Kirin x90: Huawei’s PC processor first appeared in public 41 comments
With US restrictions against Huawei, the company must not only rely on more and more of its own technology for smartphones, but also has a new strategy for notebooks in the future, as Intel is no longer allowed to supply processors. Own chips have long been speculated upon, now the Kirin X90 appears.
For Huawei’s own PC processor based on the ARM architecture, a debut in early 2025 has already been speculated upon, but there is still no significant information indicating that laptops such as the Matebook X Pro (review) could actually use their own processors anytime soon.
Kirin x90 likely SMIC 7nm
Now, a Kirin X90 processor in the Information Security Evaluation Center in China has appeared for the first time. However, the listing doesn’t reveal much about the chip itself. It is expected that the X90 will be manufactured using the 7nm process. Due to the lack of other options in this area, Huawei currently cannot rely on competitive manufacturing technologies due to US sanctions against many Chinese companies. With the performance of a current Apple M4 SOC or Qualcomm‘s Snapdragon X, it won’t be able to keep up with the Kirin X90.
Performance like the M2 and the i7-13700H?
Early reports, however, point to the processor also being in the Apple M2 region. With a power consumption of 30 watts, the X90 reportedly achieved a multi-core performance of 11,640 points in Geekbench 6, which would be comparable to the Apple M2’s average of 10,064 points, or the Intel Core i7-13700’s average of 12,203 points. No more smartphone and tablet noise
Technically, the processor is intended to use Huawei’s Taishan-V130 architecture, with eight CPU cores clocked at 2.5 GHz. Compared to smartphones and tablets, this would primarily mean an increased number of cores. The Maleoon 920, already known from these devices, is also expected to be used in the GPU, but should offer 10 cores.
GDR5 and USB4
The processor is expected to support up to 32 GB of LPDDR5-6400 on a 128-bit bus with 100 GB/s. It is also expected to support three USB 4 connections.
Topics: Huawei Processes Source: Huaweicentral
Marc deciphers processors by testing their performance for gaming, content creation, and artificial intelligence.
