Recently, according to foreign media reports, Huawei will launch the Kirin 980 processor in the second quarter of 2018. This series of mobile phones will be equipped with a 7nm processor. Last year, Huawei released the Unicorn 970, which once surprised the market. After all, this is the world’s first mobile-side artificial intelligence chip. Even the Qualcomm 835 that was released by Qualcomm had insufficient confidence. It has been applied to Mate 10 series, Glory V10, P20 series.

It is understood that, compared to the Kirin 970, this processor will configure the second generation of artificial intelligence chip NPU, on the basis of the previous generation, to support more scenarios, the performance of the NPU more than doubled (FP16 performance 4 TFLOP above) . In addition, Unicorn 980 will be equipped with A75 CPU architecture, and use more advanced TSMC 7nm process, which is Huawei’s 7nm process for the first time on the chip, the chip’s total number of core or upgrade to 10. Not only that, Unicorn 980 will also specialize in the issue of running low points for Kirin, which will significantly increase the performance of running points, and will even be more than 20% higher than Xiaolong 845 in overall performance. MV2201

In fact, Huawei and TSMC have been cooperating closely. They have been advancing since 28 nm, and have continued at 16 nm, 10 nm, and 7 nm nodes. Samsung and TSMC have been fiercely competing in new processes in recent years and have been fiercely fighting for orders. On the 7nm process, Samsung plans to introduce the world’s first EUV EUV lithography, which was originally hoped for. However, new technologies need to spend more time on research, development, calibration and equipment, and the progress is not smooth. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. first built a 7-nm process based on existing technologies, and will join EUV next year and upgrade to 7nm+. Only 5nm of 2020 will be launched directly into EUV. XC17V02PC20I

In addition, there is news that the Unicorn 980 processor will be launched on Huawei’s new flagship phone in the Mate series (maybe Mate20) released in the second half of the year. Of course, after the Mate series of new flagship mobile phones, next year’s Huawei P series next generation of new aircraft and glory high-end series of new aircraft, is also expected to use this chip, the specific performance, let us wait and see.