Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 vs Apple A14 Bionic

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 is a mobile processor for high-end smartphones or tablets. It has 8 CPU cores, one of which is clocked a little higher as the so-called "Prime Core".

This core is intended for high load scenarios and shows its advantages especially when only one CPU core can be loaded. In multi-core scenarios, this CPU core calculates with the other cores. The base clock frequency of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 is 1.8 GHz, with turbo mode 2.84 GHz (Prime Core only) or 2.4 GHz.

The structure of the CPU cores is also referred to as "hybrid (Prime / big.LITTLE)". Apple's A14 Bionic processor uses a similar structure. However, it only has 6 CPU cores. The processor does not have a "Prime Core", but its two high-performance cores are stronger than the "Prime Core" of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888.

Therefore, the Apple A14 Bionic achieves an unmatched performance for mobile devices in single-core scenarios.

A Qualcomm Adreno 660 is used as the iGPU (internal graphic) in the Snapdragon 888. The Apple A14 uses its own GPU. This already supports the new and free AV1 video codec, which is used by YouTube and Netflix, among others, and is intended to replace Google's VP8 / 9 video codec as well as the h.265 / HEVC.

Both processors can handle LPDDR4X-4266 memory, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 can also use the newer LPDDR5-3200 memory. While the Snapdragon 888 has an 8 MB level 3 cache, Apple's A14 processor has a slightly different structure and uses 4 MB level 2 cache. The mobile processors are both manufactured in a 5 nm manufacturing process and are both very energy-efficient.

Both processors use the ARMv8-A64 (64 bit) instruction set and run under Android or Apple's iOS operating system.