Video Performance Comparison. PXA and IMX Processors for Various CODECs

Media for small, embedded devices is in our future. We ran some quick tests on the leading PXA (Marvell) and i.MX (Freescale) CPU architectures to see where the current and likely future price/performance leader is. The operating system, across the board, was Windows CE. We ran the same media file, compressed four different ways, on three CPUs with three different media players. Performance differences of greater than two to one were seen; however these differences are small compared to the potential effect of application-specific features that exist with these highly specialized CPUs.