The HiSilicon Kirin 659 is an ARM-based octa-core SoC for mid-range smartphones and tablets. It was announced mid 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 2.36 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). The slightly older Kirin 658 is very similar. The 659 is in our benchmarks around 4% faster than the 658 and offers a better LTE radio (Cat. 13).
Furthermore, a ARM Mali-T830 MP2 graphics card (at >=900 MHz), 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.
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.
The MediaTek MT8163 V/B 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-T720 MP2 graphics card clocked at 520 MHz, a DDR3x32 1600Mbps memory controller, Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11 b/g/n, GPS and FM are integrated in the SoC.
The similar named MediaTek MT8163 V/A is the faster version, with a CPU clock o up to 1.5 GHz and GPU of up to 600 MHz.
The performance is situated in the entry level of 2015 and often similar to the Kirin 910T (see benchmark below).
Adreno 405 GPU, WLAN 802.11ac (1x1), Bluetooth 4.0, LTE Cat. 4, FM, GNSS, 1x 32 Bit LPDDR3-1600 Memory Controller
DDR3x32 memory controller 1600Mbps, T720 MP2@520MHz, internal Display up to 1366x768, HMID up to 1080p, H.265 1080p video decode, 13MP image signal processor, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n, embedded GPS module, Bluetooth 4.0, FM radio support, ARM TrustZone
Average Benchmarks Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2 → 71%n=7
Average Benchmarks MediaTek MT8163 V/B 1.3 GHz → 69%n=7
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card - Average benchmark values for this graphics card * Smaller numbers mean a higher performance 1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
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