Apple M1 Pro 8-Core vs MediaTek MT8188J

Apple M1 Pro 8-Core

The Apple M1 Pro 8-Core is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the late 2021 MacBook Pro 14 and 16-inch models. It offers 8 cores from the 10 available in the chip divided in six performance cores (P-cores with 600 - 3220 MHz) and four power-efficiency cores (E-cores with 600 - 2064 MHz). The cores are similar to the cores in the Apple M1.

The big cores (codename Firestorm) offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 24 MB shared L2 cache (up from 12 MB in the M1). The four efficiency cores (codename Icestorm) are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. Finally, the SoC includes 16 MB System Level Cache shared by the GPU. The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with 600 - 2064 MHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with 600 - 3228 MHz.

The unified memory (16 or 32 GB LPDDR5-6400) next to the chip is connected by a 256 bit memory controller and can be used by the GPU and CPU.

The integrated graphics card in the M1 Pro offers 14 cores (of the 16 cores in the chip).

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine, a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), a unified memory architecture, Thunderbolt 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders (including ProRes).

The M1 Pro is manufactured in 5 nm at TSMC and integrates 33.7 billion transistors. The peak power consumption of the chip was advertised around 30W for CPU intensive tasks.

MediaTek MT8188J

The MediaTek MT8188J is a mid-range ARM SoC (System-on-a-Chip) introduced in the first quarter of 2023, primarily used in Android-based tablets. It is manufactured using a 12-nanometer process and features a total of eight CPU cores (Octa-Core). These consist of two fast Cortex-A78 cores and 6 Cortex-A55 cores that work together in a big.LITTLE configuration.

The A78 cores of the MediaTek MT8188J can clock at speeds of up to 2.2 GHz, while the A55 cores can reach speeds of up to 2 GHz (going down to 500 MHz). For graphics processing, it employs an ARM Mali-G57 MP2 GPU. Additionally, it includes a video decoder with support for H.264 and H.265.

In addition to the CPU and GPU, the chip integrates an LPDDR4 memory controller, capable of supporting up to 8 GB of RAM. The SoC also includes a modem for WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, and LTE up to Cat.7.