As suspected, it turns out that the Pura X foldable is powered by the Huawei-designed Kirin 9020 application processor. This was discovered after the launch when some media was allowed to partake in a hands-on experience with the device. The SoC debuted last November powering the new Mate 70 flagship series. It features an octa-core CPU made up of one Taishan Big core running at a clock speed of 2.5GHz, three 2.15 GHz Taishan Mid CPU cores, and four 1.53 GHz Cortex-A510 cores. The latter four efficiency CPU cores are from Arm.
I know exactly what you’re thinking. How could the heavily sanctioned Huawei get access to one of Arm’s CPU cores? After all, the U.K. headquartered Arm has to follow U.S. export controls when it comes to some of its technology. Well, as it turns out, Arm was working on the older Cortex-A510 efficiency core before Huawei was added to the U.S. Entity List in 2020. The big and mid-core CPUs are from Huawei’s HiSilicon semiconductor unit. These cores were developed in-house by Huawei under its Taishan brand and are based on Arm’s architecture.
The GPU being used is Huawei’s in-house designed Maleoon 920. Early reports say that the CPU challenges the performance of Qualcomm’s flagship chips although the GPU is similar to a mid-range GPU.
