The Mate 20 & Mate 20 Pro Review: Kirin 980 Powering Two Contrasting Devices
by Andrei Frumusanu on November 16, 2018 8:10 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Mobile
- Kirin 980
- Mate 20
- Mate 20 Pro
GPU Performance & Power
The Kirin 980 is the first SoC to sport Arm’s newest generation Mali G76 GPU. The new IP differs significantly to previous generations, in more or less simplified terms, in that the GPU cores are essentially twice as big and capable as the previous generation Mali G72 cores. So while the G76MP10 configuration of the Kirin 980 might sound small, it’s not small at all in terms of theoretical performance.
GPU performance and efficiency has been a big thorn in the side of both the Kirin 960 and 970, as both SoCs showcased less than stellar power figures, which in turn also resulted in forced limited clocks and performance of the GPUs. It’s here that Huawei made the biggest promises in terms of improvements: a claimed 46% increase in performance while showcasing a staggering 178% increase in power efficiency. The latter figure especially caught some attention, as you just don’t see such increases in the industry.
Starting off with 3DMark Sling Shot Extreme Unlimited and the Physics sub-test, we see the Mate 20’s showcase some leading peak performance figures. This test is mainly a CPU test with just some more minor GPU load. The performance jump here undoubtedly comes from the new Cortex A76 microarchitecture.
In terms of sustained performance, we see some diverging figures between the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro, as the Pro is able to reach much higher sustained scores. Before getting into any conclusions, it’s worth to also look at the GPU results.
On the Graphics sub-test, we see both new Mate 20’s reach respectable peak performance figures, however they are both still throttling quite a lot until they reach thermal equilibrium. Comparing the results to the stock firmware Kirin 970’s, such as the P20 Pro, the performance increase is nevertheless quite significant.
In the new Aztec Ruins Vulkan benchmarks, both in High and Normal quality modes, we see some really odd performance behaviour. While the peak performance isn’t all that great, the sustained performance is pretty much almost identical. On the Normal run the Mate 20 Pro actually was able to maintain a higher performance than the Mate 20, something that we also saw on the 3DMark Physics run. It would be definitely interesting if the benchmark is in some way CPU bound, or if the devices have different thermal limits between Vulkan and OpenGLES workloads.
In Manhattan 3.1, we see again respectable performance gains both in peak and sustained figures. Compared to the Vulkan runs, these scores showcase a more expected delta between peak and sustained. The Kirin 980 here generally matches most Snapdragon 845 devices – short of the OnePlus 6 and G7 which seem to allow much higher sustained power limits.
GFXBench Manhattan 3.1 Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power) |
||||
Mfc. Process | FPS | Avg. Power (W) |
Perf/W Efficiency |
|
iPhone XS (A12) Warm | 7FF | 76.51 | 3.79 | 20.18 fps/W |
iPhone XS (A12) Cold / Peak | 7FF | 103.83 | 5.98 | 17.36 fps/W |
Galaxy S9+ (Snapdragon 845) | 10LPP | 61.16 | 5.01 | 11.99 fps/W |
Huawei Mate 20 Pro (Kirin 980) | 7FF | 54.54 | 4.57 | 11.93 fps/W |
Galaxy S9 (Exynos 9810) | 10LPP | 46.04 | 4.08 | 11.28 fps/W |
Galaxy S8 (Snapdragon 835) | 10LPE | 38.90 | 3.79 | 10.26 fps/W |
LeEco Le Pro3 (Snapdragon 821) | 14LPP | 33.04 | 4.18 | 7.90 fps/W |
Galaxy S7 (Snapdragon 820) | 14LPP | 30.98 | 3.98 | 7.78 fps/W |
Huawei Mate 10 (Kirin 970) | 10FF | 37.66 | 6.33 | 5.94 fps/W |
Galaxy S8 (Exynos 8895) | 10LPE | 42.49 | 7.35 | 5.78 fps/W |
Galaxy S7 (Exynos 8890) | 14LPP | 29.41 | 5.95 | 4.94 fps/W |
Meizu PRO 5 (Exynos 7420) | 14LPE | 14.45 | 3.47 | 4.16 fps/W |
Nexus 6P (Snapdragon 810 v2.1) | 20Soc | 21.94 | 5.44 | 4.03 fps/W |
Huawei Mate 8 (Kirin 950) | 16FF+ | 10.37 | 2.75 | 3.77 fps/W |
Huawei Mate 9 (Kirin 960) | 16FFC | 32.49 | 8.63 | 3.77 fps/W |
Huawei P9 (Kirin 955) | 16FF+ | 10.59 | 2.98 | 3.55 fps/W |
Looking at the power efficiency during Manhattan 3.1, we unfortunately see that the phone and chipset didn’t quite meet my projections in efficiency. Performance is exactly where it should be, however the power is off by about 1W as I had hoped to see about 3.5W peak power. At peak performance of both chipsets, the Kirin 980 showcases a 100% efficiency gain over the Kirin 970, which is still a pretty massive generational improvement, even if the previous generation didn’t exactly set the bar all that high.
