Kirin 985 5G Officially Debuts – Supports 5G With Better Signal Coverage!

Today, on April 15, Kirin 985 5G officially enters as the third 5G SoC in the Kirin family after Kirin 990 5G and Kirin 820 5G.

Kirin 985 5G Specification Sheet

SoC	Kirin 985
Release Date	April 15, 2020
Process	7nm TSMC FinFET+
CPU	1 x Cortex A76 (2.58 GHz), 3 x Cortex A76 (2.4 GHz), 4 x Cortex A55 (1.84GHz)
GPU	Mali-G77 MP8 (8 cores) Frequency???
AI	Dual-core Da-Vinci NPU
Connectivity	Integrated 5G modem, Download 1277 Mbps and the upload rate is 173 Mbps
ISP	ISP 5.0
First Phone	Honor 30 (standard version)

Kirin 985 5G – A Faster, Better, 5G supported Kirin 980?

Starting with the process, Kirin 985 features the TSMC’s 7nm LPP FinFET+ process. Similar to the Kirin 820, it’s N7P, DUV-based. In terms of CPU configuration, Kirin 985 5G has a tri-cluster design with the octa-core design (1+3+4). The high-performance core is  Cortex A76 core running at a speed of 2.58 GHz. There are three Cortex A76 cores at a speed of 2.4GHz clock speed acting as mid-performance clusters. Last but not least, we have four power-efficient Cortex A55 cores at a speed of 1.84GHz for less demanding tasks.

SoC	Kirin 980	Kirin 985	Kirin 990	Kirin 990 5G
High-Performance Cores	2 x Cortex A76 (2.6 GHz)	1 x Cortex A76 (2.58 GHz)	2 x Cortex A76 (2.86 GHz)	2 x Cortex A76 (2.86 GHz)
Mid-Performance Cores	2 x Cortex A76 (1.92 GHz)	3 x Cortex A76 (2.4 GHz)	2 x Cortex A76 (2.09 GHz)	2 x Cortex A76 (2.09 GHz)
Low-Performance Cores	4 x Cortex A55 (1.80GHz)	4 x Cortex A55 (1.84GHz)	4 x Cortex A55 (1.86GHz)	4 x Cortex A55 (1.86GHz)
Process	7nm FF+ TSMC	7nm FF+ EUV	7nm FF+ TSMC	7nm FF+EUV

GPU & AI

Considering the graphical performance, we have an eight-core Mali-G77 GPU MP8. There’s the dual-core NPU (2 big cores) of the famous DaVinci architecture categorizing it in the top 4 of AI-benchmark. ISP 5.0 is the same as the Kirin 990’s ISP.

SoC	Kirin 980	Kirin 985	Kirin 990	Kirin 990 5G
GPU	Mali-G76 GPU MP10	Mali-G77 GPU MP8	Mali-G76 GPU MP16	Mali-G76 GPU MP16
Cores	10	8	16	16
Frequency	720 MHz	???	600 MHz	700 MHz

Connectivity

Kirin 985 highlights its integrated single-chip 5G baseband solution without a plug-in. It supports 2G / 3G / 4G / 5G network standard and NSA / SA 5G dual-mode. The theoretical maximum download rate is 1277 Mbps and the upload rate is 173 Mbps. Compared to the combination of Snapdragon 865 + Snapdragon X55 it is about 40% and 75% faster, respectively.

It is specially optimized for high-speed scenarios. For example, at a speed of 90 km/hour, the download rate and upload rate can still reach 589 Mbps and 63 Mbps, respectively, which is 31% and 37% faster than the combination of Snapdragon 865 and Snapdragon X55.

Since the capacity isn’t that much, the energy efficiency of Kirin 985 5G appears to be high. According to the officials, the power consumption under 5G heavy load and light load scenarios are only 504 mA and 291 mA, respectively, and the energy efficiency ratio is about 1.5 times that of Snapdragon 865 + Snapdragon X55.

Other features include 5G anti-jamming capability, 5G low latency, 5G energy efficiency, and 5G high-speed scene performance.

The first phone to feature Kirin 985 is the Honor 30 Standard Variant.

Source (in Chinese)