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Kirin 990 5G
General Info
Designer	HiSilicon, ARM Holdings
Manufacturer	TSMC
Model Number	990 5G
Market	Mobile
Introduction	September 6, 2019 (announced) September 6, 2019 (launched)
General Specs
Family	Kirin
Frequency	2,860 MHz, 2,360 MHz, 1,950 MHz
Microarchitecture
ISA	ARMv8 (ARM)
Microarchitecture	Cortex-A76, Cortex-A55
Core Name	Cortex-A76, Cortex-A55
Process	7 nm (N7+)
Transistors	10,300,000,000
Technology	CMOS
Die	100.00mm²
Word Size	64 bit
Cores	8
Threads	8

Kirin 990 5G is a 64-bit high-performance mobile ARM LTE SoC designed by HiSilicon, introduced on September 6th 2019, first appearing in the Huawei Mate 30 Pro. Fabricated on TSMC's enhanced 7nm+ EUV process, the 990 5G incorporates two high frequency Cortex-A76 cores operating at 2.86 GHz along with two medium frequency Cortex-A76 cores operating at 2.36 GHz along with four Cortex-A55 cores operating at up to 1.95 GHz.

The 5G model of the Kirin 990 is one of the first SoC that fully integrates a 5G modem (Balong 5000) in the same silicon as the CPU and the GPU. The Kirin 990 5G includes a limited version of the Balong 5000 modem that supports Sub-6-GHz frequency but no mmWave (commonly used in the USA).

There will be a Kirin 990 4G Version, including the Balong 765 with 4G LTE (3GPP Rel. 14) in the SoC.

The Kirin 990 5G supports up to 2.3 Gbps download and up to 1.25 Gbps upload speed and supports LPDDR4X-4266 memory.

Overview

Introduced at the 2019 IFA, the Kirin 990 uses the same ARM cortex (Cortex A76 + Cortex A55) versions as its predecessor, the Kirin 980, but the clock frequencies have been increased thanks to TSMC's more advanced manufacturing method, the 7nm+ EUV node: The 990 features two high-performance big Cortex-A76 core operating at 2.86 GHz, 2 medium-performance big Cortex-A76 operating at 2.36 GHz, and four little Cortex-A55 cores operating at 1.95 GHz. Compared to the 980, the 990 5G features between 10% - 35% power efficiency due to the 2nd generation of 7nm process node. The 990 ballooned to over 50% more transistors from 6.9 billion in the 980 to 10.3 billion. The 990 incorporates an in-house developed DaVinci NPU dual-neural processor designed for AI acceleration.

Cache

Main articles: Cortex-A55 § Cache and Cortex-A76 § Cache

For the Cortex-A76:

[Edit/Modify Cache Info]

Cache Organization Cache is a hardware component containing a relatively small and extremely fast memory designed to speed up the performance of a CPU by preparing ahead of time the data it needs to read from a relatively slower medium such as main memory. The organization and amount of cache can have a large impact on the performance, power consumption, die size, and consequently cost of the IC. Cache is specified by its size, number of sets, associativity, block size, sub-block size, and fetch and write-back policies. Note: All units are in kibibytes and mebibytes.

L1$ 512 KiB 524,288 B 0.5 MiB L1I$ 256 KiB 262,144 B 0.25 MiB 4x64 KiB     L1D$ 256 KiB 262,144 B 0.25 MiB 4x64 KiB     L2$ 2 MiB 2,048 KiB 2,097,152 B 0.00195 GiB     4x512 KiB

For the Cortex-A55:

[Edit/Modify Cache Info]

Cache Organization Cache is a hardware component containing a relatively small and extremely fast memory designed to speed up the performance of a CPU by preparing ahead of time the data it needs to read from a relatively slower medium such as main memory. The organization and amount of cache can have a large impact on the performance, power consumption, die size, and consequently cost of the IC. Cache is specified by its size, number of sets, associativity, block size, sub-block size, and fetch and write-back policies. Note: All units are in kibibytes and mebibytes.

L1$ 256 KiB 262,144 B 0.25 MiB L1I$ 128 KiB 131,072 B 0.125 MiB 4x32 KiB     L1D$ 128 KiB 131,072 B 0.125 MiB 4x32 KiB     L2$ 512 KiB 0.5 MiB 524,288 B 4.882812e-4 GiB     4x128 KiB

Memory controller

The Kirin 990 supports 4-channel LPDDR4X up to 4266 MHz. Each channel supports at most two ranks.

[Edit/Modify Memory Info]

	Integrated Memory Controller
	Max Type LPDDR4X-4266 Supports ECC No Max Mem 8 GiB Controllers 1 Channels 4 Width 16 bit Max Bandwidth 31.78 GiB/s 32,542.72 MiB/s 34.124 GB/s 34,123.515 MB/s 0.031 TiB/s 0.0341 TB/s Bandwidth Double 15.89 GiB/s Quad 31.78 GiB/s

Graphics

[Edit/Modify IGP Info]

	Integrated Graphics Information
	GPU Mali-G76 Designer ARM Holdings Execution Units 16 Max Displays 2 Frequency 750 MHz 0.75 GHz 750,000 KHz Output DSI Standards DirectX 12 OpenCL 1.2 OpenGL ES 3.2 OpenVG 1.1 Vulkan 1.0

Wireless

• 5G NR Modem
  • DL: Up to User Equipment (UE) category 21
    • Downlink of up to 1.4 Gbps (4x4 MIMO + 256QAM 3CC CA = 1.2 Gbps, 2x2 MIMO + 256QAM + 1CC = 200 Mbps)
  • UL: Up to User Equipment (UE) category 18
    • Uplink of up to 200 Mbps (2x2 MIMO, 256-QAM, 1x20MHz CA)
• Wi-Fi 802.11 ac
• Bluetooth 5
• NFC
• GPS / A-GPS / GLONASS / BDS

Utilizing devices

• Huawei Mate 30 Pro

Bibliography

• Huawei Kirin 990 Keynote, 2019 IFA