Huawei’s Newest Mate 70 Series Are Equipped With The Company’s Latest Kirin 9020 Chipset With A 12-Core Hyperthreaded CPU Configuration, Upgraded GPU & More

The Mate 70 series is now Huawei’s latest flagship smartphone offering, and just like how the company surprised the competition with last year’s Mate 60 lineup by introducing the Kirin 9000S, the former Chinese giant has repeated history by adding the new Kirin 9020 in the latest models. While the silicon’s lithography was not detailed, we learned about its specifications, with its CPU cluster comprising of a 12-core configuration, along with a new graphics processor, and more. Here is everything you wanted to know.

Kirin 9020 actually has an 8-core CPU cluster; latest leak shows a 12-core configuration due to hyperthreading support

The image shared by @faridofanani96 on X reveals the Kirin 9020’s specifications, with the most obvious information left out being its lithography. However, a previous leak mentioned that the chipset would be mass produced on the newer 6nm process, suggesting that SMIC and Huawei had worked out a way to get past the 7nm barrier. Coming to the configuration, the post below reveals that, like the Kirin 9010, the Kirin 9020 supports hyperthreading, which is why we see a 12-core CPU cluster instead of an 8-core one. Regardless, we will only provide details on what we can see in the image to avoid confusion.

The first two cores are clocked in at 2.50GHz, with four of them operating at 1.60GHz and the remaining running up to 2.15GHz. Huawei has previously stuck with its custom CPU designs, but the details in the image do not mention if the company has maintained the earlier approach or has chosen to use ARM’s designs. As for the GPU, the Kirin 9020 uses the new Maleoon 920, which can run up to 840MHz, which is a sigh of relief, considering the previous leak mentioned that the older Maleeon 910 would be a part of the SoC.

Kirin 9020

Kirin 9000s:
1*Taishan-V120 @ 2.62 Ghz
3*Taishan-V120 @ 2.15 Ghz
4*Cortex-A510 @ 1.53 Ghz
Kirin 9010:
1* @ 2.30 Ghz
3* @ 2.18 Ghz
4* @ 1.55 Ghz
Kirin 9020:
1* @ 2.50 Ghz
3* @ 2.15 Ghz
4* @ 1.60 Ghz
Both support 12 threads pic.twitter.com/gFDzA1fR5R

— Mochamad Farido Fanani (@faridofanani96) November 26, 2024

As for how these specifications translate into real-world performance, we have yet to publish those metrics. Unfortunately, given that Huawei is barred from leveraging TSMC’s cutting-edge technology, it will rely on SMIC’s older lithography, meaning that the Kirin 9020 will not just be slower than the competition, it will likely consume more energy. Then again, as long as the new SoC is faster than the Kirin 9010, it signifies progress. For now, we recommend waiting for some benchmark results, which we will prepare shortly for our readers, so stay tuned.