http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/ Engadget Comments for Apple's A4 SoC faces Qualcomm Snapdragon in knock-down-drag-out benchmarking test http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 4th 2010 2:04AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/
Does it matter which one wins? No matter what apple won't share it's faster processor (if it truly is) and Apple won't trade up to snapdragon after dumping all that money into the A4 (and because apple is stuborn)]]>Apr 4th 2010 2:36AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 4th 2010 3:08AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 4th 2010 3:13AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/
+1 for saying it how it is
]]>Apr 4th 2010 3:16AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/I expected it too. I would be worried if a new computer can't even beat a smartphone.

But I still wish there was a better way to benchmark, although the javascript benchmarking seems the closest (although it is still imperfect since it still is a bit dependent on the direct implementations of the OS).

It is hard to do a processor to processor comparison with different OSes and architectures.]]>Apr 4th 2010 3:26AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 4th 2010 4:49AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Yeah, i think the fact that they actually had to do this test is pretty sad, it should just beat it hands down, i thought it was supposed to be epicly great, but with it just beating the snapdragon...
something seems wrong...
im kind of let down by what the ipad was promised to be, the more i read up on it the more it does just seem like a big iphone...]]>Apr 4th 2010 5:05AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/
Yes, loading webpages is not a cpu benchmark, funny that people would think that it is.

Also the tests were run in different time periods, so there is no constant, so even using the word test is wishfull thinking.]]>Apr 4th 2010 5:05AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 4th 2010 5:15AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 4th 2010 5:26AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/
Bespoke vs mass or bespoked mass?

either way tailoring always produces a better result.]]>Apr 4th 2010 5:50AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/
If another chip hits speeds and efficiency that exceeds what they do, they'll probably move to that, like they did when they moved off of PowerPC and on to Intel chips.

Signed,

Leto II]]>Apr 4th 2010 6:28AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 4th 2010 6:50AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Dear HighestRanked2, I think you have the record of the most downranked commenter of the planet, maybe you should change your name?]]>Apr 4th 2010 9:48AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 4th 2010 10:10AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/
Not necessarily. Since Apple produces their own chips, they save a bunch on production costs. Plus, they want almost everything of theirs to be Apple unique. (Faster chip or not)]]>Apr 4th 2010 10:27AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Since both use the Cortex A8 at 1GHz, I'd think that Anandtech's hypothesis that a larger device allows more aggressive power settings is correct. The Nexus One uses a smaller screen and a smaller battery, so the processors power usage has a much larger impact, so they probably throttle it more. In the iPad, the processor's power usage is negligible compared to the screens, so they throttle it less. Simple. ]]>Apr 4th 2010 11:50AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Or could also just be that the network connection is better on the larger iPad (larger antenna). All those tests have nothing to do with processor speed, I've seen my zune load up those pages faster at times, and absolutely fail at others. We need a CPU benchmarking app, though i'm sure apple won't let it go through ]]>Apr 4th 2010 12:39PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Yes, it tells more about the software then the hardware. There is probably better test to benchmark the CPU, and I think Snapdragon might be faster. ]]>Apr 4th 2010 1:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Why is he downranked to oblivion?
Come on, it was expected. The clock speed is not everything, it has multiple cores and look at the size of the iPad. It would have put the iPad to shame to be slower than a Nexus i.e.]]>Apr 4th 2010 2:16PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/What do you mean, it has multiple cores? It has other cores for dedicated functions, but only one Cortex A8 core. ]]>Apr 4th 2010 3:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/They didnt co invent anything. They just paid money to slap their name on it.]]>Apr 4th 2010 4:42PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://dev.chromium.org/developers/contributing-to-webkit

The only time there will be a difference in load times is if the site is Javascript heavy, but V8 is consistently faster than Nitro so you'd expect to see the results lean the other way.]]>Apr 4th 2010 4:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/
If processor speed correlates to sunspider performance on these 2 devices sharing the same platform, the nexus one should not be compared as it does not share the same platform.

