Hisilicon Kirin 980 Driver › < TRUSTED >

These are integrated into the kernel tree.

For the average user, the "Kirin 980 driver" is a closed, functional black box. EMUI and HarmonyOS use the proprietary ARM Mali driver and HiAI stack perfectly. hisilicon kirin 980 driver

With Huawei’s transition to (no Android AOSP code), the driver architecture is changing. The Kirin 980 may or may not receive HarmonyOS Next officially (as of 2025, most 980 devices are on HarmonyOS 4.x). However: These are integrated into the kernel tree

: Specialized drivers for AI tasks (image recognition, battery optimization) that are accessible to developers via the Huawei HiAI Engine. Developer Resources With Huawei’s transition to (no Android AOSP code),

The most detailed technical "paper" regarding the Kirin 980's drivers comes from security researchers who reverse-engineered the platform. Exploiting Huawei’s NPU Driver : Research presented in Da Vinci Hits a Nerve