Samsung Reveals Its Latest Mobile Processor Chip, The Exynos 5 Octa

Samsung became the third major ARM SoC maker to launch an extreme-performance product, for high-end smartphones and tablets, this CES. Hot on the heels of NVIDIA Tegra 4 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 800, the Korean silicon giant launched the Exynos 5 Octa, which stakes claim as being the industry's first eight-core ARM SoC.

While it's true that the chip packs eight CPU cores, it is based on ARM's big.LITTLE micro-architecture, in which two sets of four cores each take turns at either handling heavy processing loads, or light/stand-by loads. One of the two sets consists of high-performance Cortex-A15 cores, while the other energy-efficient Cortex-A7. When any of the four Cortex-A15 cores is being underutilized, power to it is gated, and a Cortex-A7 core relieves it. When a Cortex-A7 core is under stress, it wakes up a faster Cortex-A15 core to take over.

In addition to the ARM big.LITTLE micro-architecture, Exynos 5 Octa sees Samsung stick to mult-core ARM Mali-400 graphics, albeit retrofitted to handle display resolutions as high as 4K UHD (3840 x 2160). The Exynos 5 Octa will also be among Samsung's first chips to be manufactured at the 28-nanometer silicon fabrication process at its facility in Austin, Texas. Samsung didn't get into specifics such as clock speeds and TDP.

"The new Exynos 5 Octa introduces a whole new concept in processing architecture…designed for high-end smartphones and tablets," said Stephen Woo, president of System LSI Business, Device Solutions Division, Samsung. "When you want multiple applications to perform at their best, you want the best application processor currently available—the Exynos 5 Octa."

Smartphones and tablets based on the new chip will begin rolling out later this year. Don't be surprised if the Galaxy S IV is a candidate.

Leaked Picture Confirms Galaxy S IV Specifications

by Filipon March 5, 2013 7:40 PST

Last month Samsung invited everyone to witness the launch of Galaxy S IV smartphone at Times Square on March 14. There were plenty of rumours for one of the most anticipated but according to the latest leak we finally have confirmed specifications.

Faryaab Sheikh, an Android developer, tweeted a picture of AnTuTu benchmark that reveals Samsung Galaxy S IV specifications. According to the picture, the Galaxy S IV features an Exynos 5410 octa-core processor clocked at 1.8 GHz, which denies rumours about Samsung having problems with Exynos 5 Octa.

Furthermore, the device comes with 4.99-inch full HD display boasting a mighty 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution, 2 GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system.

Along with the picture of specifications, somebody with a Galaxy S IV has also performed an Antutu benchmark and revealed all the performance of Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa SoC. We can clearly see that the Galaxy S IV outperforms all of the handsets, but it would be intriguing to see how it performs with recently released HTC One.

However, the disappointed thing is that the device is most likely to be built out of plastic, according to Russian analyst Eldar Murtazin. He claims that he has already seen the Galaxy S IV and that it uses a similar plastic like its predecessor.

From what I've read, there will be two versions of the Galaxy S 4: one that uses the Samsung Exynos Octa 5 system on a chip (SoC), and the North American version that uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 SoC.

Because 3GPP LTE is commonly used in North America, US-market GS4's use the Snapdragon 600 because it works specifically with 3GPP LTE radio/antenna subsystems.

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