Huawei Unveils AI Mobile Chipset Said To Rival A11 Processor In Upcoming iPhones (macrumors.com)

On Saturday, Chinese mobile maker Huawei unveiled its first artificial intelligence smartphone chipset, which it hopes will lure customers away from Apple's upcoming range of new iPhones and towards the Asian company's "most powerful handset yet," the Mate 10, which is set to debut next month. Mac Rumors reports: Huawei touted the Kirin 970 AI mobile chipset's built-in "neural processing unit" at the IFA consumer electronics trade show in Berlin, claiming that the technology is "20 times faster" than a traditional processor. The world's third largest smartphone maker claimed that mobile devices powered by the Kirin 970 will be able to "truly know and understand their users," by supporting real-time image recognition, voice interaction, and intelligent photography with ease. According to Nikkei, the Kirin 970 integrates 5.5 billion transistors in a single square centimeter about the size of a thumbnail, which includes an octa-core central processing unit, a 12-core graphics processing unit, a dual-image signal processor, a high-speed 1.2Gbps Cat.18 modem, and AI mobile computing architecture. The Kirin 970 is said to be based on the same 10-nanometer technology as Apple's existing A10X Fusion processor and the A11 processor that will power its new iPhone range, set to debut this month. The Mate 10 is said to be a bezel-less all-screen handset with a 6-inch, 2:1 display and a 2,160 x 1,080 resolution. Like Apple's so-called "iPhone 8," the Mate 10 is also expected to feature some form of facial recognition and improved cameras.

Comments

Nice to see competition.

[saloomy]

This will keep Apple on their toes to further push the A** line of processors, as well as Qualcomm, Samsung, and the other Android chipset makers. I like competition.

Re:Nice to see competition.

[93 Escort Wagon]

Huawei believes in the old adage "it is better to beg for forgiveness* than to ask for permission".

*In a Chinese court, if possible.

Re:Nice to see competition.

[arglebargle_xiv]

I doubt it. If you read the specs, its just a generic mobile phone CPU/baseband as made by any number of other vendors. The "AI" is pure marketing, it's no more, or less, "AI" than a Z80. All this is saying is that just as Apple, Samsung, etc brought their processors in-house, so Huawei is doing it too.

Re:It's like a Chinese spy in your pocket!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather have the chinese spy on me than my own government.

NPU - The First Neuron

[UrbanMonk]

I'm not sure how NPUs are implemented, my guess is you have an array of gates like a FPGA that can recompile itself creating a new netlist. In effect, a cpu that is able to evolve and learn when given feedback - the first neuron. Any phDs here?

Re:NPU - The First Neuron

[ShanghaiBill]

I'm not sure how NPUs are implemented, my guess is you have an array of gates like a FPGA

Most likely it is a FinFET ASIC with local memory and lots of FP16, FP12, and/or FP8 multipliers for doing matrix ops. That is what Google's TPU is, and this is targeted to the same apps (deep NNs).

Fuck Huawei

[Gaygirlie]

I got a Huawei-tablet when it was new, since it had perfectly good specs for my needs and it wasn't outrageously expensive (1920x1200 IPS display, 2GB RAM, SD-card slot, stereo speakers, and it even has LTE-support) The hardware is still plenty good, but the tablet itself has only gotten ONE update in the couple of years that I've owned it now, and it's still stuck on Android Lollipop 5.1. The tablet has received an update to Android Marshmallow elsewhere in Europe, but when I asked their support for when the update arrives to the Nordic countries the support literally answered that they have absolutely no plans, whatsoever, to provide the update! They have all the software and everything already, they'd just need to bother doing the text-translations, but they rather leave people on an outdated Android-version and completely abandon the devices rather than spend some time and money on supplying a Nordic-version of the update!

I would not recommend anyone spend money on a company this shitty; you'll never know if they'll abandon your devices next!

Re: Fuck Huawei

[dnaumov]

Ummm, no. I work for a large Nordic mobile carrier and the delusion that you need to "certify" a device before allowing it onto a mobile network is a US-only thing. We don't do that and neither does any other mobile carrier in my country.

We are the Borg

[FrankHaynes]

We will adapt your spectral and technological distinctiveness to our own. Our collective consciousness is 20 times faster than your obsolete Apple technology. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.