Recent reports have pointed to SMIC, a Chinese semiconductor foundry that Huawei relies on, making significant progress since the launch of Kirin 9000S. Besides rumors about being able to develop 5 nm node without EUV, the foundry is now reportedly testing new TaiShan cores.

These new TaiShan cores are said to be more capable than the Cortex A510 cores found in Huawei Kirin 9000S. @Jasonwill101 on X also reports that they are very power-efficient. As for the performance, the report states that the new cores can score 350 points on the single-core test in Geekbench 5.

To compare, the Cortex A510 cores inside the Kirin 9000S achieved 200 points in the same test. This suggests that the upcoming chipset with the new TaiShan cores could bring a 1.75x performance uplift. While the report didn't mention the SoC name, this new architecture could be for the Kirin 9100, and it could power the upcoming Mate 70 series.

Huawei is also said to be planning to compete with the Apple Silicon range, with recent reports hinting that the company is developing a new Kirin PC chip. This processor can reportedly deliver a similar multi-core performance as the Apple M3 (16/512 GB 2024 MacBook Air curr. $1,349 on Amazon). But note that all these are just rumors, and we may not even see the upcoming chipsets offering the reported levels of performance.

The new Huawei Taishan's small cores has adopted a style similar to Apple's small cores, achieving extremely low power consumption while maintaining a single-core score of around 350 points in GeekBench 5. In contrast, the A510 on the 9000S only scores around 200 pts. pic.twitter.com/mWHBJl97Ky

— jasonwill (@jasonwill101) June 27, 2024