Kirin 9000 vs A15 Bionic

We compared the 8-core HiSilicon Kirin 9000 (Mali-G78 MP24) with the newer 6-core Apple A15 Bionic (Apple A15 GPU) SoC. Here you will find the pros and cons of each chip, technical specs, and comprehensive tests in benchmarks, like AnTuTu and Geekbench.

Review

General comparison of performance, power consumption, and other indicators
CPU Performance
Single and multi-core processor tests
Gaming Performance
GPU performance in games and OpenCL/Vulkan
Battery life
Efficiency of battery consumption
NanoReview Score
Overall chip score

Key Differences

Main differences and advantages of each chip
Pros of HiSilicon Kirin 9000
  • Has 2 more cores
  • Supports 29% higher memory bandwidth (44 against 34.1 GB/s)
Pros of Apple A15 Bionic
  • Higher GPU frequency (~76%)
  • Performs 47% better in floating-point computations
  • Shows better (up to 31%) AnTuTu 11 score – 1413K vs 1079K
  • Better instruction set architecture

Benchmarks

Performance tests in popular benchmarks

AnTuTu 11

The AnTuTu Benchmark measures CPU, GPU, RAM, and I/O performance in different scenarios
1079281
A15 Bionic +31%
1413275
CPU 370173 410975
GPU 275434 370837
Memory 158011 164151
UX 275663 467312
Total score 1079281 1413275
Samples Less than 3 [69 tests]
AnTuTu results from iOS and Android are not directly comparable! They won't affect NanoReview scores.

GeekBench 6

The GeekBench test shows raw single-threaded and multithreaded CPU performance
Single-Core Score
1262
A15 Bionic +83%
2315
Multi-Core Score
3507
A15 Bionic +64%
5753
Asset compression 146.1 MB/sec 208.1 MB/sec
HTML 5 Browser 90.8 pages/sec 122.9 pages/sec
PDF Renderer 113.9 Mpixels/sec 139.1 Mpixels/sec
Image detection 71.8 images/sec 125.1 images/sec
HDR 98.9 Mpixels/sec 179.4 Mpixels/sec
Background blur 11.8 images/sec 22.3 images/sec
Photo processing 29.7 images/sec 53.2 images/sec
Ray tracing 4.01 Mpixels/sec 6.26 Mpixels/sec
Samples 71 tests 37 tests
Compute Score (GPU)
7580
A15 Bionic +169%
20400
Background blur 11.8 images/sec 35.4 images/sec
Face detection 6.39 images/sec 44.8 images/sec
Horizon detection 0.24 Gpixels/sec 0.62 Gpixels/sec
Edge detection 0.52 Gpixels/sec 0.82 Gpixels/sec
Gaussian blur 0.38 Gpixels/sec 0.84 Gpixels/sec
Feature matching 0.11 Gpixels/sec 0.3 Gpixels/sec
Stereo matching 28.2 Gpixels/sec 71.1 Gpixels/sec
Particle physics 1164.8 FPS 2198.2 FPS
API Vulkan Metal
Samples - 19 tests
Compute results use different APIs (Metal vs Vulkan/OpenCL) and are not directly comparable!

3DMark

A cross-platform benchmark that assesses graphics performance in Vulkan (Metal)
3DMark Solar Bay
Score - 3765
Stability - 71%
Graphics test - 14 FPS
Section 1 - 19 FPS
Section 2 - 14 FPS
Section 3 - 9 FPS
3DMark Wild Life Extreme
2062
A15 Bionic +38%
2854
Score 2062 2854
Stability 90% 76%
Graphics test 12 FPS 17 FPS

PCMark 3.0

Benchmark for evaluating overall system performance in everyday workloads
PCMark 3.0
Web score 5096 -
Video editing score 6152 -
Data manipulation score 6691 -
Photo editing score 16500 -
Writing score 8573 -

Gaming

Table of average FPS and graphics settings in mobile games
PUBG Mobile 81 FPS
[Ultra]
-
Call of Duty: Mobile 44 FPS
[Ultra]
-
Fortnite 29 FPS
[Low]
-
World of Tanks Blitz 51 FPS
[Ultra]
-
Genshin Impact 58 FPS
[Ultra]
-
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang 60 FPS
[Ultra]
-
Device Huawei Mate 40 Pro
1344 x 3140
-
We provide average results. FPS may differ, depending on game version, OS and other factors.

Recent User Tests

The latest benchmark tests that have been submitted by users
HiSilicon Kirin 9000
No benchmark results yet
Apple A15 Bionic
DateBenchmarkResult
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-18 (Bionic)AnTuTu1336740
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-12 (Simon)AnTuTu1146332
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-08 (lUjekSh)GeekBench GPU18864
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-08 (lUjekSh)GeekBench CPU2327 / 5604
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-03 (YulikπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦)AnTuTu1289105

Specifications

Full list of technical specifications of Kirin 9000 and A15 Bionic

CPU

Architecture 1x 3.13 GHz – Cortex-A77
3x 2.54 GHz – Cortex-A77
4x 2.05 GHz – Cortex-A55
2x 3.23 GHz – Avalanche
4x 2.02 GHz – Blizzard
Cores 8 6
Frequency 3130 MHz 3230 MHz
Instruction set ARMv8.2-A ARMv8.5-A
L1 cache - 256 KB
L2 cache - 12 MB
Process 5 nanometers 5 nanometers
Transistor count 15.3 billion 15 billion
TDP (Sustained Power Limit) 6 W 6 W
Manufacturing TSMC TSMC

Graphics

GPU name Mali-G78 MP24 Apple A15 GPU
Architecture Valhall 2nd gen Apple Bionic GPU
GPU frequency 759 MHz 1338 MHz
Pipelines 24 5
Shading units 32 128
Total shaders 768 640
FLOPS 1165.8 Gigaflops 1712.6 Gigaflops
Vulkan version 1.3 -
OpenCL version 2.0 -

AI Accelerator

Neural processor (NPU) AI accelerator Apple Neural Engine
NPU theoretical performance - 15.8 TOPS

Memory

Memory type LPDDR5 LPDDR4X
Memory frequency 2750 MHz 2133 MHz
Bus 4x 16 Bit 4x 16 Bit
Max bandwidth 44 Gb/s 34.1 Gb/s
Max size 16 GB 6 GB

Multimedia (ISP)

Storage type UFS 3.1 NVMe
Max display resolution 3840 x 2160 2732 x 2048
Video capture 4K at 60FPS 4K at 60FPS
Video playback 4K at 60FPS 4K at 60FPS
Video codecs - H.264
- H.265
- VP9
- H.264
- H.265
- VP8
- VP9
- Motion JPEG
Audio codecs - AAC
- AIFF
- CAF
- MP3
- MP4
- WAV
- AAC
- AAX
- AAX+
- AC-3
- AIFF
- CAF
- E-AC-3
- MP3
- MP4
- WAV

Connectivity

Modem Balong 5000 -
4G support LTE Cat. 24 LTE Cat. 24
5G support Yes Yes
Download speed Up to 4600 Mbps Up to 7500 Mbps
Upload speed Up to 2500 Mbps Up to 3000 Mbps
Wi-Fi 6 6
Bluetooth 5.2 5.0
Navigation GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, NAVIC GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS

Info

Announced October 2020 September 2021
Class Flagship Flagship
Model number - APL1W07
Official page HiSilicon Kirin 9000 official site -
Successor - HiSilicon Kirin 9000S - Apple A19 Pro

Cast your vote

So, which SoC would you choose?
304 (50.2%)
302 (49.8%)
Total votes: 606

Comments

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