HiSilicon Kirin 9000 vs MediaTek Dimensity 7020

HiSilicon Kirin 9000

The HiSilicon Kirin 9000 is an ARM based high-end octa-core SoC for smartphones and tablet, which was introduced with the Huawei P40 Pro. It integrates eight CPU cores in three clusters. A single high performance ARM Cortex-A77 cores with up to 3.13 GHz for fast single core performance. Three more performance cores (same Cortex-A77 architecture) with up to 2.54 GHz and four efficiency cores based on the ARM Cortex-A55 architecture with up to 2.05 GHz. All 8 cores can be used at once (big.LITTLE).

The integrated graphics card is using the Mali-G78 architecture and features all 24 cores (G78MP24).

For AI acceleration (NPU), the Kirin 9000 integrates the Da Vinci Architecture 2.0 (2 * Ascend Lite and 1 * Ascend Tiny). Huawei specifies 8 MB of system cache (most likely shared for CPU, GPU and AI) and can access LPDDR4X and LPDDR5 main memory. The integrated 5G modem supports SA&NSA, Sub-6G and mmWave. WiFi 6 including VHT160 and Bluetooth 5.2 are also integrated in the chip.

The CPU performance is in the top tier of mobile SoCs of 2020 and slightly above the Snapdragon 865+ and on a level with the older Apple A13 Bionic SoC.

The Kirin 9000 is produced at TSMC in the modern 5nm process.

MediaTek Dimensity 7020

The Mediatek Dimensity 7020 is a fast mid-range SoC with an integrated 5G modem. It includes two fast ARM Cortex-A78 cores at up to 2.2 GHz and six power efficient Cortex-A55 cores at up to 2 GHz (Octa-Core with Heterogeneous Multi-Processing). Furthermore, the chip integrates a IMG BXM-8-256 GPU, a Wi-Fi 5 modem, a LPDDR5 / LPDDR4X memory controller, a AI processing unit  and video de- and encoding.

The 5G modem supports NR 2CC and mixed duplex (TDD/FDD) and dual SIM. The download speeds can reach up to 2.77 Gbit/s.

Compared to the Dimensity 930, the 7020 offers the same specifications and seems to be a rebrand.

The Dimensity 930 and 7020 are manufactured in the modern 6nm process and should be very power efficient.