1, Kirin 980
Huawei's highest-selling flagship in history is the P30 series equipped with the Kirin 980 - more than 20 million units in just seven months on the market! However, due to the impact of sanctions, the final sales volume was only 25 million units, unfortunately the target of 30 million units was not achieved.
As for the Mate 20 series, which was launched half a year earlier, the final sales volume was also fixed at 17 million units. However, if the sales of the two are added together, then it represents the old user group of this Kirin God U's flagship machine, up to 40 million +!
If you add all kinds of glory models and Nova models, the number of existing nail households should be in the tens of millions;Combined with Hongmeng4.0"Special care",Equipped with Kirin980This batch of Huawei mobile phones,It's still not a big problem to fight for three years in the future。
In terms of performance alone, the Kirin 980 is basically close to the level of the Snapdragon 778G - the CPU performance is slightly weaker but the GPU performance is comparable, as long as this performance level is not used to play Genshin Impact, daily game entertainment is no problem.
However, the real strength of the Kirin 980 is not in the pure performance level, but in Huawei's perfect integration of AI into the processor.
For example, Huawei's first magic overhaul of the public version of the CPU architecture was first applied to the Kirin 980 generation, and with the AI-powered Flex-Scheduling intelligent scheduling mechanism, the DSU-based multi-core scheduling system can run more perfectly.
The rise of the GPU part is the result of the combination of software and hardware, and the Mali-G76 generation is the pinnacle of the Bifrost architecture, and combined with Huawei's GPU Turbo technology trained through neural network models, it finally realizes the optimal allocation of resources across hardware.
To sum up, although various mobile phone manufacturers are now touting AI, the Kirin 970, which integrated NPU into the SoC for the first time, was released as early as 2017, and at that time it was very forward-looking to build a HiAI mobile computing platform that can connect with developers.
In the Kirin 980 generation, Huawei continues to dig deep into the potential of AI, thus completing the organic combination of software and hardware between the processor and the bottom layer of the system, and finally with the blessing of HarmonyOS 4.0, the strength of Kirin 980 has once again been deeply recognized by users!
This is also why, users who have never used Huawei mobile phones always like to use the "IQ tax" to describe Kirin processors: they only know the performance of Snapdragon and Dimensity, but they don't know anything about Huawei's ability to optimize the full stack of software and hardware and maintain ultra-long systems.
2, Kirin 810
Equipped with Huawei's first mid-range god U Kirin 810 machine, although they are all mid-range machines, it is precisely these mid-range machines that have the largest user group in China, so the Kirin 810 nail household group cannot be underestimated.
Among them, the Honor 9X series and the Honor Play4T Pro have achieved great success in sales, and Nova5z is also a popular model with a double harvest of sales and reputation, and now there are more nail households and the Honor 20S This mid-range god machine.
This mid-range god U, which debuted the Da Vinci NPU self-developed architecture, has a gap of about 50% in comprehensive performance compared with Kirin 980, so it is still in Hongmeng 3.0 in terms of latest system support.
3, Kirin 990 series
The Kirin 990 is actually the ultimate and improved version of the Kirin 980, which introduces a new 4MB of system cache based on the AI scheduling mechanism, in addition to the overall overclocking of the CPU architecture, while the GPU part is greatly expanded and the frequency is reduced.
In other words, with the same CPU architecture, GPU architecture, and process technology, Huawei has achieved the feat of improving the performance of the Kirin 990 and reducing power consumption through a series of architectural optimizations!
In addition, in the NPU part, the self-developed da Vinci architecture has been iterated to the industry's first "large core + small core" innovative structure, which perfectly takes into account the "low power consumption + high performance" AI computing scenario, and further strengthens the HiAI2.0 intelligent computing platform launched on the Kirin 810.
Of course, the most well-known 5G baseband integration solution in this generation is the industry's first 5G baseband integration solution on the Kirin 990 5G, which is a milestone for the full popularization of 5G, and is more than half a year ahead of its competitors in terms of mass production time.
In addition, based on the 7nm+EUV process technology, as well as the higher frequency of medium and small cores, its energy efficiency and CPU multi-core performance are slightly better than those of the Kirin 990.
As for the most well-known nail household mobile phone equipped with the "Ice Kirin" series, it is undoubtedly the Mate30 series with sales of just 20 million, and the P40 series launched later only exceeded 10 million units due to the impact of in-depth sanctions.
