It's hard to make a 7nm chip better than a 5nm one, but Huawei tried and almost succeeded

by alex

A comparison of the performance of the 7-nanometer SoC Kirin 9000S with the 5-nanometer Kirin 9000

has appeared

Kirin 9000S became Huawei's first proprietary SoC for the first time in a long time. According to Chinese media, this SoC is manufactured by SMIC using the 7 nm process technology and is a variant of the 5 nm Kirin 9000, which was produced for Huawei by TSMC.

In technical terms, the Kirin 9000 and Kirin 9000S are close, but there are still many differences. Thus, the Kirin 9000S CPU has one Taishan V120 core with a frequency of 2.62 GHz, three Taishan V120 cores with a frequency of 2.15 GHz and four Arm Cortex-A510 cores with a frequency of 1.53 GHz. In comparison, the Kirin 9000 has one Arm Cortex-A77 core at 3.13 GHz, three Arm Cortex-A77 cores at 2.54 GHz, and four Arm Cortex-A55 cores at 2.05 GHz. It can be seen that the frequencies of the Kirin 9000S are much lower, but – and this is very interesting – It wins in terms of CPU performance!

In AnTuTu 10, Kirin 9000S scored 897496 points – 3000 points more than the Kirin 9000. In Geekbench 6 the results are even better: 4% superiority over the Kirin 9000 in the single-threaded test and 17% superiority in the multi-threaded test.

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Трудно сделать 7-нанометровый чип лучше 5-нанометрового, но Huawei попробовала – и у неё почти получилось

Трудно сделать 7-нанометровый чип лучше 5-нанометрового, но Huawei попробовала – и у неё почти получилось

In general, as far as the CPU is concerned, everything is good, the problem with the Kirin 9000S is the GPU: its own Maleoon 910 GPU with a frequency of 750 MHz is much inferior to the Mali-G78 MP24 GPU with a frequency of 759 MHz in the Kirin 9000.

GPU performance difference in AnTuTu 10 – 36% in favor of Kirin 9000, in Geekbench 6 – all 80%. The gap between GPU Kirin 9000S and GPU Kirin 9000 in 3Dmark is smaller – only 17%, but the difference is also obvious.

Трудно сделать 7-нанометровый чип лучше 5-нанометрового, но Huawei попробовала – и у неё почти получилось

In general, if in terms of CPU the Kirin 9000S is slightly ahead of the Kirin 9000, then in terms of graphics it is inferior by about 30%, and in energy efficiency – 10%. But is this so much, given the difference in technical processes and the fact that Huawei is cut off from advanced equipment and advanced developments. Given the context, Huawei did very well. And it will be even better: according to rumors, the modified Kirin 9000S, which will debut in the top models of the nova 12 line, will also have built-in 5G support.

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