MediaTek MT8161 vs HiSilicon Kirin 910T vs HiSilicon Kirin 930

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).

HiSilicon Kirin 910T

The HiSilicon Kirin 910T 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 1.8 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 910 is a 200 MHz slower clocked (CPU) version.

At the time of announcement in mid 2014, the CPU performance of the Kirin910T 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.

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.