HiSilicon Kirin 9000 vs MediaTek Dimensity 8100

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 8100

The Mediatek Dimensity 8100 is a upper mid-range smartphone SoC. The CPU integrates four fast ARM Cortex-A78 cores with up to 2.85 GHz and four efficient Cortex-A55 cores with up to 2 GHz. The integrated 5G modem supports all modern standards including 5G SA and a maximum download speed of 4.7 Gbps.

The integrated ARM Mali-G610 MC6 GPU integrates 6 cores and supports displays with up to 2,960 x 1,440 pixels (WQHD+).

The chip is produced at TSMC in 5nm.