Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8230 vs NXP i.MX 6SLL vs Marvell PXA986

Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8230

The Qualcomm MSM8230 (Snapdragon S4 Plus series) is a ARM based high-end smartphone SoC in 2012. It contains two Krait (ARMv7) CPU cores at up to 1.2 GHz, a Adreno 305 GPU, a single channel LPDDR2 memory controller and radio elements.  The chip is produced in 28nm LP (low power process) at TSMC. Compared to the MSM8930, the 8230 lacks LTE.

The Krait cores offer a slightly better performance as the standard Cortex-A9 cores and are compatible to the NEON SIMD extensions.

NXP i.MX 6SLL

The NXP i.MX 6SLL or i.MX6SLL (i.MX 6 Series, MCIMX6V7DVN10AB Part Number) is a single core processor for e-readers. It integrates a single ARM Cortex-A9 processor core clocked at up to 1 GHz and a 2D graphics accelerator called Pixel Processor PXP (including E-INK display controller EPDC with support of up to 2332x1650 and 5-bit greyscale). The integrated memory controller supports up to 400 MHz LPDDR2 or LPDDR3 (32-bit interface). Flash memory can be attached using eMMC 5.0 or SD 3.0 (three connections available). Furthermore, the SoC supports 2x USB 2.0 OTH with PHY. The chip is pin-compatible with the i.MX 6SoloLite which features an additional Vivante GC320 graphics card. WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS or other peripherals have to be connected with external chips.

Marvell PXA986

The Marvell PXA986 is an ARM based dual-core SoC for smartphones and tablets (mostly Android based). It contains two Cortex-A9 CPU cores usually clocked around 1.2 GHz and a Vivante GC1000 graphics card. The integrated video processor is able to handle 720p30 content in H.263, H.264 BP and MPEG4 SP encoding. Furthermore, a GSM/EDGE/WCDMA/HSDPA radio is included in the chip.