Two OMAP 3430 Phones: Nokia N900 and Motorola Droid
by Brian Klug on June 10, 2010 9:29 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- N900
- Maemo
- Motorola Droid
- Droid
- MeeGo
- Android
- Mobile
| Physical Comparison | |||||||
| Motorola Droid | Nokia N900 | HTC Droid Incredible | Apple iPhone 3GS | ||||
| Height | 115.8 mm (4.56") | 110.9 mm (4.36 ") | 117.5 mm (4.63") | 115 mm (4.5") | |||
| Width | 60 mm (2.4") | 59.8 mm (2.35") | 58.5 mm (2.30") | 62.1 mm (2.44") | |||
| Depth | 13.7 mm (0.54") | 19.55 mm (0.78") | 11.9 mm (0.47") | 12.3 mm (0.48") | |||
| Weight | 169 g (6.0 oz) | 181 g (6.38 oz) | 130 g (4.6 oz) | 133 g (4.7 oz) | |||
| CPU | Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 @ 550 MHz | Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 @ 600 MHz | Qualcomm Scorpion @ 1GHz | ARM Cortex A8 @ 600MHz | |||
| GPU | PowerVR SGX 530 | PowerVR SGX 530 | Qualcomm Adreno 200 | PowerVR SGX 535 | |||
| RAM | 256MB LPDDR1 | 256MB LPDDR1 | 512MB LPDDR1 | 256MB LPDDR1 | |||
| NAND | 512 MB + microSD | 32 GB + microSD | 8GB + microSD | 16GB or 32GB | |||
| Camera | 5.0MP with Dual LED Flash | 5.0MP Tessar with Dual LED Flash | 8MP with Dual LED Flash | 3MP | |||
| Battery | Removable 5.18 Whr | Removable 4.88Whr | Removable 4.81 Whr | Integrated 4.51Whr | |||
| Resolution | 3.7" 854 x 489 LCD | 3.5" 800 x 480 LCD | 3.7" 800x480 AMOLED | 3.5" 320 x 480 LCD | |||
| PPI | 266 | 267 | 252 | 165 | |||
| Digitizer | Capacitive Multitouch | Resistive | Capacitive Multitouch | Capacitive Multitouch | |||
As enthusiasts of the N900, Palm Pre, and Motorola Droid alike know, the 600 MHz clock is somewhat conservative, as many have been able to get up to 1 GHz relatively easily with custom ROMs and other kernel patches. In fact, the OMAP 3440 has a recommended clock target of 800 MHz, some 200 MHz higher than the recommended 600 MHz target for the OMAP 3430. Notably, the OMAP36x series running at 45-nm has recommended clocks of 720 MHz for all but the highest end OMAP 3640, which is 1 GHz. It's entirely likely that the difference between the OMAPxx40 and the lower clocked OMAPxx30 for each process target is binning, possibly explaining why some are able to get devices running at even over 1 GHz.
Of course, the primary comparison for this generation is arguably Qualcomm's popular Snapdragon SoC. The primary differences between these two popular SoCs are two things: the Qualcomm SoC includes celluar modems, but more notable is the difference in GPU. We've talked briefly before about how the QSD8250/QSD8650 both include Qualcomm Adreno 200 GPUs which are actually re-branded AMD z340 GPUs brought over with the IP Qualcomm bought when it acquired AMD's handheld graphics and multimedia assets division. Interestingly enough, the AMD z340 is related to the Xenos GPU in the Xbox 360. Standards support wise, however, the Adreno 200 and PowerVR SGX 530 both target OpenGL 2.0 ES, but performance wise we now know the PowerVR SGX 530 is superior performance wise over the z340. Keep in mind the iPhone 3GS has a slightly higher spec'ed version of PowerVR SGX GPU, an SGX 535.
It's difficult to be absolute about how much the performance delta between the Adreno 200/AMD z340 and the PowerVR SGX530 really is, as so much of the difference is the result of driver differences. Add in further complexities surrounding how well implemented features are on different smartphone OSes, and it becomes even more challenging to give you a real objective answer. Point is, without a common software stack, it's difficult to give a solid benchmark. That said, it's hard to argue that Imagination's PowerVR SGX series isn't faster in practice across the board.