All that only proves that the android web browser is slower than safari.]]>Apr 4th 2010 6:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/
A very disappointing article from anand, considering he wrote some stunning article in the past too.]]>Apr 4th 2010 8:53PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/
The only conclusion that can be drawn from these "benchmarks" is that the iPad loaded pages & ran sunspider faster than the N1 at the time of the test. You cannot assume this is a result of the difference in processors since thee devices use very different hardware & software stacks and Internet traffic & server resources are highly volatile.]]>Apr 4th 2010 10:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/not that hard.
Brute force, amounts to reverse engineering.
pull out each processor.
wire them on the same way, to each pin
send the same signals, and see the output.
if the output is the same, then you are hitting the same function
in which case, list all the functions, and when they are all found, you can time them.
Note: not illegal, as you do not reverse engineer what is inside, but the output it gives to a certain imput.

smart way, shorter time, more thinking needed.
the core of the OS, should be pretty similar, I think the kernel is based on the same unix flavor: to be confirmed)

anyways, a delta percentage can be found.
1_ get the SAME CPU and motherborad, install the linux that is on google, and on the other install leopard.
run the same assembly code on both and find the difference, this shoudl be close to the delat the kernel brings.
2_ test the same commands on the A4 and the snapdragon: apply the delta foudn before, and here you get close to the difference between the CPU's.

I am not good enough in electronics to do it, but hey! I might have found the only reason to buy an IPAD ]]>Apr 4th 2010 11:11PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 5th 2010 1:45AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/So you're saying that Apple needs to approve Chrome for the iPad? Agreed.]]>Apr 5th 2010 2:40AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 5th 2010 5:44AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Not exactly. Apple co-developed ARM6. They played no part in inventing it.]]>Apr 5th 2010 6:19AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 5th 2010 9:35PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 4th 2010 2:04AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Not sure why this comment was down ranked at one point- Seems like a nice goal to me...]]>Apr 4th 2010 3:09AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/
I hope my next raise is at least $0.15/hr!! OOOHH!! I CAN'T WAIT!!!]]>Apr 4th 2010 4:12AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://bit.ly/iphone-4g-verizon-updates]]>Apr 4th 2010 8:05AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/I feel fairly certain that it will be the A4. What else would it be? The current iPhone uses a Cortex A8 atr ~600Mhz, the Apple A4 is a Cortex A8 at 1GHz, so I don't see where else they could go with it. And it would finally match the Nexus One and HD2 hardware wise. ]]>Apr 4th 2010 12:55PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 4th 2010 2:05AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 4th 2010 2:42AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 4th 2010 2:46AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 4th 2010 2:51AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/
Have you compared how fast the UI on the ipad is to a netbook? Try it side by side and you'll be shocked at how smooth and fast the ipad is compared to even the best of the best netbook. ]]>Apr 4th 2010 2:58AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 4th 2010 2:58AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Also, the iPad runs a mobile OS- you don't need an insanely fast processor. The iPhone OS is light and efficient. Over power a device and you'll just be wasting battery life.]]>Apr 4th 2010 3:12AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/
Actually, no.
Both are souped up A8's.

]]>Apr 4th 2010 3:20AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/
The iPad may be "smooth" but in my experience it's hardly fast. Engadget took around 20 seconds to load on the iPad I played with today (AnandTech said 13.8 seconds), which is WAY slow even compared with a netbook.]]>Apr 4th 2010 3:33AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/
The iPad OS may be lightweight but it's not magic. In my experience today, big, graphics heavy pages (like Engadget or Gizmodo or many others) took 10-20 seconds to load on the iPad, which is way, way slower than my Core 2 Duo T400 and still considerably slower than a netbook.]]>Apr 4th 2010 3:36AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/
It's mainboard has the size of the iPod Touch mainboard, the rest is used for display, batteries, (3g-board)]]>Apr 4th 2010 4:09AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/04/apples-a4-soc-pitted-against-qualcomm-snapdragon-comes-out-on/Apr 4th 2010 4:29AM