Key Message of Kirin650

Smartphone SoC with 6-mode Modem, Flagship Process, and High Energy Efficiency
16nm FinFET Plus Process Applied and CDMA and Cat.7 Supported

In April, 2016, Huawei released its latest smartphone SoC, Kirin650.Kirin650 is the third mobile chipset that adopts the advanced 16nm FinFET plus process technology and the second SoC that realizes the mass production of the 16nm FinFET plus process in the world. It introduces 4*A53+4*A53 big.LITTLE architecture and Mali-T830 GPU of ARM and makes new breakthroughs in prolonging battery life.
Kirin650 is the second chipset of the Kirin600 series chipsets. Its previous generation Kirin620 released in December, 2014, was the first mass-produced octa-core 64-bit LTE multi-mode processor in the industry. It became popular once going on sales. Each model powered by Kirin620 has been shipped over ten million units, including Honor 4X, Honor 4C and Huawei P8 Youth.  

1 SoC Design Achieving Higher Energy Efficiency

Kirin chipsets persistently follow the design principle of balancing performance and power consumption in delivering SoC and proactively explore applications of advanced process technology and CPU/GPU with high energy efficiency.

1.1 Significantly Improved Performance

Kirin650 applies the advanced 4*A53+4*A53 big.LITTLE architecture design and Mali-T830 GPU of ARM with high energy efficiency to make new breakthroughs in improving performance. Compared with the previous generation Huawei Kirin620, Kirin650 improves its CPU performance by 60% and GPU performance by 100%.

1.2 Long Battery Life With 16nm Process

Advanced process is significant in improving the battery life of the SoC. The self-developed smartphone SoC K3V2 released by Huawei in 2012 adopted the 40nm process which was the mainstream process of smartphone SoC at that time. Kirin920 released by Huawei in 2014 used the 28 nm process which improved performance by 100% and reduced power consumption by 50%, compared with the 40nm process. In 2015, some vendors applied the 20nm process for smartphone SoC. However, Huawei Kirin950 used the industry-leading 16nm FinFET plus process and became the first commercialized 16nm FinFET plus smartphone SoC. Compared with the 28HPM process, the 16nm FinFET plus process improved performance by 65% while reducing power consumption by 70%. Compared with the 20nm process, it improved performance by 40% while reducing power consumption by 60%. Today, adopting the cutting-edge 16nm process, Huawei Kirin650 is the third smartphone chipsets realizing the mass production of 16nm FinFET plus process (the two earlier chipsets are Apple A9 and Huawei Kirin950) and brings supreme user experience with high performance and low power consumption.

1.3 Intelligent Awareness i5 Processor

The upgraded intelligent core i5 processor contained in Kirin650 applies the advanced M7 core, of which the performance is five times that of M3, and is the coprocessor with the highest performance in the industry. i5 coordinates and shares resources with eight cores in the CPU. i5 in always sensing mode can rapidly wake up the main CPU when necessary, which significantly reduces the wakeup time for the main CPU. i5 also allows the smartphone to run in always sensing mode at low power. Though the smartphone is in sleep mode, i5 can still continuously collect data from various sensors while consuming power far less than the main CPU.
With enhanced capability, i5 can run certain complex calculations to reduce the CPU scheduling and occupation. Featherweight calculations can be run in i5. For example, i5 in Kirin650 can record daily steps at ultra-low power without scheduling the CPU.

2 Six-mode SoC Strengthening Leading Communication Advantages

With the 29-year accumulation of Huawei in the communication field, Kirin chipsets retain the leading position in the communication technology and Kirin650 makes breakthroughs in the communication field again.

