Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2 vs Mediatek Helio A25 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 (MSM8937)

Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2 is a mid-range ARMv8-based SoC largely for Android tablets and smartphones. Announced in February 2014, the S616 is one of the first 64-bit capable SoCs from Qualcomm. In addition to 8 Cortex-A53 CPU cores at up to 1.7 GHz (power saving cluster max. 1.2 GHz), the SoC integrates an Adreno 405 GPU with a 2x 32-bit memory controller (LPDDR3-1600, 12.8 GB/s) and supports Wi-Fi (802.11ac), Bluetooth 4.0, UMTS, and LTE.

CPU

The Cortex-A53 is the successor to the very popular Cortex-A7 design. In addition to the new 64-bit capable ARMv8 ISA, the cores offer a variety of other improvements such as better branch prediction. This leads to a significantly higher performance per clock, which is even above the older Cortex-A9.

The eight cores of the Snapdragon 616 are divided into two quad-core clusters, each optimized for a different operating point. While one cluster can clock up to 1.7 GHz to handle more demanding applications, the other cluster is limited to a maximum of 1.2 GHz for energy-saving purposes. All eight cores can be active at the same time, although most applications aren't parallelized to support 8 cores efficiently.

Overall, the Snapdragon 615 offers a performance similar to that of the older Snapdragon 600 (Krait architecture).

GPU

Another new feature is the integrated graphics unit named Adreno 405 (550 MHz most likely). The Adreno 400 series has been substantially redesigned and supports DirectX 11.2 (FL 11_1) including hardware tessellation, OpenGL ES 3.1, and OpenCL 1.2. Furthermore, the performance has been significantly improved, which is now similar to the Adreno 320 and PowerVR G6200.

Features

The Snapdragon 616 offers numerous wireless technologies such as Bluetooth 4.0 and WLAN 802.11a/b/g/n/ac as well as a Multi-SIM cellular modem supporting LTE cat. 4 (up to 150 Mbps), WCDMA, CDMA, EV-DO, TD-SCDMA and GSM/EDGE.

The SoC can encode and decode 1080p videos using dedicated hardware and stream content to displays with up to 2560 x 2048 pixels. A large number of video codecs including H.265 (playback only) will be supported. The camera ISP can handle sensors with up to 21 MP.

Power Consumption

The Snapdragon 616 is manufactured by TSMC in a 28 nm LP process. According to the specifications, we expect a medium or medium-high power consumption for use in medium-sized or larger smartphones and tablets.

Mediatek Helio A25

The Mediatek Helio A25 is an entry level ARM SoC for smartphones (mainly Android based) that was introduced in early 2020. It is manufactured in a 12 nm FinFET process and is equipped with 8 ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores divided in two clusters. A performance cluster with 4 cores clocked at up to 1.8 GHz and a efficiency cluster clocked at up to 1.5 GHz.

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a LTE Cat.4 modem, a LPDDR3-933 / LPDDR4-1200 / LPDDR4x-1600 memory controller, a IMG PowerVR GE8320 graphics card and a 1080p30 video de- and encoder (H.265 decoding, H.264 encoding).

Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 (MSM8937)

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 (SD430) is a lower mainstream SoC for (Android based) smartphones and tablets. Contrary to the Snapdragon 630, it is still manufactured in a 28-nm process and also consists of an octa-core CPU part with ARM Cortex-A53 cores. However, they are only clocked at up to 1.4 GHz. The integrated X6 LTE modem supports Cat. 4 with maximum transfer rates of 150 Mbps (downstream) and 75 Mbps (upstream). The SoC also includes an Adreno 505 GPU with support for Vulkan and OpenGL ES 3.1. WiFi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.1 are supported as well. The memory controller supports LPDDR3 clocked at 800 MHz (so probably dual-channel DDRL-1600).