Samsung Exynos 4412 Quad vs Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8960 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 APQ8026

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 APQ8026

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 APQ8026 is an entry-level ARM-SoC for Android smartphones and smartwatches. It integrates four Cortex-A7 cores at up to 1.2 GHz (Quad-Core) and a Adreno 305 graphics card at 450 MHz. Furthermore, Bluetooth 4.0 is integrated in the SoC.