Samsung Exynos 4412 Quad vs Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8960 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 8930AB

Samsung Exynos 4412 Quad

The Samsung Exynos 4 Quad (also called Exynos 4412, introduced in 2012) is an ARM SoC for tablets and smartphones. It includes a quad-core processor based on the Cortex-A9 architecture (including NEON SIMD extension), which clocks with 1.4 to 1.6 GHz (depending on the model). Thus, the computing power is similar to competitors like Nvidia's Tegra 3 SoC. The memory controller supports LPDDR2, DDR2 and DDR3 with a maximum of two 32-bit channels and 400 MHz clock speed, resulting in a bandwidth of up to 6.4 GB/s.

The SoC integrates an ARM Mali-400 MP4 GPU (15.8 GFLOPS at 440 MHz). Typical smartphone games (2012) will run fluently even in high resolutions like 1280 x 720 pixels. Videos can be accelerated by a multi-format video decoder (1080p AVI, WMV, H.264, H.263, VC1, MPEG2, MPEG4).

The chip is produced in Samsung fabs in 32nm HKMG and mainly found in high-end devices like the Samsung Galaxy S3 or Note 2. Depending on the clock speed, the power consumption should be between 2 and 4 W (estimated).

Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8960

The Qualcomm MSM8960 (Snapdragon S4 series) is a ARM based high-end smartphone SoC in 2012. It contains two Krait (ARMv7) CPU cores at 1.5 - 1.7 GHz, a Adreno 225 GPU (400 MHz), a LPDDR2 memory controller (up to 500 MHz) and radio elements including LTE. The chip is produced in 28nm LP (low power process) at TSMC.

The Krait cores offer a slightly better performance as the standard Cortex-A9 cores and are compatible to the NEON SIMD extensions.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 8930AB

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 8930AB is a high clocked dual-core ARM based SoC for smartphones. It integrates two Krait 300 CPU cores clocked at max. 1.7 GHz (the MSM8930 offers only Krait 200 cores at 1.2 GHz) and an Adreno 305 GPU. The whole chip is produced in 28nm LP at TSMC.