Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064A vs Rockchip RK3188

Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064A

The Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064A is a high-end SoC for Android smartphones and tablets, which was introduced in 2012. The chip integrates 4 CPU cores, which are based on the ARMv7-compatible, but by Qualcomm designed Krait architecture. This provides a much higher per-MHz performance than Cortex-A9 chips such as Nvidia's Tegra 3 or the Exynos 4412 from Samsung, but does not quite reach the performance of the Cortex-A15 (for example in the Tegra 4). The memory is accessed via 2 x 32 bit LPDDR2 at up to 533 MHz, which offers a bandwidth of 8.5 GB/s.

Thanks to a dedicated decoder, the SoC can accelerate 1080p video playback up to a frame rate of 30 fps. 3D photos are possible up to a resolution of 20 megapixels. In addition, the chip also integrates a wireless module with Bluetooth 4.0 and WLAN 802.11ac/a/b/g/n. Produced by TSMC in 28 nm (LP), the power consumption should be around 4 watts (estimated, depending on the clock speed).

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.