HiSilicon Kirin 960s vs Marvell Armada PXA1908 vs HiSilicon Kirin 659

HiSilicon Kirin 960s

The HiSilicon Kirin 960S is an ARM based mid-range octa-core SoC for smartphones and tablets, which was introduced with the 2018 10.5-inch Huawei MediaPad M5. Compared to the normal Kirin 960, the 960S offers an additional NPU for AI calculations from the Kirin 970. Looks like to be slower clocked than the older Kirin 960.

Besides 8 CPU cores (4x Cortex-A73, 4x Cortex-A53), the SoC is also equipped with a modern Mali-G71 MP8 graphics adapter, a dual-channel LPDDR4 memory controller as well as an LTE Cat. 12/13 modem. It is one of the fastest ARM SoCs in the end of 2016. The Kirin 960 is manufactured in a modern 16-nm process at TSMC.

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 659

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.