Huawei's Kirin 9050 Pro chip narrows performance gap with Apple, Bernstein says
Kirin 9050 Pro chip, the first based on Tau framework with 7nm technology, outperforms Apple’s 3nm A17 Pro in tests, research firm says
Quick Look
- Huawei's new Kirin 9050 Pro processor has narrowed the performance gap with Apple's chips to three years, according to Bernstein.
- While it outperformed the 3nm A17 Pro in multicore tests, it remains 30 percent behind Apple's latest 2nm A20 Pro.
AI-generated summary
Why It Matters
Huawei's Kirin 9050 Pro is the first chip based on the Tau framework using 7nm technology. Apple's A17 Pro was released in 2023 as the first mass-produced 3nm smartphone processor.
Huawei Technologies’ latest smartphone processor, the Kirin 9050 Pro, unveiled earlier this month, has narrowed its gap with Apple’s chips to about three years, from roughly four years in the previous generation, according to equity research firm Bernstein.
The chip, which Bernstein estimated was produced using technology equivalent to a 7-nanometre process node, outperformed Apple’s 3nm A17 Pro in Geekbench 6 multicore tests, a widely used benchmark that measures how effectively processors handle tasks across multiple central processing unit cores.
Apple’s A17 Pro, released in 2023, was the world’s first mass-produced 3nm smartphone processor.
The Chinese tech giant’s latest chip nevertheless remained around 30 per cent behind Apple’s newest 2nm A20 Pro in performance, while its single-core performance was closer to processors using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s (TSMC) older 4nm-class technology, Bernstein said in a report on Monday.
Open Questions
- What are the specific technical details of the Tau framework?
- How will this impact Huawei's global market share?
