TechInsights has branched out from its policy of just publishing teardowns on Apple and Samsung Galaxy phones and has published a look at the Huawei Mate 10. (Huawei Mate 10 Uses LCD, Mate 10 Pro uses OLED). The group estimates the cost of the display and touchscreen costs $31.
The site reports that the HiSilicon Kirin 970 has a die size of 9.75mm x 9.92mm = 96.72mm², making it 18% smaller than the Kirin 960, with a die size of 10.77mm x 10.93mm = 117.72mm². The chip is familiar as the location of both CPUs, the GPU clusters, the DDR interface and its control logic, even certain analogue interfaces remain the same as in the Kirin 960. We see once again the big, .LITTLE implementation as the Cortex-A73+Cortex-A53 combination. This time, however, the big CPU is 38% smaller (described as outstanding), and the little CPU is 25% smaller.
The site said that the GPU is “quite interesting”. It’s said to be the first commercial implementation of the ARM Mali G72 12-core, but it’s not made up of 12 identical cores. Instead it is composed of two 6-core clusters, each cluster being unique. Compared to the previous ARM Mali G71, it is 19% smaller.
Analyst Comment
The site has said that it will add to the teardown and when we looked, there was little, for example, on the camera.
Mate 10 teardown – click for higher resolution
