| Huawei Launches Kirin 990 5G Supporting 5G NSA, SA
Equipped with a DaVinci architecture-based dual-core NPU
Huawei P30 Pro, FreeBuds 3 Earphones Also Unveiled

As the U.S.-China trade dispute intensifies, Huawei is accelerating the strengthening of its own competitiveness in the 5G sector.


On the 6th, Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, delivered a keynote speech at IFA 2019 under the theme "Rethink Evolution." At the same time, he unveiled the "Kirin 990 Series," a flagship chipset consisting of the "Kirin 990" and "Kirin 990 5G."

Huawei plans to launch the Huawei Mate series equipped with the new Kirin 990 series in September.

CEO Richard Yu said, “The Kirin 990 5G has made improvements in performance, power efficiency, AI computing, and ISP to enhance the 5G experience for 5G smartphone users.” The Kirin 990, unveiled alongside the Kirin 990 5G, is also designed to provide a better LTE experience for LTE smartphone users.

The Kirin 990 5G was manufactured using a 7nm EUV manufacturing process.

It integrates a 5G modem to reduce size and power consumption, and supports 5G NSA (Non-Standalone) and SA (Standalone). While supporting the entire frequency band for TDD (Frequency Division Duplex) and FDD (Time Division Duplex), it provides downlink speeds of up to 2.3 Gbit/s and uplink speeds of up to 1.25 Gbit/s.

It is also equipped with a dual-core NPU based on the Da Vinci architecture, consisting of a large NPU core and a small NPU core. The large core is responsible for high performance and power efficiency in complex computing scenarios, while the small core powers ultra-low power consumption applications.

The Kirin 990 series features a three-stage power efficiency structure. It consists of two extra-large cores, two large cores, and four small cores, featuring a dominant frequency of up to 2.86 GHz.

In addition, it supports intelligent flow distribution that can save bandwidth and reduce power consumption by utilizing the 16-core Mali-G76 GPU and a new system-level Smart Cache. It also provides a faster gaming experience with Kirin Gaming+ 2.0 support.

The Kirin 990 5G features ISP 5.0, which supports hardware noise reduction, block matching, and 3D filtering (BM3D) for capturing clear images in low-light environments. Dual-domain video NR was also utilized for more accurate video noise processing. Real-time video post-processing and rendering use AI segmentation to adjust image colors frame by frame, enabling the production of high-quality video.

CEO Richard Yu stated, “Huawei’s Kirin 990 is 36% smaller than Samsung’s Exynos and 26% smaller than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon,” adding, “Although Samsung announced the Exynos 980 with an integrated 5G modem, the commercialization of the Kirin 990 will be faster.”

Meanwhile, Richard Yu unveiled the flagship wireless earphones, the Huawei FreeBuds 3, along with the new design of Huawei's flagship smartphone, the Huawei P30 Pro. Huawei FreeBuds 3 is powered by a self-developed Kirin AI chip.