Huawei is developing a new Kirin processor for PCs that could rival Apple's M3

By: Vlad Cherevko | 30.04.2024, 11:07
Huawei is developing a new Kirin processor for PCs that could rival Apple's M3

Despite trade restrictions from the US, Huawei continues to develop its Kirin chips for smartphones. Recent rumours on Chinese website Weibo suggest that Huawei is working on a new Kirin processor for PCs, which is under development and could match the performance of Apple's M3 in multi-threading and Apple's M2 in GPU.

Here's What We Know

A user under the nickname Fixed Focus Digital has revealed some of the specifications of the new Kirin processor. It will reportedly feature eight TaiShan v130 performance cores and the next generation Mailiang 920 GPU. Last year's Kirin 9000s chip, which is used in the Huawei Mate 60 series, used TaiShan v120 cores. This architecture is rumoured to be scalable and hints at the possibility of rivaling Apple Silicon in terms of performance.

In addition to the CPU and GPU architecture, the source also reports on the storage and memory specifications of the new chip. It is expected to provide support for 32GB of RAM and 2TB of inbuilt storage.

As for the manufacturing process, Huawei has two options: the 7nm SMIC process or waiting for the next generation 5nm SMIC process, which is not yet ready for mass production. If the company chooses the 7nm process, it will result in lower power efficiency, which is not ideal for a device with limited battery capacity.

The new Kirin PC chip is expected to be released this year, possibly in September. We can only wait to see how the new Kirin PC chip will handle the technical challenges amid trade sanctions and whether it will be able to compete with the multi-threaded performance of Apple's M3.

Source: Notebookcheck, Weibo