Marvell Armada PXA1908 vs HiSilicon Kirin 658 vs MediaTek MT8161

Marvell Armada PXA1908

The Marvell Armada PXA1908 is an ARM based low end SoC for smartphones and tablets. The chip was announced in late 2014 and integrates four 64-Bit Cortex-A53 processor cores with up to 1.2 GHz. As a graphics card, the SoC integrates a Vivante GC7000UL. Furthermore, a LPDDR2/3 memory controller and a HSPA+/WCDMA/LTE Cat. 4 (max. 150 Mbit/s) radio is integrated. The SoC is manufactured in 28nm and also suited for small smartphones. 

HiSilicon Kirin 658

The HiSilicon Kirin 658 is an ARM-based octa-core SoC for mid-range smartphones and tablets. It was announced early 2017 and features eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores. Four cores can be clocked with up to 1.7 GHz (power saving cores) and four with up to 2.35 GHz (performance cores). The difference to the older Kirin 650 and Kirin 655 SoCs is the higher clock speed of the performance cores (2.35 versus 2.1 and 2.0 GHz).

Furthermore, a ARM Mali-T830 MP2 graphics card (at 900 MHz with 40.8 GFLOPS), a 64-Bit LPDDR3 memory controller and a dual-sim capable LTE Cat. 6 (max. 300 MBit/s and GSM, WCDMA, UMTS, HSPA+) radio are integrated in the SoC. The processor performance can be compared with the older Kirin 930 and therefore sufficient for daily usage as browsing and non demanding apps. High-end SoCs with Cortex-A57 or A72 cores however should be noticeably faster. The SoC is produced in a modern 16nm FinFET process and is therefore very power efficient.

MediaTek MT8161

The MediaTek MT8161 is an ARM based entry-level to mid-range SoC for (Android based) tablets. It offers four ARM Cortex-A53 processor cores (quad-core) that are clocked with up to 1.3 GHz. Furthermore, an ARM Mali-720 graphics card, a LPDDR3 memory controller (e.g., accessing 1 GB in the Lenovo Tab 2 A8-50), Bluetooth 4.0 and dual-band 802.11 b/g/n are integrated in the SoC.

The performance is situated in the entry level of 2015 and often similar to the Kirin 910T (see benchmark below).