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Apple A15 Bionic Chip vs Hisilicon Kirin 970

A15 Bionic Chip
VS
Kirin 970
A15 Bionic Chip
Kirin 970

We’ve compiled a side-by-side comparison of the newly released A15 Bionic Chip versus Kirin 970 SoCs, brought to you by Apple and Hisilicon respectively. This comparison examines the pros and cons of these 6-core and 8 -core processors, with data from Geekbench, Antutu, and 3DMark benchmarks, alongside their detailed technical specifications.

Review

General comparison of performance, power consumption, and other indicators
CPU Performance
Evaluation of Single-Core and Multi-Core Processor Performance
Gaming Performance
Gaming and OpenCL/Vulkan Performance of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)
Battery life
Energy Efficiency in Battery Usage
Tech Insist Score
Overall Performance Rating of the Chip

Key Differences

Main differences and advantages of each chip
Pros of A15 Bionic Chip
  • A15 Bionic Chip has 36.86% higher CPU clock speed than Kirin 970 (3230 vs 2360 MHz).
  • A15 Bionic Chip has 128.62% higher memory frequency than Kirin 970 (4266 vs 1866 MHz).
  • A15 Bionic Chip has 175.23 % better AnTuTu 9 score than Kirin 970 (809 K vs 294 K).
  • A15 Bionic Chip has the latest instruction set, hence better than Kirin 970.
  • A15 Bionic Chip supports 14.43 % higher memory bandwidth than Kirin 970 ( 34.1 vs 29.8 MHz).
Pros of Kirin 970
  • Kirin 970 has -29.17 % higher GPU clock speed than A15 Bionic Chip ( 850 vs 1200 MHz).
  • Kirin 970 has 100.00 % smaller sized transistor than A15 Bionic Chip ( 10 vs 5 nm).

Benchmarks

Evaluating performance through competitive testing in leading benchmarks.
SoC:
A15 Bionic Chip
vs
Kirin 970

AnTuTu 10

The AnTuTu Benchmark evaluates CPU, GPU, RAM, and I/O capabilities across various scenarios.
CPU 209204 77046
GPU 351594 90560
Memory 118044 66398
UX 130276 59977
Total score 809118 293981

GeekBench 6

The GeekBench test shows raw single-threaded and multithreaded CPU performance
Single-Core Score
Multi-Core Score

3DMark

A cross-platform benchmark that assesses graphics performance in Vulkan (Metal)
3DMark Wild Life Performance
Stability 82% 80%
Graphics test 56 FPS 6 FPS
Score 9524 1050

Specifications

Full list of technical specifications of A15 Bionic Chip and Dimensity 9300

CPU

Architecture 2x 3.23 GHz – Avalanche
4x 2.02 GHz – Blizzard		 4x 2.36 GHz – Cortex A73
4x 1.84 GHz – Cortex A53
Cores 6 8
Base Frequency 2020MHz 1840MHz
Turbo Frequency 3230MHz 2360MHz
Instruction set ARMv8.5-A ARMv8-A
L2 cache 256 KB -
L2 cache 32 MB 0.5 MB
L3 cache - 2 MB
Process 5 nanometers 10 nanometers
Transistor count 15 billion 5.5 billion
TDP (Sustained Power Limit) 6 W 9 W

Graphics

GPU name Apple GPU Mali G72 MP12
Architecture - Bifrost
GPU frequency 1200 MHz 850 MHz
Pipelines 5 12
Shading units 640 192
Total shaders 1280 384
FLOPS - 347 Gigaflops
Vulkan version - 1.0
OpenCL version - 2.0
DirectX version - 12

AI Accelerator

Neural processor (NPU) Neural Engine Dedicated NPU

Memory

Memory type LPDDR4X LPDDR4X
Memory frequency 4266 MHz 1866 MHz
Bus - -
Max bandwidth 34.1 Gbit/s 29.8 Gbit/s
Max size 6 GB 8 GB

Multimedia (ISP)

Storage type NVMe UFS 2.1
Max display resolution 2732 x 2048 3840 x 2160
Max camera resolution - 1x 48MP, 2x 20MP
Video capture 4K at 60FPS 4K at 30FPS
Video playback 4K at 60FPS 4K at 60FPS
Video codecs H.264, H.265, VP8, VP9, Motion JPEG H.264, H.265, VP8, VP9, VC-1
Audio codecs AAC, AIFF, CAF, MP3, MP4, WAV, AC-3, E-AC-3, AAX, AAX+ 32 bit@384 kHz, HD-audio

Connectivity

Modem - -
4G support LTE Cat. 24 LTE Cat. 18
5G support Yes No
Download speed 5G Up to 7500 Mbps -
Download speed 4G - Up to 1200 Mbps
Upload speed 5G Up to 3000 Mbps -
Upload speed 4G - Up to 150 Mbps
Wi-Fi 6 5
Bluetooth 5.0 4.2
Navigation GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo

Info

Announced September 2021 September 2017
Class Flagship Flagship
Model number APL1W07 Hi3670
Official page A15 Bionic Chip official site Kirin 970 official site