Difference Between Apple A4 and Samsung Exynos 3110

苹果A4 vs三星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 byARM 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.

三星Exynos 3110和Apple A4均基于由三星和Intinesity（后来由Apple收购的芯片设计公司）共同开发的SOC设计。嗡嗡声mingbird.While Samsung took嗡嗡声mingbirdfor its Exynos 3110 design, Apple adapted a modified version of嗡嗡声mingbird为其A4处理器。在设计时，嗡嗡声mingbirdwas 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

2010年6月，三星在其Galaxy的首次部署Exynos 3110（又名三星S5PC110）。设计师将ARM的Cotex A8体系结构用于CPU和PowerVR的SGX540架构，用于GPU。Exynos 3110中的单核CPU同时使用L1（指令和数据）和L2缓存层次结构。SOC通常用512MB DDR2（双数据速率同步随机访问存储器，版本2 - DDR2 SDRAM）堆叠，其中GPU将其使用128MB作为其缓存。借助这种特殊的（和怪异）的缓存配置，设计师声称该芯片中出乎意料的高图形性能。

下面列出了Apple A4和Exynos 3110之间的比较。

概括

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).