this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The Kirin 9000S is only 2% larger than the original 9000, which was made using TSMC 5nm. It performs far better than any 7nm chip.

CPU Performance almost matches the 4nm Exynos 2200, which because the 2300 was a no show is the best chip Samsung has.

GPU Performance although not a match for the original 9000 still exceeds the 5nm Snapdragon 888.

Geek Bench 5 Multi/Single core Scores

Geekerwan Review of the Kirin 9000S, with English subtitles

Source of the SD 865 relative performance charts

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Wow that is extremely impressive on the CPU side in terms of raw performance. I guess having their own OS in harmony OS also helps with optimisation. Over 1000 on the single core side, right between the 865 and 888. Energy efficiency still can't match the 865 on the old TSMC process, but it's better than the 888 and 8 gen 1 on Samsungs process. The 8+ gen 1 and 8 gen 2 on the new TSMC process absolutely destroy it in energy efficiency though.

As for the GPU, raw numbers aren't the most important, many ARM GPUs, especially those from Mali, perform poorly in certain situations outside of benchmarks due to poor drivers. It's why people always recommend Adreno GPUs for game emulsion on Android. So it really depends on how Huawei has integrated it on that side. All in all, it's still very impressive.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think the CPU performance is down to optimization. The 4 custom Taishan performance cores having hyper threading is probably why. The Kirin 9000S has 8 cores / 12 threads, which is why the multi-core score is so high.

The GPU drivers definitely aren't ready yet; it can't render Genshin Impact correctly. It's not an ARM Mali reference design; it's Huawei own Maleoon 910. The only things from ARM are the Cortex-A510 efficiency cores, and the instruction set.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah I'm positive that Huawei went their own direction with the GPU because of how bad Mali has been lately, but getting the drivers to work will be a huge task

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

A YouTube link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same video on Invidious, which is a YouTube frontend that protects your privacy:

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That’s nuts how far ahead Apple is: these are all recent chips at the A13 came out in 2019

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Apple doesn’t actually make the chips, that would be TSMC

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

TSMC doesn’t actually make the chips, that would be EUV machines manufactured by ASML operated by employees of TSMC if you want to be pedantic.

Snapdragon 8+ gen 1 is built on TSMC 4nm as well, so that’s probably not the single factor.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It doesn't help that Qualcomm's 888, and 8 Gen 1 were a disappointment. Even more so since they were the debut of ARM's Cortex-X series of performance cores. Those were supposed to be ARM's attempt at matching Apple's custom cores. Thermal throttling issues meant that they weren't even real upgrades from the 865 in terms of sustained performance.

The original Kirin 9000 was from 2020. Hard to improve performance, if the US government is doing everything to hinder your ability to make chips in the first place. Huawei matching the original TSMC 5nm EUV chip with just SMIC 7nm DUV is a miracle.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh yeah - this is not to undermine Huawei’s achievement here which is absolutely incredible. I just think the choice of putting the A13 as the newest apple chip on a chart with modern chips is an interesting one