More details are leaked about the chip powering the new Huawei Pura X foldable
Last week we told you that Huawei had introduced its innovative side-opening Pura X foldable which is equipped with a display that uses a unique aspect ratio of 16:10. When Huawei unveiled the phone, it didn't mention the chipset powering the phone which is a shrewd move by the manufacturer because Huawei and the foundry building its chips, SMIC, remain a few generations behind its rivals. The inability of either firm to get its hand on the lithography machine needed to build chips under 7nm is a problem...for now.
As we told you a week ago, Huawei is testing the use of laser-induced discharge plasma (LDP) technology as a substitute for the Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography machines needed to build today's advanced chipsets. Reports out of Dongguan where Huawei is reportedly testing this technology say that the company has been able to duplicate the 13.5nm wavelength needed to mark up silicon wafers with circuitry patterns used to build today's advanced 3nm and 2nm silicon. For now, Huawei is stuck on SMIC's 7nm (N+2) node.
As suspected, it turns out that the Pura X foldable is powered by the Huawei-designed Kirin 9020 application processor. This was discovered after the launch when some media was allowed to partake in a hands-on experience with the device. The SoC debuted last November powering the new Mate 70 flagship series. It features an octa-core CPU made up of one Taishan Big core running at a clock speed of 2.5GHz, three 2.15 GHz Taishan Mid CPU cores, and four 1.53 GHz Cortex-A510 cores. The latter four efficiency CPU cores are from Arm.
I know exactly what you're thinking. How could the heavily sanctioned Huawei get access to one of Arm's CPU cores? After all, the U.K. headquartered Arm has to follow U.S. export controls when it comes to some of its technology. Well, as it turns out, Arm was working on the older Cortex-A510 efficiency core before Huawei was added to the U.S. Entity List in 2020. The big and mid-core CPUs are from Huawei's HiSilicon semiconductor unit. These cores were developed in-house by Huawei under its Taishan brand and are based on Arm's architecture.
The GPU being used is Huawei's in-house designed Maleoon 920. Early reports say that the CPU challenges the performance of Qualcomm's flagship chips although the GPU is similar to a mid-range GPU.
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