A Chinese state report assessing CPU reliability and security has revealed the HiSilicon Kirin X90, a never-before-seen SoC (via Jukanlosreve on X). For context, HiSilicon serves as Huawei's wholly-owned chip subsidiary. The juxtaposition of this SoC with other server processors positions it as the successor of the aging Kunpeng 920 design that launched back in 2019. To clarify, the report does not disclose important details such as the process technology, specifications, or intended use case. However, Huawei has long used the same underlying architectures for both servers and PCs, and the company reportedly has a new line of laptops coming in April that will leverage its own homegrown HarmonyOS.
Kirin SoCs are primarily used in Huawei's mobile devices and have become increasingly vital to China's goal towards semiconductor autarky after the imposition of sanctions. The Kirin 9000S, Kirin 9000S1, and Kirin 9010 are the company's first homegrown offerings built using SMIC's 7nm technology with custom Arm-based Taishan cores. The latest Kirin 9020 that powers Huawei's Mate 70 series is based on Taishan V120, which can match AMD's Zen 3 cores in Geekbench single-core performance.
