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Samsung puts latest Exynos 5 Octa chip into a prototype tablet, we go hands-on (video)
The Exynos 5 Octa was definitely one of the biggest things to come out of CES. Given how well the regular dual-core Exynos V performs in the Nexus 10 and Chromebook, devices containing the souped-up Octa version could be really special. As you probably know already, we're looking at four Cortex-A15 cores for when you need raw performance for gaming or media creation, and then four energy-saving Cortex-A7 cores for less demanding tasks like surfing or watching video. We've just seen how fast and fluid this big.LITTLE core-switching technology is, courtesy of a Samsung reference tablet on show at ARM's booth at MWC -- check it out for yourself after the break.
Samsung's next-gen Exynos 5 Octa rumored to have only current-gen PowerVR graphics
There's nothing we can concretely do or say about the Exynos 5 Octa until it's in a device and in our hands. It's all just educated guesswork in the meantime, but that happens to be something AnandTech is rather good at. That site has reached the conclusion, based on "numerous sources," that the Octa probably uses a PowerVR 544MP3 GPU clocked at 533MHz. If true, this implies that the ARM Mali T-604 used in Exynos Dual devices like the Sammy Chromebook somehow couldn't meet Octa's needs, and that the higher-specced T-658 perhaps wasn't ready. It also suggests that Octa's graphical and GPU compute performance might lie somewhere between that of the third-gen iPad (A5X) and the fourth-gen (A6X). Frankly, a newer GPU would have been more exciting, especially given the appearance of PowerVR Series6 at CES, but big.LITTLE should still give us plenty to talk about when the new eight-core chip finally arrives.
Samsung announces eight-core Exynos 5 'Octa' chip at CES
Samsung's second keynote, and the news keeps coming. The mobile giant has just annouced a new Exynos 5 Octa chip, based on the ARM big.LITTLE / Cortex A15 architecture. Designed to be a low powered, high performance mobile processor. Samsung claims that the 3D gaming performance is twice that of anything available at the moment. The demonstration given on stage by Dr Woo showed him searching for restaurants and watching an HD movie while singing the virtues of its fast performance and power sipping abilities. While we don't have full details at the moment, this sounds very much like the chip we heard about back in November that is expected to run dual quad-core set ups (1.8GHz A15 for the hard work, 1.2GHz A7 for lighter tasks) all on a 28-nanometer process.
