Intro:
If you are a mobile enthusiast, you should know that there are two major players in the market. The android phone companies and the Apple iPhone. They both have been at war with each other for a long time ago. The primary battle is between android users and IOS users, which translated to the conflict between Android phones and iPhones.
The most significant player in the android mobile game is Samsung, which has been producing flagship and mid-tier mobile phones for a very long time. Till now, Samsung has battled Apple iPhones to be recognized as the better flagship maker.
Amongst this, there is another secret competition going on between two entities, namely Apple and Qualcomm. Now this competition is a bit different as Qualcomm Snapdragon does not manufacture mobile phones. The rivalry between Apple and Qualcomm Snapdragon is of producing and designing the best processors.
Apple designs its custom processors for the latest flagship iPhones each year. Similarly, Snapdragon also designs processors for mobile phones in general. These processors designed by Qualcomm Snapdragon are not built for a specific mobile phone, unlike apple. The processors by Qualcomm Snapdragon are used by numerous companies but are majorly used in the latest flagship phones.
Today we are going to compare two processors head to head with each other. The first is Apples A10X fusion, and the second is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845. Just by their names, you can’t tell about their capabilities, so let’s discuss both of them separately and then compare then to each other.
Apple A10X:
The full name is Apple A10X fusion. It is a 64-bit processor designed by Apple, and an ARM-based system on a chip, manufactured by TSMC. It appeared in the 10.5” iPad Pro and the second generation 12.9” iPad Pro. Both of these iPad Pros were launched on June 5, 2017.
The Apple A10X is a variant of Apple A10 but much faster. Apple claims that the A10X is 30% more quickly in the CPU domain and 40% faster in the GPU domain than its predecessor, the A9X. The fifth generation of Apple TV also featured the Apple A10X.
The Apple A10X fusion is a Hexa-core processor with three high-performance Hurricane cores and three energy-efficient Zephyr cores. The processor also features a twelve-core graphics processing unit for handling games. The Apple A10X is also embedded with the M10 motion coprocessor. The Apple A10X was launched in 2017.
Snapdragon 845:
The full name of this processor is Qualcomm Snapdragon 845. This system on chip is 64-bit ARM LTE based. The Snapdragon 845 was released in 2017. This processor was featured in many flagship phones like Samsung Galaxy Note 9, Google Pixel 3, Oppo Find X, Razer Phone 2, OnePlus 6T, Xiaomi Pocophone F1, Sony Xperia XZ3, and an LG V40 ThinQ. These are just a few of the major smartphones.
The Snapdragon is rated 14% faster than its predecessor, the Snapdragon 835. Although both processors are built on the same architecture, the Snapdragon 845 is clocked higher than Snapdragon 835, making it faster.
The Snapdragon 845 features four high-efficiency Kryo 385 silver cores functioning at 1.7 GHz, and four Kryo 385 Gold high-performance cores operating at 2.8 GHz. The GPU embedded in the Snapdragon 845 is the Adreno 630 GPU.
Apple A10X vs. Snapdragon 845:
The Apple A10xX and Snapdragon 845 were launched in the same year, 2017, but they were designed for separate purposes. The Apple A10X was designed and targeted at tablets like iPad Pro. On the other hand, Snapdragon 845 was designed and aimed at mobile phones.
Both of the processors are built on the 10nm process, but with a little difference. The Apple A10X is built on the 10nm FinFET process, while the Snapdragon 845 is built on the 10nm FinFET LPP process.
The Snapdragon has 5.3 billion transistors packed into it, while the Apple A10X has a total of 3.3 billion transistors. The Apple A10X is a Hexa-Core processor with six threads, while the Snapdragon 845 is an Octa-Core processor with eight threads.
The Snapdragon 845 has four energy-efficient cores and four high-performance cores, while the Apple A10X has three energy-efficient cores and three high-performance cores. The Apple A10X has 8 MB of cache memory, while Snapdragon 845 has 2 MB.
The Snapdragon has a boost clock speed of 1.9 GHz, and a turbo boost speed of 2.8 GHz, on the other hand, the Apple A10X has a boost clock speed of 1.3 GHz, and a turbo boost speed of 2.4 GHz.
The maximum memory supported by the Apple A10X is 4 GB, while the Snapdragon 845 supports up to 6 GB. Both of them support the memory type of LPDDR4.
The graphics unit integrated into Apple A10X is the Imagination PowerVR GT7600 Plus, with 6 GPU execution units, 192 GPU shading units, and a GPU clock rate of 900 MHz. On the other hand, the Snapdragon 845 has the Qualcomm Adreno 630 GPU embedded with 2 GPU execution units, 256 GPU shading units, and GPU clock rate of 710 MHz. The Snapdragon 845 uses heterogeneous multi-processing while the Apple A10X does not.
The Snapdragon 845 and Apple A10X have integrated LTE, AES, NX BIT, dynamic frequency scaling, out-of-order execution, trust zone, and support hardware-assisted virtualization.
Verdict:
The snapdragon 845 is a mobile targeted processor, while the Apple A10X is a tablet targeted processor. Both of them have their pros and cons, but when faced with each other, the Snapdragon 845 is the clear winner in terms of speed and efficiency.
