HiSilicon Kirin 955 vs Nintendo Switch

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CPU comparison with benchmarks


HiSilicon Kirin 955 CPU1 vs CPU2 Nintendo Switch
HiSilicon Kirin 955 Nintendo Switch

CPU comparison

HiSilicon Kirin 955 or Nintendo Switch - which processor is faster? In this comparison we look at the differences and analyze which of these two CPUs is better. We compare the technical data and benchmark results.

The HiSilicon Kirin 955 has 8 cores with 8 threads and clocks with a maximum frequency of 2.50 GHz. Up to GB of memory is supported in 2 memory channels. The HiSilicon Kirin 955 was released in Q2/2016.

The Nintendo Switch has 8 cores with 8 threads and clocks with a maximum frequency of 1.75 GHz. The CPU supports up to 4 GB of memory in 2 memory channels. The Nintendo Switch was released in Q1/2017.
HiSilicon Kirin (29) Family NVIDIA Tegra (2)
HiSilicon Kirin 950 (2) CPU group NVIDIA Tegra X1 (2)
4 Generation 2
Cortex-A72 / Cortex-A53 Architecture Cortex-A57/-A53
Mobile Segment Mobile
-- Predecessor --
-- Successor --

CPU Cores and Base Frequency

The HiSilicon Kirin 955 is a 8 core processor with a clock frequency of 2.50 GHz. The Nintendo Switch has 8 CPU cores with a clock frequency of 1.00 GHz (1.75 GHz).

HiSilicon Kirin 955 Characteristic Nintendo Switch
8 Cores 8
8 Threads 8
hybrid (big.LITTLE) Core architecture hybrid (big.LITTLE)
No Hyperthreading No
No Overclocking ? No
2.50 GHz
4x Cortex-A72
A-Core 1.00 GHz (1.75 GHz)
4x Cortex-A57
1.80 GHz
4x Cortex-A53
B-Core 1.00 GHz (1.75 GHz)
4x Cortex-A53

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Processors with the support of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can process many calculations, especially audio, image and video processing, much faster than classic processors. Algorithms for ML improve their performance the more data they have collected via software. ML tasks can be processed up to 10,000 times faster than with a classic processor.

HiSilicon Kirin 955 Characteristic Nintendo Switch
-- AI hardware --
-- AI specifications --

Internal Graphics

The integrated graphics unit of a processor is not only responsible for the pure image output on the system, but can also significantly increase the efficiency of the system with the support of modern video codecs.

ARM Mali-T880 MP4 GPU NVIDIA Tegra X1 (Maxwell)
0.90 GHz GPU frequency 0.30 GHz
0.90 GHz GPU (Turbo) 0.77 GHz
Midgard 4 GPU Generation 1
16 nm Technology 20 nm
2 Max. displays 1
4 Compute units 2
64 Shader 256
No Hardware Raytracing No
No Frame Generation No
-- Max. GPU Memory 2 GB
11 DirectX Version 12

Hardware codec support

A photo or video codec that is accelerated in hardware can greatly accelerate the working speed of a processor and extend the battery life of notebooks or smartphones when playing videos.

ARM Mali-T880 MP4 GPU NVIDIA Tegra X1 (Maxwell)
Decode / Encode Codec h265 / HEVC (8 bit) Decode
Decode Codec h265 / HEVC (10 bit) Decode
Decode / Encode Codec h264 Decode / Encode
No Codec VP9 Decode
Decode / Encode Codec VP8 Decode
No Codec AV1 No
No Codec AVC Decode
No Codec VC-1 Decode
Decode / Encode Codec JPEG Decode / Encode

Memory & PCIe

The HiSilicon Kirin 955 supports a maximum of GB of memory in 2 memory channels. The Nintendo Switch can connect up to 4 GB of memory in 2 memory channels.

