Apple A6x vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 626 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2

Apple A6x

The Apple A6x is a dual-core-SoC (System on a Chip) with ARM compatible CPU cores (ARMv7s instruction set). Both can be clocked at up to 1400 MHz depending on the load. It is used in the iPad 4 and compared to the A6 in the iPhone 5, the A6x offers a faster GPU (PowerVR SGX544MP4).

The CPU-Performance of the A6x is similar to the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro MSM8960T, while the GPU is about as fast as the Adreno 320.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 626

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 626 (SD626) is a mid-range octa-core SoC with eight ARM Cortex-A53 cpu cores at up to 2.2 GHz, an Adreno 506 GPU, a DDR3L-1866 memory controller and a X9 LTE (Cat 7, 4G+, 300 Mbps down, 150 Mbps up) modem. Furthermore, the chip supports 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1. It is manufactured in 14nm FinFet. The processor performance should be a bit higher than the average Snapdragon 625, due to the 200 MHz higher maximum clock speed.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2 is a mid-range ARMv8-based SoC largely for Android tablets and smartphones. Announced in February 2014, the S616 is one of the first 64-bit capable SoCs from Qualcomm. In addition to 8 Cortex-A53 CPU cores at up to 1.7 GHz (power saving cluster max. 1.2 GHz), the SoC integrates an Adreno 405 GPU with a 2x 32-bit memory controller (LPDDR3-1600, 12.8 GB/s) and supports Wi-Fi (802.11ac), Bluetooth 4.0, UMTS, and LTE.

CPU

The Cortex-A53 is the successor to the very popular Cortex-A7 design. In addition to the new 64-bit capable ARMv8 ISA, the cores offer a variety of other improvements such as better branch prediction. This leads to a significantly higher performance per clock, which is even above the older Cortex-A9.

The eight cores of the Snapdragon 616 are divided into two quad-core clusters, each optimized for a different operating point. While one cluster can clock up to 1.7 GHz to handle more demanding applications, the other cluster is limited to a maximum of 1.2 GHz for energy-saving purposes. All eight cores can be active at the same time, although most applications aren't parallelized to support 8 cores efficiently.

Overall, the Snapdragon 615 offers a performance similar to that of the older Snapdragon 600 (Krait architecture).

GPU

Another new feature is the integrated graphics unit named Adreno 405 (550 MHz most likely). The Adreno 400 series has been substantially redesigned and supports DirectX 11.2 (FL 11_1) including hardware tessellation, OpenGL ES 3.1, and OpenCL 1.2. Furthermore, the performance has been significantly improved, which is now similar to the Adreno 320 and PowerVR G6200.

Features

The Snapdragon 616 offers numerous wireless technologies such as Bluetooth 4.0 and WLAN 802.11a/b/g/n/ac as well as a Multi-SIM cellular modem supporting LTE cat. 4 (up to 150 Mbps), WCDMA, CDMA, EV-DO, TD-SCDMA and GSM/EDGE.

The SoC can encode and decode 1080p videos using dedicated hardware and stream content to displays with up to 2560 x 2048 pixels. A large number of video codecs including H.265 (playback only) will be supported. The camera ISP can handle sensors with up to 21 MP.

Power Consumption

The Snapdragon 616 is manufactured by TSMC in a 28 nm LP process. According to the specifications, we expect a medium or medium-high power consumption for use in medium-sized or larger smartphones and tablets.