Huawei's HiSilicon Kirin along with Snapdragon, Mediatek and Exynos are the main contenders in the Mobile SOC's. Huawei along with Exynos which are only focussed on in-house SOC's are quite successful and have some decent market share thanks to their respective midrangers and flagships. Huawei has been making some great looking as well as performing devices and all of them house the Kirin SOC's.
HiSilicon is a different entity fully owned by Huawei and takes care of all the processing needs i.e SOC. They have issued licensing rights from ARM and manufacture the chips.
Below is a small overview of the major Kirin SOC's used :
1. Kirin 960:
The Kirin 960 (based on 16nm process) is the flagship SOC from HiSilicon and is used in Huawei's P10/P10 plus. These SOC's are 8 core and have 4 Cortex A73 cores clocked at 2.4gHz and rest 4 Cortex A53 clocked at 1.8gHz based on big.LITTLE architecture.
It comes with Mali G71-MP8 GPU clocked at 1037Mhz and 272 GFlops. This GPU is the most powerful GPU from ARM which both Mediatek and HiSilicon can use under licensing terms.
It supports LPDDR4 dual channel memory with frequency of 1866Mhz and LTE category of CAT 12/13 with peak upload and download speeds of 600Mbps and 150Mbps. It also comes with UFS 2.1 storage support and supports regular WiFi standards of 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac and dual band.
2. Kirin 955:
The Kirin 955 SOC (16nm process) comes with 8 cores with 4 Cortex A72 cores clocked at 2.5gHz and 4 Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.8gHz. It is also based on big.LITTLE architecture.
It comes with Mali T880-MP4 GPU clocked at 900Mhz and 122.4 GFlops. The SOC supports dual channel memory of LPDDR3 at 933Mhz or LPDDR4 at 1333Mhz.
The LTE category with the SOC is CAT 6 capable of 300Mbps download and 50Mbps upload peak speeds. It comes with eMMC 5.0 storage support and support for regular WiFi standards i.e 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac with dual bands.
The Huawei P9 made use of Kirin 955 SOC.
3. Kirin 950:
The Kirin 950 is exactly similar to the Kirin 955 with the only difference in clock speeds. The 4 Cortex A72 cores are clocked at 2.3gHz and the remaining 4 Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.8gHz.
The GPU is the Mali T880-MP4 clocked at 900Mhz.
The Huawei mate 8 made use of the Kirin 950 SOC.
4. Kirin 655:
The 600 series of HiSilicon is similar to the Qualcomm's 600 series of mid-range SOC's. However, they may not be as powerful as the Snapdragon 660 or even the 653 yet, they perform quite well and at par with Snapdragon 625 only lagging in terms of GPU.
The Kirin 655 comes with 8 cores in clusters of 2. The 4 Cortex A53 cores are clocked at 2.1gHz and remaining 4 Cortex A53 at 1.7gHz. It is also based on the 16nm process. The GPU is Mali T830-MP2 with frequency of 900Mhz and 40.8GFlops. It is also based on 16nm process.
It supports LPDDR3 dual channel memory with frequency of 933Mhz. The maximum screen resolution supported is 1080p and the SOC comes with LTE CAT6 wireless network.
This SOC is used in the most popular Huawei Honor 6X along with Honor 8 lite.
Its direct competitor i.e Snapdragon 625 has better GPU i.e Adreno 506 which has 130 GFlops as against 40.8 in 655 thus making gaming and heavy graphics related tasks work better with devices running Snapdragon 625. However, the day to day usage with casual gaming will never be an issue with devices running Kirin 655.
5. Kirin 650:
The Kirin 655 was an updated version of Kirin 650. The Kirin 650 was announced few months before the 655 in 2016.
It comes with 8 cores with 4 Cortex A53 cores clocked at 2.0gHz and remaining 4 Cortex A53 cores at 1.7gHz. The GPU is Mali T830-MP2 which has a frequency of 900Mhz and 40.8 GFlops.
It supports dual channel memory of LPDDR3 with frequency of 933Mhz. The maximum screen resolution supported is 1080p and wireless network LTE category of CAT6.
6. Kirin 658/659:
The Kirin 658 and 659 are exactly similar to the 655 and 650, the only difference lies in the clock speed of the higher clocked cores. The Kirin 658 comes with 4 Cortex A53 cores clocked at 2.35gHz with remaining 4 Cortex A53 at 1.7gHz.
Similarly the Kirin 659 comes with 4 Cortex A53 cores clocked at 2.36gHz with remaining 4 Cortex A53 at 1.7gHz.