HiSilicon Kirin 955 Characteristic Nintendo Switch
LPDDR4, LPDDR3 Memory LPDDR4-3200
Max. Memory 4 GB
2 (Dual Channel) Memory channels 2 (Dual Channel)
-- Max. Bandwidth 25.6 GB/s
No ECC No
-- L2 Cache 2.50 MB
-- L3 Cache --
-- PCIe version --
-- PCIe lanes --
-- PCIe Bandwidth --

Thermal Management

The TDP (Thermal Design Power) of a processor specifies the required cooling solution. The HiSilicon Kirin 955 has a TDP of --, that of the Nintendo Switch is 5 W.

HiSilicon Kirin 955 Characteristic Nintendo Switch
-- TDP (PL1 / PBP) 5 W
-- TDP (PL2) --
-- TDP up --
-- TDP down 5 W
-- Tjunction max. --

Technical details

The HiSilicon Kirin 955 has a 0.00 MB cache, while the Nintendo Switch cache has a total of 2.50 MB.

HiSilicon Kirin 955 Characteristic Nintendo Switch
16 nm Technology 20 nm
Chiplet Chip design Chiplet
Armv8-A (64 bit) Instruction set (ISA) Armv8-A (64 bit)
-- ISA extensions --
-- Socket --
None Virtualization None
No AES-NI No
Android Operating systems
Q2/2016 Release date Q1/2017
-- Release price --
show more data show more data


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iGPU - FP32 Performance (Single-precision GFLOPS)

The theoretical computing performance of the internal graphics unit of the processor with simple accuracy (32 bit) in GFLOPS. GFLOPS indicates how many billion floating point operations the iGPU can perform per second.
HiSilicon Kirin 955 HiSilicon Kirin 955
ARM Mali-T880 MP4 @ 0.90 GHz
122 (31%)
Nintendo Switch Nintendo Switch
NVIDIA Tegra X1 (Maxwell) @ 0.77 GHz
393 (100%)

Geekbench 5, 64bit (Single-Core)

Geekbench 5 is a cross plattform benchmark that heavily uses the systems memory. A fast memory will push the result a lot. The single-core test only uses one CPU core, the amount of cores or hyperthreading ability doesn't count.
HiSilicon Kirin 955 HiSilicon Kirin 955
8C 8T @ 2.50 GHz
330 (100%)
Nintendo Switch Nintendo Switch
8C 8T @ 1.75 GHz
0 (0%)

Geekbench 5, 64bit (Multi-Core)

Geekbench 5 is a cross plattform benchmark that heavily uses the systems memory. A fast memory will push the result a lot. The multi-core test involves all CPU cores and taks a big advantage of hyperthreading.
HiSilicon Kirin 955 HiSilicon Kirin 955
8C 8T @ 2.50 GHz
989 (100%)
Nintendo Switch Nintendo Switch
8C 8T @ 1.00 GHz
0 (0%)

Geekbench 6 (Single-Core)

Geekbench 6 is a benchmark for modern computers, notebooks and smartphones. What is new is an optimized utilization of newer CPU architectures, e.g. based on the big.LITTLE concept and combining CPU cores of different sizes. The single-core benchmark only evaluates the performance of the fastest CPU core, the number of CPU cores in a processor is irrelevant here.
HiSilicon Kirin 955 HiSilicon Kirin 955
8C 8T @ 2.50 GHz
0 (0%)
Nintendo Switch Nintendo Switch
8C 8T @ 1.75 GHz
270 (100%)

Geekbench 6 (Multi-Core)

Geekbench 6 is a benchmark for modern computers, notebooks and smartphones. What is new is an optimized utilization of newer CPU architectures, e.g. based on the big.LITTLE concept and combining CPU cores of different sizes. The multi-core benchmark evaluates the performance of all of the processor's CPU cores. Virtual thread improvements such as AMD SMT or Intel's Hyper-Threading have a positive impact on the benchmark result.
HiSilicon Kirin 955 HiSilicon Kirin 955
8C 8T @ 2.50 GHz
0 (0%)
Nintendo Switch Nintendo Switch
8C 8T @ 1.00 GHz
702 (100%)

Devices using this processor

HiSilicon Kirin 955 Nintendo Switch
Unknown Nintendo Switch

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