At IFA 2017, Huawei "unofficially" revealed its upcoming Kirin 970 chipset, something that has traditionally happened with so-called pomp at its official keynotes. This year, the upgraded CPU was shown behind closed doors and promises several improvements, in addition to a new Neural Processing Unit, which will be used for AI-related tasks.
We reported earlier of Microsoft Research attempting to push the limits of how small it could design these dedicated-AI chips, aiming to shrink them down to the size of a breadcrumb specifically for use in devices like the Raspberry Pi. However, it seems that Huawei has been one step ahead of the competition.
According to the documentation at the showcase, the Kirin 970 will feature the standard octa-core configuration, with four ARM Cortex A73 cores clocked at 2.40GHz, and four ARM Cortex A53 cores running at 1.80GHz. The most notable change, however, will be the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) which boasts a performance bump three-fold of what the Kirin 960"s GPU was capable of. The NPU will have 1.92 teraflops of FP16 computing performance. This will reportedly improve the speed at which the chip will power through advanced AI calculations.
The GPU will also receive a slight bump, retaining the twelve-core configuration of the previous generation, but opting for the latest ARM Mali G-72. Other features include support for HDR10, 4K 60fps decoding, and 4K 30fps encoding. For improved camera performance, the chipset will support Dual-ISP motion detection and low-light enhancement.
The chipset will most likely be officially announced at a later date, with the company"s upcoming Mate 10 smartphone possibly featuring this chip when it is revealed in October.
Source and image: AnandTech
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