In regards to Huawei’s 178% power efficiency claim during the chipset’s announcement: I still think this number is correct, however evidently this was a traditional case of somewhat misleading presentation or a mixup between “or” and “and” in the relationship between the performance and power efficiency improvements. Now in hindsight, the 178% efficiency figure likely refers to the efficiency advantage of the Kirin 980 at the same performance of the Kirin 970, which given the measured power figures here, is something that’s definitely plausible.
In T-Rex, the peak performance improvements over the Kirin 970 are far less, and I do wonder exactly what the bottleneck here is. Nevertheless, the sustained performance jumps 50%, but yet again this is just for the Mate 20 Pro as the regular Mate 20 sees far more severe throttling. T-Rex would be in many ways CPU bound as it’s hitting very high frame-rates on modern SoCs.
GFXBench T-Rex Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power) |
||||
Mfc. Process | FPS | Avg. Power (W) |
Perf/W Efficiency |
|
iPhone XS (A12) Warm | 7FF | 197.80 | 3.95 | 50.07 fps/W |
iPhone XS (A12) Cold / Peak | 7FF | 271.86 | 6.10 | 44.56 fps/W |
Galaxy S9+ (Snapdragon 845) | 10LPP | 150.40 | 4.42 | 34.00 fps/W |
Galaxy S9 (Exynos 9810) | 10LPP | 141.91 | 4.34 | 32.67 fps/W |
Galaxy S8 (Snapdragon 835) | 10LPE | 108.20 | 3.45 | 31.31 fps/W |
Huawei Mate 20 Pro (Kirin 980) | 7FF | 135.75 | 4.64 | 29.25 fps/W |
LeEco Le Pro3 (Snapdragon 821) | 14LPP | 94.97 | 3.91 | 24.26 fps/W |
Galaxy S7 (Snapdragon 820) | 14LPP | 90.59 | 4.18 | 21.67 fps/W |
Galaxy S8 (Exynos 8895) | 10LPE | 121.00 | 5.86 | 20.65 fps/W |
Galaxy S7 (Exynos 8890) | 14LPP | 87.00 | 4.70 | 18.51 fps/W |
Huawei Mate 10 (Kirin 970) | 10FF | 127.25 | 7.93 | 16.04 fps/W |
Meizu PRO 5 (Exynos 7420) | 14LPE | 55.67 | 3.83 | 14.54 fps/W |
Nexus 6P (Snapdragon 810 v2.1) | 20Soc | 58.97 | 4.70 | 12.54 fps/W |
Huawei Mate 8 (Kirin 950) | 16FF+ | 41.69 | 3.58 | 11.64 fps/W |
Huawei P9 (Kirin 955) | 16FF+ | 40.42 | 3.68 | 10.98 fps/W |
Huawei Mate 9 (Kirin 960) | 16FFC | 99.16 | 9.51 | 10.42 fps/W |
Again, the power efficiency as measured on T-Rex sees a significant jump over the Kirin 970, however most of this improvement is simply going towards reducing the actual power usage from the ridiculously high values of its predecessor, with only a little gained peak performance.
I wouldn’t take this as a definitive verdict on the Mali G76 as of yet, as over the last 3 generations Samsung has been able to extract much better results out of their GPU implementations inside the Exynos SoCs than what HiSilicon was able to achieve in the Kirins. The next generation Exynos 9820 should be able to do better than this, so maybe that’s where the Mali G76 will hit its projected targets.
Overall, the Kirin 980 definitely is posting substantial improvements over its predecessor, however Arm’s Mali GPU still seems to lag a tad behind the higher end competition from Apple and Qualcomm. What is definitely positive for Huawei is that the new SoC finally is able to shed off the atrocious performance showcased in the previous generation chipsets, and is now actually competitive with most recent devices.
141 Comments
View All Comments
name99 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
Andrei you are concentrating on the wrong thing. I don't care about the inadequacies of GB4's memory bandwidth test, or the device uncore, I care about the DRAM part of this.I understand you and anomouse are both claiming that LPDDR4-2133 means 4266 MT/s.
