MediaTek MT8161 vs Broadcom BCM21664T vs HiSilicon Kirin 910

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).

Broadcom BCM21664T

The Broadcom BCM21664T is an ARM based entry-level SoC for smartphones that integrates two Cortex-A9 CPU cores clocked at up to 1.2 GHz and a HSPA+ modem with support for 21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.8 Mbps HSUPA. Furthermore, a VideoCore-IV GPU and a video decoder (H.264 1080p capable) and encoder (720p) are built into the SoC.

HiSilicon Kirin 910

The HiSilicon Kirin 910 is an ARM based quad core SoC for Android smartphones and tablets. As HiSilicon is fully owned by Huawei, the chip is mostly used in Huawei models like the MediaPad X1, P6 S, MediaPad M1 and Honor 3C 4G). The SoC integrates four Cortex-A9 cores (at 1.6 GHz max.), a ARM Mali-450 MP4 GPU (at 533 MHz), a 32-bit single-channel LPDDR3-1600 memory controller (533 MHz) and a LTE Cat. 4 radio. The similar named HiSilicon Kirin 910T is a 200 MHz higher clocked (CPU) version.

At the time of announcement in mid 2014, the CPU performance is in the mid-range of smartphone and tablet SoCs. The power consumption is a bit higher than usual, as the CPU cores are rather high clocked.