Huawei Technologies’ latest smartphone processor, the Kirin 9050 Pro, unveiled earlier this month, has narrowed its gap with Apple’s chips to about three years, from roughly four years in the previous generation, according to equity research firm Bernstein.
The chip, which Bernstein estimated was produced using technology equivalent to a 7-nanometre process node, outperformed Apple’s 3nm A17 Pro in Geekbench 6 multicore tests, a widely used benchmark that measures how effectively processors handle tasks across multiple central processing unit cores.
Apple’s A17 Pro, released in 2023, was the world’s first mass-produced 3nm smartphone processor.
The Chinese tech giant’s latest chip nevertheless remained around 30 per cent behind Apple’s newest 2nm A20 Pro in performance, while its single-core performance was closer to processors using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s (TSMC) older 4nm-class technology, Bernstein said in a report on Monday.
