Kirin 9020 vs A17 Pro

We compared the 8-core HiSilicon Kirin 9020 (Maleoon 920) with the older 6-core Apple A17 Pro (Apple A17 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 9020
  • Has 2 more cores
  • Supports 33% higher memory bandwidth (68.2 against 51.2 GB/s)
Pros of Apple A17 Pro
  • Has a smaller size transistor (3 versus 7 nm)
  • Higher GPU frequency (~66%)
  • 51% higher CPU clock speed (3780 vs 2500 MHz)
  • Performs 25% better in floating-point computations
  • Better instruction set architecture
  • Shows better (up to 6%) AnTuTu 11 score – 1467K vs 1383K

Benchmarks

Performance tests in popular benchmarks

AnTuTu 11

The AnTuTu Benchmark measures CPU, GPU, RAM, and I/O performance in different scenarios
1383793
A17 Pro +6%
1467470
CPU 484142 374357
GPU 269177 463612
Memory 340806 184670
UX 289668 444831
Total score 1383793 1467470
Samples [10 tests] [21 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
1370
A17 Pro +117%
2969
Multi-Core Score
4446
A17 Pro +71%
7599
Asset compression 169.6 MB/sec 254.1 MB/sec
HTML 5 Browser 129.9 pages/sec 166 pages/sec
PDF Renderer 126.6 Mpixels/sec 180.7 Mpixels/sec
Image detection 85.1 images/sec 178.7 images/sec
HDR 118.5 Mpixels/sec 240.3 Mpixels/sec
Background blur 14.7 images/sec 26.7 images/sec
Photo processing 43.4 images/sec 77.8 images/sec
Ray tracing 5.21 Mpixels/sec 7.76 Mpixels/sec
Samples 7 tests 32 tests
Compute Score (GPU)
4881
A17 Pro +475%
28057
Background blur 6.04 images/sec 55.5 images/sec
Face detection 3.28 images/sec 65.1 images/sec
Horizon detection 0.24 Gpixels/sec 0.8 Gpixels/sec
Edge detection 0.32 Gpixels/sec 1.08 Gpixels/sec
Gaussian blur 0.26 Gpixels/sec 1.11 Gpixels/sec
Feature matching 0.03 Gpixels/sec 0.43 Gpixels/sec
Stereo matching 20.6 Gpixels/sec 87.6 Gpixels/sec
Particle physics 568.2 FPS 3313.9 FPS
API Vulkan Metal
Samples 6 tests 22 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 Steel Nomad Light
A17 Pro +206%
1391
Score 454 1391
Stability - 71%
Graphics test 3 FPS 10 FPS
3DMark Solar Bay
6089
Score - 6089
Stability - 73%
Graphics test - 23 FPS
Section 1 - 29 FPS
Section 2 - 23 FPS
Section 3 - 16 FPS
3DMark Wild Life Extreme
3655
Score - 3655
Stability - 63%
Graphics test - 21 FPS

Recent User Tests

The latest benchmark tests that have been submitted by users
HiSilicon Kirin 9020
DateBenchmarkResult
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-13 (AndreyK)AnTuTu 111372431
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-09 -> LeofMateAnTuTu 111291607
πŸ“˜ 2026-08-22 (A_s_t_r_a)AnTuTu 111328024
πŸ“˜ 2026-04-18 (Antonio)AnTuTu 111395526
πŸ“˜ 2026-02-25 (BlizardRx)AnTuTu 111337422
Apple A17 Pro
DateBenchmarkResult
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-28 (Kuan.28)AnTuTu 111752198
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-23 (podsolnuh)AnTuTu 111357765
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-11 (Zabza)AnTuTu 111599694
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-10 (elio)AnTuTu 111445771
πŸ“˜ 2026-07-28 (human)Geekbench 6 GPU26734

Specifications

Full list of technical specifications of Kirin 9020 and A17 Pro

CPU

Architecture 1x 2.5 GHz – TaiShan V121
3x 2.15 GHz – TaiShan V120
4x 1.6 GHz – Taishan-Little
2x 3.78 GHz – Everest
4x 2.11 GHz – Sawtooth
Cores 8 6
Frequency 2500 MHz 3780 MHz
Instruction set ARMv8-A ARMv8.6-A
L1 cache - 256 KB
L2 cache 1 MB 16 MB
L3 cache 10 MB -
Process 7 nanometers 3 nanometers
Transistor count - 19 billion
TDP (Sustained Power Limit) - 8 W
Manufacturing SMIC TSMC

Graphics

GPU name Maleoon 920 Apple A17 GPU
Architecture Maleoon Apple Bionic GPU
GPU frequency 840 MHz 1398 MHz
Pipelines 4 6
Shading units 256 128
Total shaders 1024 768
FLOPS 1720.3 Gigaflops 2147.2 Gigaflops
Vulkan version 1.3 -
OpenCL version 3.0 -
DirectX version 12 -

AI Accelerator

Neural processor (NPU) Da Vinci Apple Neural Engine
NPU theoretical performance - 35 TOPS

Memory

Memory type LPDDR5X LPDDR5
Memory frequency 4266 MHz 3200 MHz
Bus 4x 16 Bit 4x 16 Bit
Max bandwidth 68.2 Gb/s 51.2 Gb/s
Max size 16 GB 8 GB

Multimedia (ISP)

Storage type UFS 4.0 NVMe
Max display resolution 3840 x 2160 1290 x 2796
Max camera resolution - 1x 48MP
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
- AV1
- 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 6000 Snapdragon X70
4G support LTE Cat. 24 LTE Cat. 24
5G support Yes Yes
Download speed Up to 7500 Mbps Up to 7500 Mbps
Upload speed Up to 3500 Mbps Up to 3500 Mbps
Wi-Fi 7 6
Bluetooth 5.4 5.3
Navigation GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS, NAVIC GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS, NAVIC

Info

Announced November 2024 September 2023
Class Flagship Flagship
Model number Hi36C0V110 APL1V02
Successor - - Apple A19 Pro

Cast your vote

So, which SoC would you choose?
21 (52.5%)
19 (47.5%)
Total votes: 40

Comments

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