 will have eight CPU cores made up of:
- One Cortex-X1 Prime performance CPU core with a clock speed of up to 2.67GHz.
- Three Cortex-A78 performance-efficiency CPU cores with a clock speed of up to 2.32GHz.
- Four Cortex-A55 efficiency CPU cores with a clock speed of up to 2.02GHz.
You can tell from these clock speeds that if they are true, the Kirin 9100 AP is going to be slower than the silicon used on most rivals' flagship phones.
Specs for the basic Huawei Mate 70 model are leaked
The Kirin 9100 AP will have the same GPU used on the Kirin 9000S, the Maleoon 910 GPU. There still could be a difference; the GPU on the Kirin 9000S had four cores and there could be more on the Kirin 9100.
The Huawei Mate 70 will have a circular rear camera island. | Image credit-Tech Home
Keep this in mind. If the 6nm node is used to build the Kirin 9100 AP, it means that SMIC and Huawei were able to figure out a way to increase the transistor count of the new AP using older Deep Ultraviolet Lithography machines which SMIC was able to purchase well before the 2020 U.S. export rule changes went into effect. U.S. lawmakers might be pissed if that is true, but there is nothing they could have done to stop this.
As for the Mate 70 series itself, the same "X" subscriber tweeted what he says are specs for the basic Mate 70 model. He says that the phone will sport a 6.7-inch, 1.5K flat OLED display. On the back will be a triple-rear camera setup including a 50MP sensor backing the main camera with OIS, and a 12MP periscope camera with 5x optical zoom. The device will support wireless charging, feature a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, and will be dust and water-resistant.
As we said, the Mate 70 line will be Huawei's second flagship series of 2024. Typically, the beleaguered Chinese manufacturer releases a photography-centered flagship in the first quarter that received a name change to the Pura 70 line this year. Last year, it was known as the P60 line. The second flagship series is one that usually features several tech innovations and as already stated, it will be called the Mate 70 line in 2024.
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