Apple A4 vs Samsung Exynos 3110 | Samsung Exynos 3110 vs Apple A4 Speed and Performance
 

This article compares two recent System-on-Chips (SoC), Apple A4 and Samsung Exynos 3110, marketed by Apple and Samsung respectively targeting handheld devices. In a Layperson’s term, a SoC is a computer on a single IC (Integrated Circuit, aka chip). Technically, a SoC is an IC that integrates typical components on a computer (such as microprocessor, memory, input/output) and other systems that cater electronic and radio functionalities. While Apple released its A4 processor in March 2010 with its inaugural tablet PC, Apple iPad, Samsung released Exynos 3110 in June 2010 with its Samsung Galaxy S smart phone.

Typically, the major components of a SoC are its CPU (Central Processing Unit) and GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). The CPUs in both A4 and Exynos 3110 are based on ARM’s (Advanced RICS – Reduced Instruction Set Computer – Machine, developed by ARM Holdings) v7 ISA (Instruction Set Architecture, the one that is used as the starting place of designing a processor) and both the SoCs are manufactured using a semiconductor technology known as 45nm.

Both Samsung Exynos 3110 and Apple A4 are based on a SoC design co-developed by Samsung and Intrinsity (a chip design company later acquired by Apple) under the codename Hummingbird. While Samsung took Hummingbird for its Exynos 3110 design, Apple adapted a modified version of Hummingbird for its A4 processor. At the time of the design, Hummingbird was considered the SoC for the next generation high performance and low power handheld devices.

Apple A4

A4 was first commercially produced in March 2010, and Apple used it for their Apple iPad, the first tablet PC marketed by Apple. Following the deployment in iPad, Apple A4 was later deployed in iPhone4 and iPod touch 4G. A4’s CPU is designed by Apple based on ARM Cortex-A8 processor (that uses ARM v7 ISA), and its GPU is based on PowerVR’s SGX535 graphics processor. The CPU in A4 clocks at a speed of 1GHz, and the GPU’s clock speed is a mystery (was not revealed by Apple). A4 has both L1 cache (instruction and data) and L2 cache hierarchies, and it allows to pack DDR2 memory blocks (although it did not contain memory module packed originally). The sizes of memory packaged varies among different devices such as 2x128MB in iPad, 2x256MB in iPhone4.

Samsung Exynos 3110

In June 2010, Samsung in its Galaxy S first deployed Exynos 3110 (aka Samsung S5PC110). The designers used ARM’s Cotex A8 architecture for its CPU and PowerVR’s SGX540 architecture for GPU. The single core CPU in Exynos 3110 uses both L1 (instruction and data) and L2 cache hierarchies. The SoC is stacked typically with 512MB DDR2 (Double Data Rate Synchronous Random Access Memory, version 2 – DDR2 SDRAM), out of which 128MB is used by the GPU as its cache. With this special (and weird) cache configuration, the designer claims unexpectedly high graphics performance out of this chip.

A comparison between Apple A4 and Exynos 3110 is tabulated below.

Summary 

In summary, both Apple A4 and Samsung Exynos 3110 have comparable features. Given that they were released at a similar time, they have used similar designs. Both of them use the same CPU architecture (with the same clock frequency) while Exynos 3110 uses a better GPU with a faster graphics processing support (mainly due to its special GPU cache and due to its faster GPU clocking frequency). Although, both have exactly similar CPU cache configurations, Exynos 3110 has more memory in its first release (384MB effective in Galaxy S vs. 256MB in iPad). However, the later deployment of Apple A4, such as the one in iPhone4 has 512MB packaged with it. When the initial release is considered, Samsung Exynos 3110 slightly outperforms Apply A4 (which is usually expected in this type of technology with three months delayed time to market).

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