Huawei unveils Kirin 950 SoC based on TSMC's 16nm FinFET technology

Huawei has revealed the specs of the Kirin 950 SoC at an event in Beijing today. It is an Octa-core SoC with four ARM Cortex A72 Cores that can be clocked up to 2.53GHz and four ARM Cortex A53 that has a maximum clock speed of 1.8GHz. It’s built using TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process, which is the same one used for Apple’s A9 processor.

The Kirin 950 uses ARM's big.LITTLE architecture so it can alternate between the Cortex A72 and Cotex A53 cores depending on the type of tasks. A small i5 co-processor is included for things like the sensor hub, barometer, gyroscope, magnetometer and acceleration and it's "always sensing". The chip also uses Huawei’s own powerful image signal processor.

The Kirin 950 SoC is likely to be used in Huawei's upcoming flagship smartphone, Ascend Mate 8, which is expected to be unveiled on November 26.