HiSilicon Kirin 930 vs HiSilicon Kirin 655 vs MediaTek MT8163 V/A 1.5 GHz

HiSilicon Kirin 930

The HiSilicon Kirin 930 is an ARM-based octa-core SoC (system-on-a-chip) for smartphones and tablets. It was launched in the first half of 2015. It integrates two quad-core clusters of Cortex-A53 cores (big.LITTLE). The performance cluster clocks at up to 2 GHz, the power saving cluster at up to 1.5 GHz. Furthermore, the SoC integrates a ARM Mali-T628 MP4 graphics card and LTE Cat. 6 modem. The SoC is manufactured in 28nm and thanks to the small Cortex-A53 cores also suited for smaller smartphones.

HiSilicon Kirin 655

The HiSilicon Kirin 655 is an ARM-based octa-core SoC for mid-range smartphones and tablets. It was announced late 2016 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 2.1 GHz (performance cores). The difference to the older Kirin 650 is the 100 MHz higher clock speed of the performance cores.

Furthermore, a ARM Mali-T830 MP2 graphics card (at 600 MHz or 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 MT8163 V/A 1.5 GHz

The MediaTek MT8163 V/A 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 1.5 GHz. Furthermore, an ARM Mali-T720 MP2 graphics card clocked at 600 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/B is the slower clocked version, with a CPU clock o up to 1.3 GHz (-6%) and GPU of up to 520 MHz (-13%).

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