Rockchip RK3168 vs Apple S9 SiP vs Apple A6

Rockchip RK3168

The Rockchip RK3168 is a low-end ARM SoC designed primarily for smartphones. It integrates two Cortex-A9 CPU cores with NEON extension, a PowerVR SGX 540 graphics card (400 MHz) and a memory controller for low-power (LP-) DDR2/DDR3. The performance should be comparable to other similarly clocked Cortex-A9 SoCs such as the Samsung Exynos 4210. Thanks to its 28nm manufacturing, the RK3168 is relatively power efficient and should enable longer battery life.

Apple S9 SiP

The Apple S9 SiP (System in a Package) is a 64-bit processor with two cores (Sawtooth Dual-Core) that is used in the Apple Watch Series 9. The two CPU cores are based on the same microarchitecture as in the Apple A15 SoC. The chip also includes a Neural Engine (with 4 cores) for AI tasks for the first time.

The S9 offers 64 GB internal memory, L1 GPS, GNSS, Galileo and BaeiDou, WLAN 4 (802.11n), Bluetooth 5.3), and LTE / UMTS (optional). The ultra-wideband chip Apple U1 is also integrated.

The chip is manufactured in the modern 4nm process at TSMC (N4P).

Apple A6

The Apple A6 is a dual-core SoC found in the iPhone 5 with ARM compatible CPU cores. The A6 was developed by Apple and supports the extended ARMv7s instruction set. The clock rate of the CPU is between 800 to 1200 MHz depending on the CPU load. The integrated GPU is a PowerVR SGX543MP3 at 266 MHz.