Mediatek's new SOC MT8377 and its difference with MT6577

Mediatek's newer SOC MT8377 is based on the older MT6577 and there is a lot of similarity between them, such as : same GPU (PowerVR SGX531 Ultra),  same CPU core (dual Cortex A9 architecture), the same process technology (40nm), same frequency (1-1.2GHz), same package and same pin configuration (TFBGA package). There are also some differences in the details as listed below...

1) Product positioning : MT8377 is positioned for tablet manufacturers and MT6577 targeted at mobile phones.

2) Different VPU : MT8377 is the first MTK smart chip to support 1080P video decoding by hardware, while the MT6577 only  supports 720P hardware decoding and a software based 1080P video decoding. So the same length of 1080P video playback on the MT8377 will play more smoothly than on the MT6577. This is because the MT8377's VPU unit is stronger.

3) Four different chips: the MT6577 chip uses 4 bundled chips - MT6620 (ie, wireless broadband / WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, GPS and FM transceiver 4-in-1 integrated single-chip), while the MT8377 platform uses the upgraded version of the MT6628. The advantage of MT6628 is the support for Bluetooth 4.0, WIFI speed and stability and the GPS is more sensitive.

4) Improved RAM controller : MT8377 supports LPDDR3 and PCDDR3 dual channel RAM, while in the general version of the MT6577 platform it only supports LPDDR2.

5) Better ROM controller : MT8377's Flash ROM support to eMMC4.5, while the MT6577 supports only eMMC4.41

6) Display resolution: MT8377 product is designed to support the lowest resolution of 1024 × 600, and it also supports higher resolutions viz. 1024 × 768, 1280 × 720, 1280 × 800, 1333 × 768 - four combinations. The MT6577's most commonly supported resolutions are  320 × 480 and 800 x 480.

7) Power consumption : There is only a subtle difference in the power consumption of MT8377 and MT6577 at the same frequency  - only by about 3% which is negligible.

Summary  

The price difference between the 2 chipsets is not much, but the performance upgrade is good especially on the video playback and resolution. Also the RAM and ROM controller upgrades make a difference in the overall performance. Also since the base the MT8377 and MT6577 are pin compatible with small cages to the core software it is an easy upgrade the MT6577 design to MT8577 based tablet design.