Apple A16 Bionic vs HiSilicon Kirin 990 5G vs HiSilicon Kirin 810

Apple A16 Bionic

The Apple A16 Bionic is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the iPhone 14 Pro (2022) models. It offers 6 cores divided in two performance cores (codename Everest, up to 3.46 GHz) and four power-efficiency cores (codename Sawtooth, up to 2.02). According to Apple, the most improvements were made to the efficiency cores and the improved memory bandwidth (+50% thanks to LPDDR5). According to the die analysis from angstronomics, the e-core cluster still has the same 4 MB L2 cache, but the p-cores now offer 16 MB L2 cache. The SLC (System Level Cache) however seems to be reduced to 24 MB.

The Neural Engine still offers 16 cores and offers an increased performance of 17 TOPS (vs. 15.8 of the A15) for AI tasks. The integrated graphics engine still offers 5 cores and benefits mostly from the higher memory bandwidth. The new display engine supports adaptive refresh rates down to 1 Hz, the new always-on display, and improved anti-aliasing (for the dynamic island animations).

The CPU performance only shows small improvements to the last generation (Apple A15 Bionic). Still, the A16 is by far the fastest mobile CPU for smartphones and leaves e.g. the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 easily behind (in Geekbench 5.4 single- and multi-thread tests).

The chip is manufactured in the modern 4nm process at TSMC and integrates nearly 16 billion transistors (compared to the 15.8 billion of the A15 and 11.8 of the A14). Apple emphasized on efficiency and e.g. mentioned 20% power savings for the big performance cores and class-leading efficiency of the e-cores.

HiSilicon Kirin 990 5G

The HiSilicon Kirin 990 5G is an ARM based high-end octa-core SoC for smartphones and tablets, which was introduced with the Huawei Mate 30 Pro in late 2019. It integrates eight CPU cores in three clusters. The performance cluster contains two Cortex-A76 cores with up to 2.86 GHz, the balanced cluster contains also two Cortex-A76 cores but with only up to 2.36 GHz and finally the power saving cluster contains four small ARM Cortex-A55 cores with up to 1.95 GHz. Furthermore, the SoC integrates a neural processor (2 + 1 cores) for AI tasks and a ARM Mali-G76 MP16 GPU clocked at up to 700 MHz. Compared to the 4G version, the 5G Kirin 990 integrates a Balong 5G modem and is slightly higher clocked (2 of the 3 clusters and the GPU).

The Kirin 990 5G is produced in the modern 7nm (7FF+ with EUV) process at TSMC, the 4G version is still produced in the slightly older 7nm process as the Kirin 980.

HiSilicon Kirin 810

The HiSilicon Kirin 810 is a ARM-based mid-range Octa-Core-SoC for Android based smartphones and tablets. It was announced mid 2019 and contains 8 processor cores. Two fast ARM Cortex-A76 cores with up to 2.27 GHz and six small power efficient ARM Cortex-A55 cores with up to 1.88 GHz (bigLITTLE). Furthermore, the SoC integrates a mid range graphics card called ARM Mali-G52 MP6 with 6 clusters. For AI acceleration, the Kirin 810 integrates a Ascend D100 Lite NPU (Da Vinci architecture). The integrates LTE modem supports Cat.12/13 with Dual Sim VoLTE. For photography, the Kirin 810 integrates the Kirin ISP4.0. The memory controller supports LPDDR4X at up to 2133 MHz. Furthermore, WiFi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 5.0 are integrated in the chip.

The SoC is manufactured in the modern 7nm process at TSMC and therefore should be very energy efficient.