A feature of mobile processors is their ability to operate on a single battery with minimal heating of the case. But it often happens that the chip shows high performance, but very quickly discharges the battery. Conversely, performance may be slightly lower, but at the same time, energy efficiency increases. Therefore, judging the superiority of one chip over another is not always relevant. Mobile processors are built on a multi-core architecture. The presence of more cores increases the number of tasks performed simultaneously, subject to software optimization.
This article presents mobile processor rating in order of increasing productivity.
10. Intel Atom Z3775D
Intel Atom Z3775D opens the top ten best mobile processors in terms of performance. The four-core chip is designed for tablets running Android and Windows. Z3775D belongs to the Bay Trail-T family. With a quad-core processor running at 1.46 to 2.39 GHz, the Z3775 is significantly faster than the previous Intel Atom Z2760 processor.
9. Intel Atom Z3775
Ninth place was taken by a quad-core processor with a frequency of 1.46-2.39 GHz Intel Atom Z3775, designed for smartphones. The optimized 22nm P1271 process with tri-gate transistors demonstrates increased speed and energy efficiency compared to the previous Atom Z2770.
8. Intel Atom Z3785
Four-core mobile processor for tablets and smartphones on Anroid and Windows Intel Atom Z3785 took the eighth position in performance. SoC, operating at a frequency of 1.49 to 2.41 GHz, is built on part of the Bay Trail-T platform. Thanks to the optimized 22nm process in combination with tri-gate transistors, the performance and energy saving have been improved compared to the previous generation. The processor cores built on the Silvermont architecture show performance up to 50% higher due to the use of a pipeline, optimization of the branch prediction module, expansion of decoders and increase in the buffer.
7. Intel Atom Z3795
In sixth place is a processor designed for Windows and Android tablets, Intel Atom Z3795. The four-core chip operates at a frequency of 1.59 to 2.39 GHz. An optimized 22nm process processor using Tri-Gate transistors has improved performance and reduced power consumption compared to the previous Atom series. The performance of the Z3795 is mainly designed to work with an office application and a browser, so it will not be enough for demanding tasks.
6. Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 MSM8992
Mobile processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 MSM8992, specially designed for tablet devices and smartphones based on Android, has 6 processor cores, an Adreno 418 graphics card with a 2 × 32-bit memory controller LPDDR3-1866, Bluetooth 4.1, UMTS and LTE. Based on ARM big.LITTLE, which combines various processor cores for an optimal combination of performance and power consumption, the 808 MSM8992 combines two fast Cortex-A57 cores with a clock frequency of up to 2 GHz, with a performance 30% higher than the previous processor in this series.
5. Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 MSM8994
Fast octa-core processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 MSM8994designed for tablets and smartphones, produced by 28-nm process technology. It uses two groups of 64-bit cores with the architecture of Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53. If necessary, all Snapdragon 810 cores can work simultaneously. There is an Adreno 430 graphics accelerator, a dual-channel LPDDR4 memory controller, Wi-Fi modules (802.11ac + MIMO), Bluetooth 4.1, 3G and LTE. Accelerator Adreno 430 is able to cope with any games in Full-HD resolution and higher.
4. Intel Atom x7-Z8700
Mobile processor Intel Atom x7-Z8700Introduced in 2015, uses four Cherry Trail processing cores. Compared with earlier processors in this series, the new Intel Atom x7-Z8700 has a number of obvious advantages. A streamlined architecture, a 14-nm process with a frequency of 2.4 GHz allows you to achieve high performance while maintaining low heat. The LPDDR3-1600 memory controller and the HD Graphics (Cherry Trail) adapter are integrated here, which supports DirectX 11.2 and uses 16 processing units (shaders) with a frequency within 600 MHz. Atom x7-Z8700 can be used both for laptops and tablets, and for smartphones.
3. ARMv8 Apple A9
In third place on the list is a 64-bit dual-core ARM microprocessor with architecture ARMv8 Apple A9. It is manufactured using the 14nm FinFET process technology. The A9 chip, which is a 2-core SoC, with a frequency of 1.8 GHz, received a performance increase of up to 70% in general and about 90% of the graphics compared to the previous generation of chips (Apple A8). The power consumption of the chip is reduced by 35% and its size decreased by 15%.
2. Samsung Exynos 7420 Octa
In second place Samsung Exynos 7420 Octa. The mobile processor was introduced in 2015 with the Samsung Galaxy S6 device. The 7420 Octa uses eight cores according to the big.LITTLE architecture. The overall performance is quite high and can be compared with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 or Nvidia's Tegra K1. Production according to the norms of a 14-nanometer technological process also reduces energy consumption against the background of earlier developments (20 nm or 28 nm). As a complete system-on-a-chip (SoC), the Exynos 7420 Octa also utilizes many additional components, including the ARM Mali-T760 MP8 graphics accelerator, LPDDR4 fast memory controller and various communication modules.
1. Apple A9X
Apple A9X from Apple leads the ranking of the best mobile processors. It is manufactured using the 16-nm FinFET process technology at TSMC factories. The “Twister” processor core is the third generation of 64-bit ARM cores that operate at frequencies up to 2.26 GHz. Compared to the Apple A8X chip, the memory bandwidth was doubled. According to Apple, the new chip has 1.8 times higher productivity in office tasks than the A8X, which was used in particular in the iPad Air 2. The chip area, according to Chipworks, is 147 mm2. The built-in PowerVR Series7 3D accelerator with 12 clusters is used. LPDDR4 memory is connected to the system via a 128-bit wide bus; the total throughput is estimated at 51.2 GB / s. The chip contains an M9 coprocessor for processing data from sensors.