What is the difference between Apple A9 and HiSilicon Kirin 955? Should you buy phone having Apple A9 or should go for HiSilicon Kirin 955? Well, you'll get all your questions cleared here.Compare two chipset models on the basis of their benchmark score (AnTuTu and Geekbench), pros and cons, technical specs categorised into gaming, CPU, GPU, Multimedia, and Connectivity.
Apple A9 has a AnTuTu benchmark score of 171612 and HiSilicon Kirin 955 has AnTuTu score of 118268. Apple A9 comes up with 2 cores, 1850 MHz frequency and on the other hand, HiSilicon Kirin 955 has 8 cores and 2500 MHz frequency. In terms of Graphics, Apple A9 has PowerVR GT7600 GPU and Rogue architecture and latter HiSilicon Kirin 955 comes up with ARM Mali-T880 MP4 GPU and Midgard architecture.
Go through detailed comparison below to see the actual difference and similarity between both chipsets.
| Specifications | A9 | Kirin 955 |
|---|---|---|
| Total score | 171612 | 118268 |
| Frequency | 1850 MHz | 2500 MHz |
| Max size | 4 GB | 4 GB |
| Max display resolution | 1920 x 1080 | 1920 x 1080 |
AnTuTu Score | ||
| CPU | 70699 | 51935 |
| GPU | 36687 | 7316 |
| Memory | 31959 | 27012 |
| UX | 35338 | 31813 |
| Total score | 171612 | 118268 |
Connectivity Features | ||
| Modem | Qualcomm MDM9635M | |
| 4G support | LTE Cat. 6 | LTE Cat. 6 |
| 5G support | No | No |
| Download speed | Up to 450 Mbps | Up to 300 Mbps |
| Upload speed | Up to 150 Mbps | Up to 50 Mbps |
| Wi-Fi | 4 | 5 |
| Bluetooth | 4.2 | 4.2 |
Performance | ||
| Processor | 2x 1.85 GHz – Twister | 4x 2.5 GHz – Cortex-A724x 1.8 GHz – Cortex-A53 |
| Cores | 2 | 8 |
| Frequency | 1850 MHz | 2500 MHz |
| Instruction set | ARMv8-A | ARMv8-A |
| L2 cache | 3 MB | |
| L3 cache | 8 MB | |
| Process | 14 nanometers | 16 nanometers |
| Transistor count | 2 billion | |
| TDP | 5 W | 5 W |
Geekbench Score | ||
| Image compression | 53.4 Mpixels/s | 72.65 Mpixels/s |
| Face detection | 9.04 images/s | 10.7 images/s |
| Speech recognition | 21.9 words/s | 19.25 words/s |
| Machine learning | 26.3 images/s | 16.35 images/s |
| Camera shooting | 12.2 images/s | 8.98 images/s |
| HTML 5 | 1.34 Mnodes/s | 1.36 Mnodes/s |
| SQLite | 313 Krows/s | 366.8 Krows/s |
Graphics | ||
| GPU name | PowerVR GT7600 | ARM Mali-T880 MP4 |
| Architecture | Rogue | Midgard |
| GPU frequency | 650 MHz | 900 MHz |
| Execution units | 6 | 4 |
| Shading units | 192 | 64 |
| Vulkan version | 1.1 | 1.0 |
| OpenCL version | 1.2 | 1.2 |
| DirectX version | 11 | 11.2 |
Memory Info | ||
| Memory type | LPDDR4 | LPDDR4 |
| Memory frequency | 1333 MHz | |
| Bus | 2x 32 Bit | 2x 32 Bit |
| Max bandwidth | 14.9 Gbit/s | 25.6 Gbit/s |
| Max size | 4 GB | 4 GB |
Multimedia | ||
| Neural processor (NPU) | No | No |
| Storage type | NVMe | eMMC 5.1, UFS 2.0 |
| Max display resolution | 1920 x 1080 | 1920 x 1080 |
| Max camera resolution | 1x 32MP, 2x 12MP | 1x 32MP, 2x 12MP |
| Video capture | 4K at 30FPS | 4K at 30FPS |
| Video playback | 4K at 30FPS | 4K at 30FPS |
| Video codecs | H.264, H.265 | H.264, H.265, VP8, VP9 |
| Audio codecs | AAC, AIFF, CAF, MP3, MP4, WAV | AAC LC, MP3, HE-AACv1, HE-AACv2, FLAC |
Apple A9 has been announced on September 2015 whereas HiSilicon Kirin 955 has been announced on April 2016. Check out detailed comparison with key specs below:
Benchmark measures the performance of the CPU. Geekbench is a benchmark that measures a processor's single core performance and AnTuTu score is the most popular and trustable benchmarking score which evaluates multi core performance. A9 has an AnTuTu benchmark score of 171612 points with CPU, GPU, Memory, UX score 70699, 36687, 31959, 35338 respectively.
CPU speed shows how many processing cycles per second can be executed by a CPU. A9 comes up with the architecture of Rogue and Kirin 955 comes up with architecture of Midgard. Former one has 2 core and 1850 MHz frequency and latter has 8 cores and 2500 MHz frequency. A larger cache time leads to faster performance.
Apple A9 has PowerVR GT7600 GPU with GPU Frequency as 650 MHz. Dynamic frequency allows the processor to conserve power and reduce noise when it is under a light load. HiSilicon Kirin 955 has ARM Mali-T880 MP4 GPU with GPU Frequency as 900 MHz.
First chipset has max size of 4 GB and HiSilicon Kirin 955 has max size of 4 GB. It shows the maximum amount of memory supported by a chipset.
In terms of multimedia, A9 has No NPU with storage type as NVMe and Kirin 955 has No NPU and eMMC 5.1, UFS 2.0 storage type.