Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S IV smartphone is expected to start shipping in April, and some models will feature the company’s new 8-core Exynos 5 Octa processor. So it’s not exactly shocking that the company has announced that mass production of the new chip is scheduled to start in the second quarter of 2013.
But it’s not just Samsung phones and tablets that use the company’s chips… so we could eventually see these powerful octa-core chips in products from other device makers as well.
The Exynos 5 Octa features 4 ARM Cortex-A15 processor cores and 4 lower-power ARM Cortex-A7 cores. They work together using ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture which lets the more powerful (and power hungry) components kick in when they’re needed, while relying on the lower power cores when they’re good enough for performing basic tasks.
Samsung says this allows the chip to use as much as 70 percent less power than one which only features ARM Cortex-A15 processor cores.
The chipset can handle devices with displays up to 2560 x 1600 pixels, USB 3.0 interfaces, full HD video playback at 60 frames per second, and 13 megapixel cameras.
I’m not aware of any products other than the Samsung Galaxy S IV which are expected to use the Exynos 5 Octa just yet… but now that production is ready to start I suspect it won’t be long.
Chinese device makers, for instance, are already using last year’s Samsung Exnos 4412 quad-core processor in tablets such as the Ramos W42 and Hyundai T7.
Tooooo many power (and cores). How much it cost (each one)?????
It would be very interesting as a home server. Ideally where one could use either core set on battery, it would be good if all the cores could be used in parallel when connected to a power supply based on processor load.
This would actually be a somewhat interesting home microserver processor… and tablet processor. I’m actually NOT expecting it to be a particularly oustanding phone chip, since those A15’s are hungry, and having 4 A7’s is kind of… for the kind of low power tasks you’d want on the little side. I think 2+2 would have been smarter personally.
But we’ll see once review units go out.