Huawei’s latest smartphone processor, the Kirin 9050 Pro, has narrowed the performance gap with Apple, outperforming a flagship iPhone chip from 2023 on some benchmarks in spite of manufacturing constraints, according to research from equity analysts Bernstein.

The performance gap narrowed to three years from four years with the previous generation, Bernstein analysts said.

The Kirin chip, which Bernstein estimated was manufactured with the equivalent of a 7-nanometre process node, outperformed Apple’s 3nm A17 Pro in Geekbench 6 tests that measure the efficiency with which chips handle tasks across multiple processing cores.

Older manufacturing tools

The Kirin 9050 Pro performed 30 percent behind Apple’s newest A20 Pro, Bernstein found.

It said the Kirin chip’s single-core performance was closer to chips using TSMC’s 4nm technology.

Bernstein said the Kirin 9050 Pro was probably manufactured using SMIC’s N+2 or N+3 process technology, equivalent to a 7nm process carried out using deep-ultraviolet lithography, which is inferior to the extreme ultraviolet tools barred for sale to Chinese companies.

It said the “underestimated breakthrough” was largely due to architectural changes that Huawei introduced with the new chip, designed to boost performance as an alternative to the use of smaller process nodes.

Part of the framework, which Huawei calls the Tau Scaling Law, is a technique called LogicFolding that stacks logic vertically and uses dense interconnections between layers, bringing components closer together.

Architectural advances

Bernstein said the technique boosted transistor density to 238 million per square millimetre, from about 155 million for Huawei’s previous-generation smartphone chip.

Other components of the Tau Scaling Law framework include software-chip co-design and system-level technologies such as UnifiedBus.

Huawei is using the same approach to design upcoming Ascend AI accelerator chips, while also linking together large numbers of AI processors to create clusters that deliver significant performance gains, while relying on domestic Chinese technology.