MediaTek MT8161 vs Rockchip RK3188 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).

Rockchip RK3188

The Rockchip RK3188 is a fast ARM SoC primarily designed for tablets. It integrates four ARM Cortex A9 cores with NEON extension and a clock speed of up to 1.8 GHz, a Mali-400 MP4 graphics card (up to 600 MHz, 24 GFLOPS) and a low-power (LP-)DDR2/DDR3 memory controller. Due to the high clock rates, the performance of the CPU and GPU is superior to other Cortex-A9 quad-cores such as the Nvidia Tegra 3 and Samsung Exynos 4412. These high frequencies are possible due to the 28nm process (TSMC). However, this results in high power consumption and is thus not suited for compact smartphones.

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.