Apple M1 Pro vs MediaTek Dimensity 8020

Apple M1 Pro

The Apple M1 Pro 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  all 10 cores available in the chip divided in eight performance cores (P-cores with 600 - 3220 MHz) and two power-efficiency cores (E-cores with 600 - 2064 MHz). There is no Turbo Boost for single cores or short burst periods. The cores are similar to the cores in the Apple M1. The entry level model offers only 8 cores.

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. CPU and GPU can both use the 24 MB SLC (System Level Cache). 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 (200 GB/s bandwidth) and can be used by the GPU and CPU.

The integrated graphics card in the M1 Pro offers all 16 cores.

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. In the Prime95 benchmark the chip uses in our tests (with a MBP16) 33.6W package power and 31W for the CPU part. In idle the SoC only reports 1W package power.

MediaTek Dimensity 8020

The MediaTek Dimensity 8020 is a ARM-based System-on-a-Chip (SoC) similar to the older Dimensity 1100. It was specifically designed for use in Android smartphones and falls into the mid-range category in terms of performance. It supports all current mobile network standards, including 5G with 2CC-CA (200MHz) and FDD+TDD.

The CPU consists of a total of eight cores divided into two clusters. One cluster has four ARM Cortex-A78 performance cores with speeds of up to 2.6 GHz, while the other cluster has four ARM Cortex-A55 power-efficient cores with speeds of up to 2.0 GHz. LPDDR4 RAM can be used as the memory, and it supports UFS 3.1 as the internal storage.

In terms of connectivity, it offers Dual-5G support, as well as Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.

The integrated graphics unit, ARM Mali-G77 MC9, can power displays with a resolution of up to 2560 x 1080 and a refresh rate of up to 144 Hz (possibly only for Full HD+).

The chip is manufactured by TSMC using the current 6nm process in the mid-range segment.