Huawei: ARM Cortex-A77 Cores Would Shorten Battery Life
Anonymous Coward writes:
https://www.phonearena.com/news/Why-the-Kirin-990-uses-the-Cortex-A76-and-not-the-A77_id118763
Just a couple of days ago, Huawei rolled out the Kirin 990 SoC. Designed by Huawei's HiSilicon unit and manufactured by TSMC using its 7nm+ EUV process, each chip contains 10.3 billion transistors and has an integrated 5G modem chip. The component will be powering the new Mate 30 line and the delay in releasing the foldable Mate X has allowed Huawei to stuff that device with its new chipset as well. Originally, the Kirin 980 SoC was designed into the niche device.
The Kirin 990 has eight CPU cores; four are powerful Cortex-A76 cores (with two running at a clock speed of 2.86GHz and the other two at 2.34GHz). And there are four Cortex-A55 cores with a clock speed of 1.9GHz for general housekeeping. The one question that many are asking is why Huawei didn't include ARM's latest and greatest Cortex-A77 core inside the Kirin 990. And when that question was asked of Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's consumer group, he gave some interesting responses according to GizChina. And no, it has nothing to do with the U.S. supply chain ban.
The Huawei executive said that since the performance of the Kirin 990 is "beyond the user's needs," trading additional power in exchange for a shorter battery life is not worth it according to Yu. Even though ARM says that the Cortex-A77 provides a 20% boost in performance with no additional power consumption, Huawei's testing contradicts ARM's claims.
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