Huawei Mate 70 may not use a 5nm chip after all

The Huawei Mate 70 series is coming, and it is widely expected to use a 5nm chip, but that may not happen. According to a new report, the Huawei Mate 70 series will use a 6nm processor instead.

The Huawei Mate 70 series may not use a 5nm chip, a 6nm processor could be used instead

That chip’s name is the Kirin 9100, and its codename is HiSilicon Baltimore. The information comes from @spektykles Telegram account, which also revealed the details of that processor.

The Kirin 9100 allegedly has a 1+3+4 CPU architecture. It has one Cortex-X1 prime core, which runs at 2.67GHz. There are also three Cortex-A78 cores which run at 2.32GHz. That leaves four Cortex-A55 cores which run at 2.02GHz. The Maleoon 910 GPU is also a part of the package.

That chip also allegedly uses Arm v8 and uproots on an SMIC N+3 node (6nm) tech. It is expected to be on the level of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in terms of CPU performance, and the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 in terms of GPU performance.

Now, those are rather dated chips at the moment, but they still offer really good performance. Huawei’s upcoming chip will be a couple of generations behind, but that doesn’t mean it won’t perform well.

Improved power efficiency is expected

It’s also worth noting that this processor is expected to deliver considerably improved power efficiency… compared to previous Kirin chips that Huawei and SMIC have come up with.

Do take this information with a grain of salt, though. This is not our usual source of Huawei information, so it could be wrong. Several sources pointed to a 5nm processor, so there’s still a chance we’ll get that.

The Huawei Mate 70 series will launch this month, by the way. That much has been confirmed by the company’s Chairman, Yu Chengdong. We still don’t know the exact date, but November 19 is tipped.

Four models are expected to arrive, the Huawei Mate 70, Mate 70 Pro, Mate 70 Pro+, and Mate 70 Ultimate Design. All of them will ship with Huawei’s new HarmonyOS NEXT operating system, which is not based on Android. We’ll see what will happen with global models, but Huawei will likely stick with Android-based HarmonyOS.