OK, if that's true it's a dumb naming convention, but whatever. The point is, this claim goes directly against the entire thrust of the anandtech DDR5 article from a few days ago that I keep referring to, which states very clearly that something like DDR4-3200 means 3200MT/s
THAT is the discrepancy I am trying to resolve.
ternnence - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
name99 , for mobile,LPDDR4x has 4266 spec , however desktop DDR4 rarely could get such frequency. So it is not LPDDR4-2133 has 4266MT/s, it is LPDDR4-4266 has 4266MT/sternnence - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
FYI,https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/dram/lpddr4x... you could check this site.name99 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
FWIW wikipedia sees things the same way saying thathttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR4_SDRAM
eg DDR4-2133 means 2133MT/s
This follows the exact same pattern as all previous SDRAM numbering. Up to DDR3 the multiplier was 2 (DDR), 4(DDR2) or 8(DDR3); with DDR4 the multiplier stays at 8 but the base clock doubles so from min of 100MHz it's now min of 200MHz.
But these are internal details; the part that matters is that most authorities seem to agree that DDR4-2133 means 2133MT/s, each transaction normally 64-bits wide.
Now there are SOME people claiming no, DDR4-2133 means 4266 MT/s
- https://www.androidauthority.com/lpddr4-everything...
claims this (but couches the claim is so much nonsensical techno-double-speak that I don't especially trust them)
- so do you and anonomouse.
So, like I said, WTF is going on here? We have a large pool of sources saying the sky is blue, and a different pool insisting that, no, the sky is green.
anonomouse - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
I never claimed that DDR4-2133 means 4266MT/s. I am instead claiming that there is no LPDDR4-2133.anonomouse - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
I think the discrepancy here is just that you/they are mixing the naming conventions. DDR4-3200 means 3200MT/s. After an admittedly brief and cursory search, I don't see any references to Micron using the term LPDDR4-2133. I instead see every indication that they have LPDDR4 running at 2133MHz. Perhaps people here and there are mixing up the terminology, but when in doubt may as well just look at the actual memory clock or bandwidth being listed as that's ultimately what's importantly.name99 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
Yeah, I think you are correct. After looking in a few different places I think the following are all true:- The DDR4 guys tend to talk about MT/s and give the sorts of numbers I gave
- The LPDDR4 guys tend to talk about Mb/s per pin (same as MT/s, but just shows a different culture) and tend to be working with substantially higher numbers.
I *THINK* (corrections welcome) that
(a) the way LPDDR4 is mounted (no DIMMs and sockets, rather it's direct mounting, either on the SoC as PoP, or extremely close to it on a dedicated substrate), allows for substantially higher frequencies than DDR4.
(b) one's natural instinct (mine, and likely other people's) is that "of course DDR4 runs faster [fewer power concerns, etc]" so when you see LPDDR4 running faster (at say "4266") you assume this has to mean some sort of "silent" multiplication by 2, and what's actually meant is the equivalent of DDR4-2133 at 2133MT/s.
(c) It certainly doesn't help that Micron at least is calling the 4266MT/s LPDDR4 as having a "2133MHz clock". I have no idea what that is supposed to mean given that the DDR4 "clock" runs at 1/8th transaction speed, so for DDR4 the clock of a 4266MT/s device would be 533MHz.
So I think we have established that the actual speeds ARE 4266MT/s (or so) for LPDDR4.
Left unresolved
- these are generally higher than DDR4? Meaning that, sooner or later, PC users are going to have to choose between flexible RAM (DIMMs and sockets) or high speed RAM (PoP mounting, or superclose to the SoC on a substrate --- look at the A12X)?
- Why is Micron calling something like LPDDR4-4266 as having a 2133MH clock? What does that refer to? I would assume that, like normal DDRx, the "low frequency clock" (what I've said would be 533MHz) is the speed for control transactions, and the 8x speed (4266Mb/s per pin) is the speed for bulk data flow?
ternnence - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
where do you get this "Micron lists their LPDDR4, for example, as LPDDR4-2133, NOT as LPDDR4-4266?"? just check Micron official site, they mark LPDDR4-4266, not LPDDR4-2133, to their 2133MHz ram.ternnence - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
ddr means double data rate. 2133MH equals ram operates 2133 per second. but one operate produce two data output. MT/s equals million transfer per second. so LPDDR4-4266= 4266 million transfer per second = 2133 million Hzname99 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
The Micron datasheets, for example, numdram.pdf,https://www.micron.com/~/media/documents/products/...
do exactly this.