Not to be outdone by rivals Qualcomm and MediaTek, who earlier unwrapped their own new SoCs, Huawei has introduced their much-anticipated high-end chipset, the Kirin 960.
Related: Qualcomm Debuts Three New Entry-Mid Tier CPUs: Snapdragon 427, 626, 653
Related: MediaTek Officially Launches Helio X30, P20, P25 Chipsets
The HiSilicon Kirin 960 is expected to be packed into Huawei’s upcoming Mate 9 premium phablet, which features high-end internals worthy enough to be a Galaxy Note 7 alternative.
Related: Press Renders of Huawei’s Mate 9 with Dual 20MP Cams: A Galaxy Note 7 Look-Alike
On the technical loadout, the Kirin 960 is composed of four high-performance ARM Cortex A73 cores clocked at 2.4GHz, and four Cortex A53 cores at the 1.8GHz mark. According to the company’s benchmarks, the Kirin 960 outshines Apple’s A10 Fusion chipset when it comes to multi-core performance.
The Kirin 960 also packs the new Mali-G71 MP8 GPU, which boasts a whopping “180% better performance” compared to the previous gen Mali processor. This is the same GPU currently speculated to be loaded into Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S8 flagship series next year.
Other notable features of the Kirin 960 include UFS 2.1 support, CDMA and 4CC support, Category 12/13 capabilities, and a new Image Signalling Processor for improved camera functions.
