The Cotex-A15 core of ARM has been published in writing for a long time, but the application of this chip in actual models is still relatively small. Now only Nexus 10 can be contacted. It uses the Exynos 5250 chip based on Cortex-A15. How much improvement will the A15 kernel have compared with the previous A9 kernel? This comparison uses Exynos 4412 and Exynos 5250, the strongest A9 kernel, for a test.

testing environment

Model: Nexus 10 (Android 4.2.1), Galaxy Note II (Android 4.1.2)

Test items: theoretical score, soft solution video, simulator, web page, game loading, compression

These two products are very different in type and resolution. They are used for testing purely because they represent the most high-end CPU processing performance of Android today. This paper tests the CPU capabilities of these two SoCs. The GPU and DSP capabilities are not compared.

SoC Introduction

The Exynos 5250 of the Nexus 10 is Samsung's top SoC, which uses dual core A15 core, 32nm HKMG manufacturing process, and Mali-T604. The frequency of Exynos 5250 of Nexus 10 is 1.7GHz, and it is matched with 2G Ram.

The Exynos 4412 of Galaxy Note II is Samsung's mainstream high-end SoC, which uses a quad core A9 core, a 32nm HKMG manufacturing process, and Mali-400MP4. The Exynos 4412 of the Galaxy Note II has a frequency of 1.6GHz and a 2G Ram.

here Since the frequency of Galaxy Note II is relatively low, we use the overclocking method to make both reach 1.7GHz , and lock the frequency to ensure that the test conditions are as fair as possible.

Theoretical score

Geekbench2： The performance of Exynos 5250 in this scoring software is eye-catching, much higher than that of Exynos 4412.

Exynos5250

Exynos 4412

Sunspider javascript score (the lower the score, the better): Since Baidu Browser has no T5 kernel developed for Android 4.2, Firefox is used for testing. The score shows that Exynos 4412 is far worse than Exynos 5250, which also reflects the gap between single thread efficiency. stay Evaluation of Nexus 10 The author even ran more than 700 milliseconds with Baidu Browser, which is enough to show the sharpness of A15 architecture.

Exynos 5250

Exynos 4412

Google V8 javascript score: In this run, the Exynos 5250 also showed strong single thread strength, and the Exynos 4412 was far behind.

Exynos 5250

Exynos 4412

Video soft solution

Video soft solution is also a test project that tests CPU performance very much. Here we use high-resolution 1080P or even 1440P video for comparison, As the soft solution video will utilize multithreading, the quad core processor will have a great advantage 。 But from the results, It seems that the quad core A9 has not completely overwhelmed the dual core A15, and the performance is basically at the same level We can see the amazing efficiency of the A15 architecture.

1080P 60FPS ref=16 MP4

Exynos 5250: average frames 33.19

Exynos 4412: Average frames 36.76

1440P 24FPS ref=3 MP4

Exynos 5250: Average number of frames 16.43

Exynos 4412: average frames 17.53

Simulator, web page, game loading, compression

These items are common methods to test the general performance of CPU. The following content will be presented through video to make readers feel the difference between them more intuitively.

Summary of video test

Web page test: Nexus 10 loads faster, but zooming and sliding Note 2 performs better (not excluding resolution).

Simulator test: The NDS simulator Nexus 10 has great advantages, and the PS simulator level is similar (it is specially noted here that the Nexus 10 is not compatible with FPS Meter software, so the real-time frames of both are not tested).

Game loading test: There is little difference between the two.

Compression test (580M content): Nexus 10 has obvious advantages, leading by about 30%.

summary

Through a series of comparative tests, we believe that everyone has a certain understanding of the gap between Exynos 5250 and Exynos 4412. without doubt, Even the dual core A15 processor is much better than the previous quad core A9 processor 。 In addition, this test is conducted on the overclocked A9 processor. Under normal circumstances, the gap will be larger. Before that, foreign media had a test of "A15 seconds killing ATOM". The comparison based on netbooks seems to have little practical significance for ordinary users. This test is a comparison based on the fair conditions of the Android platform, and the gap between A15 and A9 can also be more intuitive and clear to us. For the A15 core, it is still in its infancy. Only the Nexus 10 tablet on the market uses the A15 core processor. What we expect more is that A15 can be used on mobile phones. Of course, the first thing to do is to solve the power consumption problem. When the advanced technology of 28nm or even 22nm arrives next year, it is believed that the A15 core will also be possible to be used in mobile phones, and then the CPU performance of mainstream mobile phones will certainly have a significant leap.

testing environment

SoC Introduction

Theoretical score

Video soft solution

summary

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