It can be seen from this that the sanctions hit Huawei at that time - especially the impact of the lack of cores in the back is the most critical, after all, the previous P30 series set a sales record, but the sales of the P40 series fell off a cliff by 60%!
Even so, the Kirin 990 series still helped Huawei retain 30 million flagship users, and thanks to its excellent comprehensive strength, it has created a large number of nail households, and the push of Hongmeng 4.0 has further stabilized the "Ice Kirin" nail household group.
In addition, there are also nail household god machines such as the Honor 30 Pro series and V30 series, which are flying in sales and word of mouth, while the Honor Play4 Pro and Nova6 series have become the "timeless" god machines in their respective product lines, and the lineup is extremely strong.
4 / 5，麒麟 820 / 985
Kirin 820 is actually the performance enhancement 5G version of Kirin 810, for example, the CPU part has been changed from the previous generation of "dual large cores + six small cores" design to "single large core + three medium cores + four small cores" partial performance design, so its multi-core performance has been increased by about 20%.
As for the GPU, it iterated to the Mali-G57, which is also a six-core design, and slightly reduced the frequency, and finally achieved a 38% performance improvement. Finally, like the Kirin 990 5G, both have integrated 5G baseband.
In terms of nail toshen machines, although the number of Kirin 820 models is small due to special historical background, its shine is still dazzling, such as Honor 30s, Honor X10, Nova7 SE, etc. are all classic models with both sales and reputation.
The next Kirin 985 is the performance enhancement version of the Kirin 820, first of all, the large core and medium core of the CPU have been overclocked - but the performance increase is small at about 5%, and the GPU part is increased by 17% by adding two cores.
Looking at the performance part alone, the increase is not very large, but the Kirin 985 also has the same NPU architecture as the Kirin 990, that is, the design of "single large core + single small core", while the Kirin 820 only has one NPU large core.
In addition, those nail Hushen machines equipped with Kirin 985, such as the Nova7 series and the four models of the Nova8 series, as well as the Honor 30, the Sunset model before Honor became independent, can be upgraded to HarmonyOS 4.0, which is also a big invisible advantage.
6, Kirin 9000 series
This generation is based on the most advanced TSMC 5nm process at that time, continuing the Kirin 985's "single large core + three medium core + four small core" CPU design, and upgrading the large core and medium core to the A77 architecture, and the GPU is iterated to the latest Mali-G78 at that time and is fully matched.
In addition, based on the flagship-level positioning, under the condition that the CPU L3 cache is maintained at the Kirin 980/990 level of 4MB capacity, its system cache is directly piled to a terrifying 8MB capacity (shared by all functional modules of the SoC) - the Snapdragon 888 behind is only 3MB!
It can be seen that Huawei is in a desperate situation, in order to extend the life cycle of the Kirin 9000 series, it can be said that it is crazy to pile up materials regardless of the cost! Combined with Huawei's handy CPU architecture optimization capabilities, its CPU energy efficiency level has been ahead of the Android flagship for two years!
However, in terms of GPUs, the Kirin 9000 series suffers from the same bottleneck as the Kirin 985 - the performance increase obtained by stacking cores is much lower than the theoretical value, which reduces the GPU's energy efficiency performance (only slightly stronger than the Snapdragon 888).
But this is all a desperate move in the face of sanctions, because the time is too tight to compromise on GPU large-scale optimization, and the CPU energy efficiency, which is the most important for daily use, is the focus of attention.
It is precisely because of the particularity of this generation of chips that most of the models finally implemented are concentrated in the generation of the Mate40 series, and have created the feat of selling more than 10 million units of a single Mate40 Pro!
End:
After the return of Kirin, the Mate60 series and Mate X5 equipped with Kirin 9000S have sold more than 10 million units!
Of course, Huawei has not stopped moving forward, for example, in August last year, it released HarmonyOS 4.0, which has greatly improved the experience, and has been popularized to the Kirin 980 model five years ago.
The HarmonyOS Galaxy version released in January this year has finally taken the step of building the HarmonyOS ecosystem! Although there are still heavyweight applications that have not been adapted, there is reason to believe that Huawei, which has been reborn in a desperate situation of sanctions, will find appropriate countermeasures!
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