Huawei claims its new chip can beat Apple and Samsung
The third-largest smartphone maker in the world, Huawei, has made a powerful new AI-powered smartphone chip, which it says would give the company an edge over rivals Apple and Samsung. The Kirin 970 chip will feature in Huawei's high-end phones, and will make its debut through the company's flagship Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro phones to be released in October.
"Compared with Samsung and Apple, we have advantages. Users are in for much faster (feature) performance, longer battery life and more compact design," said Richard Yu, the chief executive of Huawei's consumer business.
The Kirin 970, which offers tremendous speed and low power consumption, was designed by Huawei's HiSilicon chip design business, and manufactured by TSMC. Huawei described the chip as the world's first Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for smartphones which integrates classic computing, graphics, image and digital signal processing, all of which earlier required separate chips. Artificial intelligence built into the chip ensures unparalleled personalization.
Huawei aims to use the Kirin 970 to differentiate its products from a vast number of competitors including Samsung all of whom use Snapdragon chips by Qualcomm, the world leader in mobile chip technology. The adoption of Kirin chips now makes Huawei and Apple the only major smartphone makers in the world who use their own core processors.