2.1 Faster Network Speed: 4G+, CDMA, Cat.7, and Full-Frequency SoC

Mobile phones shoulder the responsibility of connecting people. The smartphone SoC needs to enhance the connection function as well as the calculation speed and power consumption.
In June 2014, Huawei released the world's first 4G+ SoC Kirin920 and at the same time Huawei's first 4G+ smartphone Honor6 came to market. From Kirin920, all the following SoCs of Kirin900 family can support 4G+. More than 50 percent of 4G+ enabled smartphones in China are powered by Kirin SoCs today.
Kirin650 not only supports TD-LTE/LTE-FDD/TD-SCDMA/WCDMA/GSM and 4G+, but also CDMA. It can freely switch among any modes in any frequency bands, which meets the full-frequency demand. In addition, it also supports the leading communication specification Cat.7, being one of the first smartphone SoCs that support Cat.7 in the industry. Carrier aggregation for both uplink and downlink data is supported. The downlink peak rate reaches 300 Mbps (TDD: 220 Mbps) while the uplink peak rate reaches 100 Mbps (TDD: 20 Mbps). Compared with Kirin620, Kirin650 achieves 100 percent improvement in both downlink peak rate and uplink peak rate. Improved uplink rate accelerates sharing of videos and photos.

2.2 High Call Quality in the 4G Era: VoLTE and SPLC

To provide better voice experience, Kirin teamed with leading 4G+ mobile operators in China, Europe, and Korea to complete a two-year VoLTE test. Kirin650 supports VoLTE that doubles the voice bandwidth and sampling rate, offers improved internet connection speed, and reserves complete voice information, making voices richer, more natural and pleasant. What's more, VoLTE significantly reduces call delay while achieving video call quality ten times that of 3G. It also allows users to surf the internet while making phone calls. Phone calls will not interrupt gaming any more.
When signals are weak or interrupted or in high-speed mobile scenarios, phone calls become choppy and voices are not natural or clear, which greatly affects user experience. The unique intelligent voice enhancement technology SPLC of Huawei Kirin650 implements dynamic intelligent compensation based on users' voices and reduces voice discontinuity and noises by 50%, which enhances clearness, smoothness, naturalness, and continuity of voices and improves call quality.

2.3 Strong Pseudo Base Station Defense Patented Technology: Free of Fraud Calls and Junk Short Messages

According to statistics, 36 out of 100 mobile phone users are harassed by pseudo base stations every day. Pseudo base stations not only send junk short messages and fraud messages, but also make users miss important calls and messages. Though hated by mobile users, the problem of pseudo base station has not been solved for a long time.
With 29-year accumulation of Huawei in the communication field, Kirin650 applies the pseudo base station defense technology based on communication baseband processor, which can judge base stations on the bottom layer of the mobile communication, reject the communication with pseudo base stations, and prevent mobile phones from receiving fraud calls and junk short messages sent from pseudo base stations.

3 Breakthrough in ISP Bringing True-to-life Photography

SLR-level Prime ISP built in Kirin650 provides independent hardware-level graphics processing calculation and injected dynamic range adjustment and supports hybrid focus and intelligent scene recognition technologies, which enables phones to take photos in various scenarios. The dedicated image post-processing DSP can deliver the best image quality, colors, and effects. The face detection technology makes the skin color more natural and vivid during photographing.

4 Chip-level HiSEE Security Solution Safeguarding Information Security

Kirin650 provides RPMB for fingerprint unlocking and fingerprint payment. With TrustZone of ARM, fingerprints are read and stored in the SoC and protected by using the encrypted key protection. Fingerprint sensor interfaces and driver programs are encapsulated in TEE OS so the fingerprint sensor cannot be directly accessed by any third-party application, which prevents fingerprint information leakage and is considered to be the most secure bottom-layer protection in the world. Phones powered by Kirin650 are protected by the HiSEE security solution, especially when using applications with insecure information, to safeguard user information security.

5 New Connectivity Solution with Fast Internet Speed and Accurate Positioning

Kirin650 comes with the latest connectivity 5-in-1 Huawei Hi1102 SoC, which realizes the WLAN, Bluetooth, navigation, FM, and infrared remote control functions. Hi1102 supports global WLAN frequency bands, which allows users to connect to wireless network anytime anywhere. In navigation, Hi1102 supports any two modes, three modes, four modes, or five modes joint positioning of satellite positioning systems such as GPS, GLONASS, and Beidou. Especially for the Beidou system, Hi1102 supports extended ephemeris and high-accuracy positioning, which responds to the national innovation technology standard with actions and provides comprehensive navigation solutions and accurate positioning services to users.
 
Huawei Honor 5C and Huawei P9 Lite smartphones powered by Kirin650  have been launched in May, 2016.