Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 MSM8260 vs HiSilicon Kirin 655 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 8930AB

Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 MSM8260

The Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 MSM8260 is an entry level SoC for smartphones and tablets (mostly Android based). It contains two Scorpion cores (enhanced ARM Cortex-A8) clocked at up to 1.5 GHz, a Adreno 220 graphics card and radio elements. Compared to the similar MSM8660, the 8260 does not include support for CDMA2000.

The similar named MSM8260A already contains the faster Krait cores and the slightly faster Adreno 225 graphics card.

HiSilicon Kirin 655

The HiSilicon Kirin 655 is an ARM-based octa-core SoC for mid-range smartphones and tablets. It was announced late 2016 and features eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores. Four cores can be clocked with up to 1.7 GHz (power saving cores) and four with up to 2.1 GHz (performance cores). The difference to the older Kirin 650 is the 100 MHz higher clock speed of the performance cores.

Furthermore, a ARM Mali-T830 MP2 graphics card (at 600 MHz or 900 MHz with 40.8 GFLOPS), a 64-Bit LPDDR3 memory controller and a dual-sim capable LTE Cat. 6 (max. 300 MBit/s and GSM, WCDMA, UMTS, HSPA+) radio are integrated in the SoC. The processor performance can be compared with the older Kirin 930 and therefore sufficient for daily usage as browsing and non demanding apps. High-end SoCs with Cortex-A57 or A72 cores however should be noticeably faster. The SoC is produced in a modern 16nm FinFET process and is therefore very power efficient.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 8930AB

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 8930AB is a high clocked dual-core ARM based SoC for smartphones. It integrates two Krait 300 CPU cores clocked at max. 1.7 GHz (the MSM8930 offers only Krait 200 cores at 1.2 GHz) and an Adreno 305 GPU. The whole chip is produced in 28nm LP at TSMC.