Huawei says the Kirin 990 is capable of hitting 2.3Gbps down and 1.3Gbps up, far lower than rival flagship SoCs (at least in terms of downlink).Qualcomm and Samsung's latest chipsets offer a big leap in photo and video resolution.It’s worth noting that AI performance is still a pretty tough thing to quantify, owing to the varying approaches to silicon and the variety of different workloads.It’s too early to definitively call a winner until we’ve put all these chipsets to the test, but a peek at the spec sheet and preliminary testing has already revealed interesting findings.Qualcomm isn’t standing still obviously, so we’re expecting the Snapdragon 865 to surpass the Kirin 990 for CPU tasks and stretch its lead in the GPU arena. And although Huawei’s Kirin 990 5G falls behind the Snapdragon 865, the NPU is undoubtedly a lot faster than the rest. Previously, Qualcomm has maintained the GPU advantage, but is this the year for Arm’s Mali graphics to close the gap?Huawei, however, has been forced to increase the core count of its older, Mali-G76 GPU in order to remain competitive (going from 10 to 16 cores).
Samsung Galaxy S20 5G Android smartphone. Features 6.2″ Dynamic AMOLED 2X display, Exynos 990 chipset, 4000 mAh battery, 128 GB storage, 12 GB RAM, Corning Gorilla Glass 6. Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 HiSilicon Kirin 990 5G Samsung Exynos 990; CPU Config: 1x semi-custom Cortex A77 @ 2.85GHz 3x semi-custom Cortex-A77 @ 2.4GHz Integrating the 5G modem into the chipset itself theoretically results in reduced power consumption, a smaller footprint, and reduced heat compared to a processor with a separate 5G modem.One benefit that the Kirin 990 has is support for BM3D (block matching and 3D filtering) noise reduction technology, reportedly associated with DSLR cameras. Qualcomm, Huawei, and Samsung have all adopted heavy, medium, and light CPU cores. This suggests that the main fight will be between Samsung and Qualcomm once again. The integrated Mali-G77 GPU in Samsung Exynos 990 is definitely a lot closer to the performance of Adreno 650 GPU. Here you will find the pros and cons of each chip, technical specs and comprehensive tests in benchmarks like AnTuTu and Geekbench. The Exynos 990 processor can be paired with the 5G cellular modem to deliver hyper-fast mobile broadband speed for the era of live. For what it’s worth, the Huawei is using a lower GPU clock speed as well, which should theoretically result in less thermal-induced slowdown.Samsung’s 2020 flagship processor features a new, dual-core NPU, and Samsung says the combo of this NPU and the digital signal processor delivers 10 TOPS of performance.Qualcomm is expected to retain its graphical lead over Huawei, owing to previous benchmarks.When it comes to CPU power, it’s clear that all three brands are offering similar approaches. Qualcomm says the AI power can be put to good use translating your speech into another language in real-time, while retaining your voice.Real-world results show that you can expect significantly slower speeds owing to a variety of factors, but it looks like Qualcomm and Samsung’s chips hold the theoretical speed advantage for now.Huawei does stand out in a good way though, as the Kirin 990 5G is the only chipset here featuring an integrated modem solution. Qualcomm’s impressive camera chops don’t end there, as the Snapdragon 865 supports 8K/30fps video, 4K/120fps, 4K HDR video (as well as Dolby Vision capture), and “unlimited” 960fps video at 720p.Absolute speed sees Qualcomm claiming 7.5Gbps downlink speeds and 3Gbps uplink speeds, while Samsung’s Exynos 990 hits 7.35Gbps downlink speeds (it hasn’t revealed uplink speeds).
Based on Samsung's internal test results.
This theoretically allows for a better balance of power and efficiency for a given task.In other words, it seems like users in regions with mmWave 5G networks will want to stick with a Samsung or Qualcomm-powered phone to guarantee compatibility.All in all, it looks like Qualcomm and Samsung will enjoy a megapixel and video resolution/frame rate advantage over Huawei’s chipset. Huawei says this tech helps to bring noise down by 30% for photos and 20% for video. We compared two 8-core processors: Samsung Exynos 990 (with Mali-G77 MP11 graphics) and HiSilicon Kirin 990 (5G) (Mali G76 MP16). However, Huawei seems to be focusing on improving low-light quality even more.The Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 touts a fifth-generation AI Engine, featuring a new Hexagon Tensor Accelerator. Winner: Tie (Exynos 990 and Kirin 990 5G) Exynos 990 vs Apple A13 Bionic vs Kirin 990 5G – Other Specs Comparison. Qualcomm says the new chipset delivers 15 TOPS (trillion operations per second), compared to the Snapdragon 855’s 7 TOPS. But, this is not the end of the road for Samsung Exynos 990 and Kirin 990 5G. We’ll need to wait for Exynos 990 benchmarks to figure out if this strategy has worked for Huawei.