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
System Performance
Given that we’ve seen excellent raw CPU performance of the Kirin 980, we should also largely see this translated over to actual system performance. System performance is what we call the performance of more realistic every-day workloads, which are most of the time mainly transactional in their nature, in contrast to the more continuous long SPEC tests of the previous pages.
The Mate 20’s come with Android 9/P out of the box, and in terms of mechanisms that promise to improve system performance, Huawei/HiSilicon employ a custom scheduler for the Kirin 980 that is able to properly deal with the three efficiency CPU groups (Perf & efficiency A76’s, and A55s).
Huawei has been locking down things quite tightly over the past year, so I wasn’t able to extract that much information out of the kernel. What I did find out is that it looks like they’re using a scheduler that is based on Google’s ACK (Android Common Kernel) and builds custom modifications on top of that. Among the key features that look to be enabled in the kernel is WALT – which I think if I’m not mistaken would make this the first non-Qualcomm SoC which sports the more responsive load tracking mechanism out of the box.
It’s to be noted that after our recent article addressing less than honest benchmarking behaviour, that Huawei has changed the behaviour of its battery power modes. The new “Performance mode” in the battery settings is off by default, which I found quite a bit odd as a default setting. To be able to get the full performance of the SoC blocks, this setting should be turned on, and we’ll note that all our testing was with the performance mode enabled, something which Huawei also recommended us to do.
Starting off with the PCMark Web Browsing 2.0 test, we see the Mate 20’s take a considerable lead among all Android devices. Here it is evidently clear that this is a considerable generational leap in performance, and more so compared to the previous generation Kirin 970 devices.
The video editing test again has become somewhat non-representative of performance as most flagship devices hover within the same score range without much difference between each other. I’m still now sure why some devices score ever so slightly higher or lower, but the absolute differences are quite minor..
The PCMark Writing test is among one of the most representative ones in terms of putting a number on overall device snappiness and speed. Here the Mate 20’s again take the lead, however the delta to the second best devices here isn’t quite as big as in the web browsing test. The OnePlus 6 and Pixel 3 both seem to have an advantage over other devices due to the fact that they’re running Android 9/P along with an up-to-date Qualcomm scheduler.
The photo editing test consists of small workload bursts – applying photo filters via RenderScript APIs. Here both performance and again performance responsiveness are key. The Mate 20’s again do very well, however they don’t quite match the performance of some of the best Snapdragon 845 devices, featuring the more up to date Qualcomm schedulers.
The Data Manipulation test is heavily influenced by single-threaded performance. Here although they don’t seem to quite match the Pixel 3 in this particular test, the Mate 20’s are still ahead of most other Android phones.
In the overall PCMark performance test, the Mate 20’s just land ahead of the Pixel 3 and OnePlus 6.
In the WebView tests where we first use Speedometer, a JS framework test, we see the Mate 20’s again take a good leap ahead of the second-best Android platforms based on the Snapdragon 845. Against the previous generation Kirin 970 phones, Huawei was again essentially able to double the performance. It’s still not enough to catch up to Apple, but at least we’re on par with the A10, a result that was also largely represented by the SPEC2006 results.
WebXPRT is a tad less microarchitecturally demanding than Speedometer, and here performance largely seems to scale with simple overall raw CPU execution power. Again we see a similar positioning as in Speedometer, with the Mate 20’s taking the lead among Android devices.
My experience with the devices pretty much matches the system benchmarks – the Mate 20’s are among the fastest devices on the market. Where the Kirin 980’s performance shines is in more complex and heavier workloads, such as loading a webpage or opening content of more heavy apps.
In terms of overall feel and responsiveness, I do feel that the Mate 20’s maybe weren’t quite as fast as the Pixel 3 or OnePlus 6. Here these phones do feel a bit quicker in opening some applications or new activities. It’s possible that Huawei maybe is lacking some OS framework related boosters that these phones might be using. I do plan to try to reintroduce empirical and controlled app loading time testing in the future, so this might be a topic we’ll revisit soon enough.
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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.