At present, news about Huawei’s next-generation flagship processor Kirin 1020 is gradually increasing. However, the processor will not be released until next fall.
The news comes from Weibo. One of the bloggers’ channel simply said ‘5nm Baltimore, ready to verify!’ In the past, the internal codes of Hisilicon chips were usually named after foreign cities. Plus, there only two customers of TSMC’s 5nm process at present, Apple and Hisilicon. So there is every reason to think here is a hint that Kirin’s next-generation flagship processor is ready to enter the tape-out verification stage.
It is reported that the current processor chip tape-out is divided into pre-tape verification and post-tape verification. But in September some sources said that the 5nm Hisilicon processor has officially tapped out. So it should be done to prepare the development board to verify whether the function meets the design expectations after the tape is finished, and then enter the engineering machine test phase.
It is worth mentioning that there is news that the Kirin 1020 directly skips A77 to upgrade to the A78 framework. But it seems too early to discuss the framework. Perhaps, at least, until the next summer, there will be more accurate information.
According to the convention, Huawei’s new Kirin flagship processors will be launched every autumn. It should be no surprise to see the Huawei Mate 40 series debuting with this processor.
Regardless of the launch date, what we are most interested in is its increase of power, which according to the last rumors, would be 50% over that of the Kirin 990, a considerably large increase. To give you an idea, the increase in power of Snapdragon 865 compared to 855 is less than 25%.