Huawei Kirin 9000 and Kirin 9000E difference and Similarities
With Mate 40 Series, the Kirin 9000 is officially announced. It is the world’s first and only 5nm manufactured 5G SoC with as many as 15.3 billion transistors integrated, surpassing the 15 billion mark for the first time, making it the most transistor-rich and most fully functional 5G SoC available. Although the first 5nm mobile processor was snatched by Apple A14 Bionic, while the Huawei Kirin 9000 integrated 5G baseband in the chip, thus taking the world’s first and current only 5nm 5G SoC.

Huawei introduced that Kirin 9000 is by far the most complex and powerful SoC 5G chip. It has 30% more transistors (15.3 billion) than Apple A14, Kirin 9000 CPU is 10% faster than Snapdragon 865+, GPU is 52% faster than Snapdragon 865+ Adreno 650, and its NPU is faster than Snapdragon 865+ 240%, Kirin 9000 download speed is 2 times faster than Snapdragon 865+ X55 modem, upload speed is 5 times faster than Snapdragon 865+.
Huawei Kirin 9000 specifications wise, the CPU part is eight cores, including a 3.13GHz A77 large core, three 2.54GHz A77 medium cores, and four 2.04GHz A55 energy-efficient small cores, slightly more than the Snapdragon 865 Plus 3.1GHz, which is the highest frequency mobile processor currently.
Besides Huawei Kirin 9000 integrated 24-core Mali-G78 GPU, the world’s first, architecture over the Kirin 990 Mali-G76, the number of cores is also half as many, 60 percent higher performance. In terms of AI aspects of the integration of two large cores, a micro-core NPU, a 100 percent increase in performance, as well as quad-core ISP.
For 5G, the industry’s first quad-network collaboration technology, which can efficiently integrate Wi-Fi 2.4GHz, Wi-Fi 5Ghz, primary card 5G, and secondary card 4G, bringing aggregated high network speed, stability, and low latency under changing network conditions, and achieving network preference or concurrent downloads.

In terms of security, the Kirin 9000 chip is the world’s first mobile terminal chip to pass the international CC EAL5+, while the HarmonyOS microkernel has obtained the highest security certification level for commercial OS kernels – the International IT security evaluation standard CC EAL5+ certification, and has also passed the mobile financial chip and carrier certification (domestic), the international FIDO authentication standard, ePrivacyseal, and other International authoritative security and privacy certification.
There is also a Huawei Kirin 9000E is the second 5nm 5G SoC. According to the official architecture parameters given, the difference between the Kirin 9000 and Kirin 9000E is mainly in the NPU and GPU. In terms of CPU architecture, both the Kirin 9000 and Kirin 9000E use an 8-core design, with one 3.13GHz Cortex-A77 super core, three 2.54GHz Cortex-A77 large cores, and four 2.05GHz Cortex-A55 energy-efficient cores, respectively.

As for the GPU, the Kirin 9000 is a 24-core Mali-G78 while the Kirin 9000E is a 22-core Mali-G78. In terms of NPU, the Kirin 9000 is a 3-core (dual large-cores and small-cores), and the Kirin 9000E is a dual-core (one large core and one small core).
Other aspects of the two seem to remain consistent, including both integrated Balong 5000 5G baseband, ISP 6.0, security module, etc.. Besides, they are manufactured using the 5nm EUV process, support LPDDR5/4X memory and UFS flash memory, support for HiFi sound quality, 4K HDR video, etc.. The first device using Kirin 9000E is Huawei Mate 40.