Huawei's Kirin 9030 Pro is the first processor made by SMIC using its new process.

Due to its inability to acquire extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment from ASML, SMIC has been compelled to utilize deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines, employing a technique known as multi-patterning. Rather than using a single EUV exposure to print circuitry on each wafer, SMIC must print and etch features on silicon wafers multiple times using DUV, potentially causing alignment inaccuracies, leading to more chips being discarded during quality control, and increasing component prices because of lower yields. Additionally, multi-patterning increases chip production time.

EUV machines can print fine lines on silicon wafers using a single light exposure with a short wavelength of 13.5nm. In contrast, the DUV machines accessible to SMIC have a much longer wavelength of 193nm, explaining the necessity for multi-patterning in manufacturing the Kirin 9030 Pro and Kirin 9030.

A post on Weibo by Digital Chat Station revealed the Kirin 9030 Pro AP will feature nine cores:

One CPU core with a clock speed of up to 2.75GHz.

Four CPU cores with a clock speed of up to 2.27GHz.

Four CPU cores with a clock speed of up to 1.72GHz.

The Kirin 9030 Pro AP will also include the Maleoon 935 GPU, an improvement over the Maleoon 920 GPU found in last year's Kirin 9020 AP. Benchmarking of the chipset, conducted using a Huawei Mate 80 Pro Max with 16GB of RAM, yielded single-core and multi-core Geekbench scores of 1131 and 4277, respectively. The scores were compared to those of three competing APs.

Dimensity 9500

320.9% faster in single-core (3,629 points)

245.2% faster in multi-core (10,488 points)

A19 Pro

300.1% faster in single-core (3,394 points)

233.2% faster in multi-core (9,974 points)

346.6% faster in single-core (3,920 points)

234.1% faster in multi-core (10,011 points)

Digital Chat Station advises caution regarding the Kirin 9030 Pro AP Geekbench score, alluding to past instances where Huawei has manipulated chip performance. Regardless, SMIC's inability to acquire EUV lithography equipment places Huawei at a notable disadvantage.

SMIC has been manufacturing Kirin APs for Huawei since the Kirin 9000s, which were used in the 2023 Mate 60 Pro, utilizing its 7nm N+7 process node. The Kirin 9030 Pro is the first commercial chip from SMIC using its N+3 process node.

There are two AP versions: the Kirin 9030 Pro, which will be used in the Mate 80 RS Ultimate Design and higher-storage Mate 80 Pro models (typically 16GB RAM), and the Kirin 9030 AP, which will be used in lower-storage Mate 80 Pro versions (12GB RAM). The Pro version supports 14 threads, while the non-Pro model supports 12. The standard Mate 80 uses last year's Kirin 9020 AP, produced using SMIC's N+7 process node.

Since both the Kirin 9030 Pro and Kirin 9030 feature nine CPU cores, some cores utilize Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) to manage multiple independent tasks (threads) concurrently. The Kirin 9030 Pro AP (with 14 threads) should achieve a slightly higher multi-core score than the Kirin 9030 AP (with 12 threads).