Of course, the untold story here is that although the 3430 ships with modest clocks (which the Motorola reduces by 50 MHz), it has seen largely uniform overclocks to 1 GHz. In fact, what's really interesting here is that in principle, a 1 GHz OMAP 3430 should outpace a 1 GHz Snapdragon SoC in a number of use scenarios because of the vastly better GPU onboard the 3430.
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Wadzii22 - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
Out of curiosity I ran linpack and Benchmark pi on my droid that's oc'd to 1ghzmy benchmark pi score was 1280 and linpack gives me 17.24 mflops
strikeback03 - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
Did you run them stock? As those numbers seem to be a ~4x improvement over what is shown here, which seems odd given the ~2x increase in clockspeed.Wadzii22 - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 - link
with the phone completely stock my scores were basically the same as whats in the original article.jamyryals - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
Please continue this type of in depth comparison with current and future hardware. PC hardware is all well and good, but it's all so fast now the mobile space is a much more interesting battle. Not to mention with how fast things are evolving there is the opportunity for a lot of content.Ratman6161 - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
For eample, my droid purchased in early April came out of the box running at 600 MHz (though now it actually runs at up to 900 Mhz). My wife got hers in early June and hers is 600 MHz too and also came out of the box with Android 2.1 already on it.Wadzii22 - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
For whatever reason, setcpu always sees a stock droid's max at 600, but they do run at 550. I just got a new one yesterday after bricking my old droid, it showed the same thing.CharonPDX - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
Nokia was the originator of the "sell unsubsidized smartphones direct" model, years before Apple or Google. You could get a Nokia N80 at CompUSA completely unlocked for $800 in 2006, a year before the unsubsidized iPhone.Stas - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
0.1 build with fixed WiFi and maps.LinPack - 12.2 (twelve point two)MFLOPS
Engadget.com loads in 20 sec (default browser)
'nuff said.
Stas - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
forgot to mention. the CPU is at 800Mhz. I've had it up at 900Mhz with bare Android build (leaked 2.2) and the performance seems no different, but no numbers, sorry.milli - Saturday, June 12, 2010 - link
That's pretty wrong what you're saying there.Qualcomm didn't even license the A8 (nor will they ever).
What they did license is the ARMv7 instruction set (and that's a huge difference). With that they made a custom implementation of the ARMv7 architecture. (BTW Qualcomm already stated in 2005 that they're an architectural licensee for ARM’s ARMv7 instruction set)
There are many differences between Scorpion and A8.
I'll quote from a certain article since i can't say it better:
'Although Scorpion and Cortex-A8 have many similarities, based on the information released by Qualcomm, the two cores differ in a number of interesting ways. For example, while the Scorpion and Cortex-A8 NEON implementations execute the same SIMD-style instructions, Scorpion’s implementation can process128 bits of data in parallel, compared to 64 bits on Cortex-A8. Half of Scorpion’s SIMD data path can be shut down to conserve power. Scorpion’s pipeline is deeper: It has a 13-stage load/store pipeline and two integer pipelines—one of which is 10 stages and can perform simple arithmetic operations (such as adds and subtracts) while the other is 12 stages and can perform both simple and more complex arithmetic, like MACs. Scorpion also has a 23-stage floating-point/SIMD pipeline, and unlike on Cortex-A8, VFPv3 operations are pipelined. Scorpion uses a number of other microarchitectural tweaks that are intended to either boost speed or reduce power consumption. (Scorpion’s architects previously designed low-power, high-performance processors for IBM.) The core supports multiple clock and voltage domains to enable additional power savings."
"Qualcomm claims that Scorpion will have power consumption of roughly 200 mW at 600 MHz (this figure includes leakage current, though its contribution is typically minimal in low-power processes). In comparison, ARM reports on its website that a Cortex-A8 in a 65 nm LP process consumes .59 mW/MHz (excluding leakage), which translates into about 350 mW at 600 MHz."
With that said, i don't understand where the misconception about the Scorpion being an A8 started. Even Qualcomm states clearly on their own website that Scorpion is not licensed from ARM. They also state that they invested hundred of millions in creating their own core based on the ARMv7 instruction set.
I hope now all the staff from Anand will stop saying that there's an A8 inside of Snapdragon. Or maybe you should even clarify that with a small article.