ARM Mali-T880 MP12 vs NVIDIA Tegra X1 Maxwell GPU

ARM Mali-T880 MP12

The ARM Mali-T880 MP12 is a mobile graphics solution that can be found in ARM SoCs like the Samsung Exynos 8890. The chip is available since Q1/2016 (e.g. in some of the Galaxy S7 variants) and supports OpenGL ES 3.1, OpenCL 1.2 and DirectX 11.2 (FL 11_2). The Mali-T880 can be built with 1 to 16 clusters, where the MP12 version features 12 clusters/cores.

The MP12 version that is used in the Samsung Exynos 8890 is clocked with up to 650 MHz and is a bit slower than the Adreno 530 in the Snapdragon 820 SoC. However, it still belongs to the high-end graphics cards for ARM based SoCs.

NVIDIA Tegra X1 Maxwell GPU

The NVIDIA Tegra X1 Maxwell GPU is an integrated graphics card in the NVIDIA Tegra X1 SoC for (mostly Android based) tablets. It is the successor of the Tegra K1 GPU and based on the Maxwell architecture. It offers the same features as the laptop and desktop Maxwell based products like OpenGL 4.5, CUDA 6.0, OpenGL ES 3.1 and DirectX 11.2. The GPU offers 256 shader cores (2 SMMs) and clocks at up to 1000 MHz. The memory interface offers a maximum bandwidth of 25.6 GB/s (2x 32 Bit LPDDR4-3200).

First benchmarks of the Tegra X1 graphics card using GLBench show twice as high scores as the PowerVR GXA6850 in the Apple A8X. Therefore, the X1 should be the fastest GPU for Android based devices that should not struggle with high end Android games in high resolutions.

The improved video part of the SoC is able to en- and decode 4K videos in H.265 according to Nvidia (decoding at 60fps, encoding at 30fps). Thanks to HDMI 2.0 support, the 4K60 material can be transmitted to external displays (2 displays in parallel at max). The integrated dual ISP is able to drive up to 6 cameras (max. 100 MP, 4096 focus points) at once.

The power consumption of the whole SoC should be rather big compared to other ARM based SoCs. Therefore, Tegra X1 based smartphones are unlikely. As the Tegra K1, the X1 will be most likely seen in tablets with good cooling solutions. Similar to the Apple A8X, the Tegra X1 is manufactured in 20nm.