It’s extremely impressive. A domestic chip on a 7nm process. That’s equivalent to Android flagships of three years ago with the Snapdragon 865, in terms of the manufacturing process. To only be three years behind, after all the sanctions and doing everything yourself, it’s incredible.
The Kirin 9000S is only 2% larger than the original 9000, which was made using TSMC 5nm. It performs far better than any 7nm chip.
CPU Performance almost matches the 4nm Exynos 2200, which because the 2300 was a no show is the best chip Samsung has.
GPU Performance although not a match for the original 9000 still exceeds the 5nm Snapdragon 888.
Geek Bench 5 Multi/Single core Scores
Wow that is extremely impressive on the CPU side in terms of raw performance. I guess having their own OS in harmony OS also helps with optimisation. Over 1000 on the single core side, right between the 865 and 888. Energy efficiency still can’t match the 865 on the old TSMC process, but it’s better than the 888 and 8 gen 1 on Samsungs process. The 8+ gen 1 and 8 gen 2 on the new TSMC process absolutely destroy it in energy efficiency though.
As for the GPU, raw numbers aren’t the most important, many ARM GPUs, especially those from Mali, perform poorly in certain situations outside of benchmarks due to poor drivers. It’s why people always recommend Adreno GPUs for game emulsion on Android. So it really depends on how Huawei has integrated it on that side. All in all, it’s still very impressive.
I don’t think the CPU performance is down to optimization. The 4 custom Taishan performance cores having hyper threading is probably why. The Kirin 9000S has 8 cores / 12 threads, which is why the multi-core score is so high.
The GPU drivers definitely aren’t ready yet; it can’t render Genshin Impact correctly. It’s not an ARM Mali reference design; it’s Huawei own Maleoon 910. The only things from ARM are the Cortex-A510 efficiency cores, and the instruction set.
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It doesn’t help that Qualcomm’s 888, and 8 Gen 1 were a disappointment. Even more so since they were the debut of ARM’s Cortex-X series of performance cores. Those were supposed to be ARM’s attempt at matching Apple’s custom cores. Thermal throttling issues meant that they weren’t even real upgrades from the 865 in terms of sustained performance.
The original Kirin 9000 was from 2020. Hard to improve performance, if the US government is doing everything to hinder your ability to make chips in the first place. Huawei matching the original TSMC 5nm EUV chip with just SMIC 7nm DUV is a miracle.
“Huawei must go”
I had no idea and am delighted to learn that they’d rolled their own OS to replace Android.
It seems like it can run Android apps through a compatibility layer as well.
It looks like they’re hoping to end that though: https://www.huaweicentral.com/harmonyos-next-is-a-pure-harmonyos-without-android-apps-and-future-of-huawei-ecosystem/
Not only is it 5g but it’s also got satellite calling capability using Chinese satellites. On top of that, it’s a flagship phone being sold at a comparable price to a basic satellite phone.
At this point Huawei is just dabbing in the US.
Countries are learning that US sanctions only hold so much power now. And they can circumvent them with without much punishment. It’s incredible to see. Hopefully heavily sanctioned countries will start collaborating a continue to grow the new global economy independently of the west.
I expect that’s what we’re going to see with BRICS shortly. One of the rules of BRICS is that members can’t sanction one another. So, the more countries join the more become immune from western sanctions. BRICS is already a bigger economy than G7 as well, so if you have to choose economic blocs, it’s the winning choice.
Great things are happening in the world, I’m just disappointed I only get to cheer from the sidelines.