The GPU, memory and other specs remain the same as the 655/650.
The Kirin 658 and 659 were launched in the first and second quarter of 2017 which came as a minor update to the Kirin 655.
 |
| HiSilicon manufacturing Kirin SOC's |
HiSilicon is a different entity fully owned by Huawei and takes care of all the processing needs i.e SOC. They have issued licensing rights from ARM and manufacture the chips.
Below is a small overview of the major Kirin SOC's used :
1. Kirin 960:
The Kirin 960 (based on 16nm process) is the flagship SOC from HiSilicon and is used in Huawei's P10/P10 plus. These SOC's are 8 core and have 4 Cortex A73 cores clocked at 2.4gHz and rest 4 Cortex A53 clocked at 1.8gHz based on big.LITTLE architecture.
It comes with Mali G71-MP8 GPU clocked at 1037Mhz and 272 GFlops. This GPU is the most powerful GPU from ARM which both Mediatek and HiSilicon can use under licensing terms.
It supports LPDDR4 dual channel memory with frequency of 1866Mhz and LTE category of CAT 12/13 with peak upload and download speeds of 600Mbps and 150Mbps. It also comes with UFS 2.1 storage support and supports regular WiFi standards of 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac and dual band.
2. Kirin 955:
The Kirin 955 SOC (16nm process) comes with 8 cores with 4 Cortex A72 cores clocked at 2.5gHz and 4 Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.8gHz. It is also based on big.LITTLE architecture.
It comes with Mali T880-MP4 GPU clocked at 900Mhz and 122.4 GFlops. The SOC supports dual channel memory of LPDDR3 at 933Mhz or LPDDR4 at 1333Mhz.
The LTE category with the SOC is CAT 6 capable of 300Mbps download and 50Mbps upload peak speeds. It comes with eMMC 5.0 storage support and support for regular WiFi standards i.e 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac with dual bands.
The Huawei P9 made use of Kirin 955 SOC.
3. Kirin 950:
The Kirin 950 is exactly similar to the Kirin 955 with the only difference in clock speeds. The 4 Cortex A72 cores are clocked at 2.3gHz and the remaining 4 Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.8gHz.
The GPU is the Mali T880-MP4 clocked at 900Mhz.
The Huawei mate 8 made use of the Kirin 950 SOC.
4. Kirin 655:
The 600 series of HiSilicon is similar to the Qualcomm's 600 series of mid-range SOC's. However, they may not be as powerful as the Snapdragon 660 or even the 653 yet, they perform quite well and at par with Snapdragon 625 only lagging in terms of GPU.
The Kirin 655 comes with 8 cores in clusters of 2. The 4 Cortex A53 cores are clocked at 2.1gHz and remaining 4 Cortex A53 at 1.7gHz. It is also based on the 16nm process. The GPU is Mali T830-MP2 with frequency of 900Mhz and 40.8GFlops. It is also based on 16nm process.
It supports LPDDR3 dual channel memory with frequency of 933Mhz. The maximum screen resolution supported is 1080p and the SOC comes with LTE CAT6 wireless network.
This SOC is used in the most popular Huawei Honor 6X along with Honor 8 lite.
Its direct competitor i.e Snapdragon 625 has better GPU i.e Adreno 506 which has 130 GFlops as against 40.8 in 655 thus making gaming and heavy graphics related tasks work better with devices running Snapdragon 625. However, the day to day usage with casual gaming will never be an issue with devices running Kirin 655.
5. Kirin 650:
The Kirin 655 was an updated version of Kirin 650. The Kirin 650 was announced few months before the 655 in 2016.
It comes with 8 cores with 4 Cortex A53 cores clocked at 2.0gHz and remaining 4 Cortex A53 cores at 1.7gHz. The GPU is Mali T830-MP2 which has a frequency of 900Mhz and 40.8 GFlops.
It supports dual channel memory of LPDDR3 with frequency of 933Mhz. The maximum screen resolution supported is 1080p and wireless network LTE category of CAT6.
6. Kirin 658/659:
The Kirin 658 and 659 are exactly similar to the 655 and 650, the only difference lies in the clock speed of the higher clocked cores. The Kirin 658 comes with 4 Cortex A53 cores clocked at 2.35gHz with remaining 4 Cortex A53 at 1.7gHz.
Similarly the Kirin 659 comes with 4 Cortex A53 cores clocked at 2.36gHz with remaining 4 Cortex A53 at 1.7gHz.
The GPU, memory and other specs remain the same as the 655/650.
The Kirin 658 and 659 were launched in the first and second quarter of 2017 which came as a minor update to the Kirin 655.