With Exynos 7420, Samsung was able to break new records of processing performance in mobile devices that has not been yet achieved by any other smartphone. While Intel has yet to catch up to Samsung's powerful SoC, the company's Atom Z3580 SoC is able to deliver impressive levels of performance, and since it carries a low manufacturing cost, it can be found in cost-effective products like Asus Zenfone 2.
One reason why Atom Z3580 is cheaper to manufacture is because it possesses a lithographic process of 22 nm, in contrast to Exynos 7420's 14 nm FinFET architecture. Additionally, Samsung's flagship mobile chipset is only present in the South Korean firm's flagship smartphone lineup, Galaxy S6 and its respected variants. While Samsung wants to focus the performance of its 14 nm SoC to its own product, the company is not doing itself a favor by keeping its Exynos 7420 limited to its own products (apart from the rumored Meizu MX 5 Pro).
It is however, taking bulk orders from tech giants like Qualcomm and Apple for their own chipsets, which are going to be processed on the 14 nm FinFET architecture. Given below are the number of cores that Atom Z3580 and Exynos 7420 feature, along with the clock speed of each core.
Exynos 7420:
- Four Cortex-A57 cores at 2.1 GHz
- Four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.5 GHz
Atom Z3580:
- Quad-core CPU running at 2.33 GHz
Eight cores are plentiful to make short work of the four cores running in Intel Atom. Unfortunately, this level of performance can only be witnessed in benchmarking applications. When a regular interface is taken in to consideration, then even a quad-core is sufficient enough to provide a fluid mobile experience. This is one of the reasons why devices like Zenfone 2 has become so popular in such a small time span.
If smartphone owners are looking to receive the best possible performance out of mobile devices, then purchasing a device which features an Exynos 7420 (which at the moment happens to be the Galaxy S6 family) should be the target. Otherwise, acquiring a price/performance handset featuring Intel Atom Z3580 is more than enough to deliver a smooth smartphone experience.
