Samsung puts Exynos 5 Octa into production: guess who's the first customer
That Galaxy S 4 isn't going to compute tasks through sheer force of will, you know. Just a day after Samsung unveiled the smartphone as its inaugural Exynos 5 Octa device, the company has confirmed that the not-really-eight-core ARM processor should be in mass production during the second quarter of the year, or between April and June. There aren't many more details to share beyond what the company mentioned at CES, but that doesn't diminish what could be a best-of-all-worlds processor: the automatic switching between four Cortex-A15 and four Cortex-A7 cores should give it a performance edge over many of its peers while reducing power consumption by up to 70 percent. We also know that the Octa's graphics performance has largely caught up to peers versus earlier Exynos 4 designs, as Imagination Technologies has confirmed that its PowerVR SGX544MP is providing enough muscle to double 3D performance over the creaky Mali-400 in the Exynos 4 Quad. About the only mystery left is whether or not many companies beyond Samsung will get a chance at some Exynos 5 Octa silicon, although there's one or two prospects.
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Samsung Announces the Availability of Exynos 5 Octa for New Generation of Mobile Devices
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a world leader in advanced semiconductor solutions, announced that its new Exynos 5 Octa application processor is scheduled for mass-production in the second quarter of 2013. The Exynos 5 Octa features an unprecedented eight-core ARM® big.LITTLE™ architecture based on the Cortex-A15™ CPU, technology built for efficient handling of multitasking abilities for high-end mobile devices today.
"High processing performance based on multi-cores has become an essential factor for advanced mobile devices, and what users expect more is how long and seamlessly they can enjoy smart mobile computing experiences," said Taehoon Kim, Vice President of Marketing, System LSI Business, Device Solutions Division, Samsung Electronics, "With the new mobile platform driven by the Exynos 5 Octa processor, which heralds and fulfills such expectations, consumers will be able to experience a new level of mobile computing in a few months."
As highlighted at CES 2013, the Exynos 5 Octa is the world's first mobile application processor to implement the new concept of processing architecture, big.LITTLE™, based on the Cortex-A15™ CPU to offer optimal core use. By housing a total of eight cores to draw from-four powerful Cortex-A15™cores for processing-intense tasks along with Cortex-A7™ quad cores for lighter workloads-the Exynos 5 Octa enables mobile devices to achieve maximum performance. This approach offers up to 70 percent energy saving when performing various tasks, compared to using Cortex- A15™cores only.
The newest Exynos processor will be manufactured using Samsung's latest 28-nanometer (nm) HKMG (High-k Metal Gate) low power process and power-saving design, which increases the power efficiency of the processor by minimizing the static current leakage.
The Samsung Exynos 5 Octa enhances the powerful 3D graphics processing capabilities by more than two-times over the Exynos 4 Quad.
With today's advanced display technology transitioning toward ever higher and sharper resolutions, the Exynos 5 Octa is powerful enough to drive WQXGA (2560x1600) display, the best crystal-clear resolution currently available for mobile devices, enabling users to enjoy crisper video images on their premium smartphones and tablets.
By adopting e-MMC (embedded multimedia card) 5.0 and USB 3.0 interface for the first time in the industry, the new Exynos application processor boasts fast data transfer speed, a feature that is increasingly required to support advanced processing power on mobile devices so that users can fully experience upgraded mobile computing such as faster booting, web browsing and 3D game loading.
Samsung Exynos 5 Octa incorporates a full HD 60fps (frame per second) video hardware codec engine for 1080p video recording and play-back, an embedded 13 mega-pixel 30fps image signal processor interface for high-quality camera functionality, and 12.8GB/s memory bandwidth interface that enables Full HD Wifi display.
