CPU benchmarks show that the Raspberry Pi 4 outperforms Raspberry Pi 3 by +36% https://www.geeks3d.com/20190930/raspberry-pi-4-vs-raspberry-pi-3-cpu-and-gpu-benchmarks/
How is this possible given the fact that they both have a quad-core CPU with the Raspberry Pi 3 running at 1.4Ghz and the Raspberry Pi 4 running at 1.5 Ghz?
The Raspberry PI 4 uses a Quad-core ARM Cortex A72 processor while the Raspberry PI 3+ uses a Quad-core Cortex A53 processor. The A72 processor is a newer version (2016) of the ARMv8-A architecture than the A53 (2012).
The A72 uses out-of-order and speculative execution and other improvements to achieve better performance than the A53.
This is analogous to how newer generations of Intel processors have better single core performance than older generations while running at the same clock speed.
