Samsung Announces Eight-Core Exynos 5 Octa Mobile Processor

Samsung Announces Eight-Core Exynos 5 Octa Mobile Processor

Hot on the heels of Nvidia's Tegra 4 and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800/600 announcements come Samsung's own next-gen Exynos 5 Octa unveiling. The mobile processor will be the first to implement the ARM® big.LITTLE™ processing technology based on the Cortex-A15 CPU. Dr. Stephen Woo, president of System LSI Business, Device Solutions Division, Samsung Electronics described it as a pumped up combination of existing Exynos 5 Dual and Exynos 4 Quad chips - of which the former is found in Nexus 10 and the later, in Samsung Galaxy S III and Note II. 

The key message here is about energy saving despite the enhanced power. Like the Tegra 3 chip, the Exynos 5 Octa activates necessary cores depending on the level of your workloads - there's a total of four powerful Cortex-A15 processors to handle processing-intense tasks along with four additional Cortex-A7 cores for lighter workloads. Samsung promises that the processor will be up to 70 percent higher energy efficiency compared to its previous quad-core chips.

Naturally, the new Exynos 5 Octa is designed for high-end smartphones and tablets - where 3D gaming is concerned, Samsung has vouched that the chip will provide twice the 3D performance of its predecessors. At the keynote event, a live demonstration of EA's 3D racing game, Need for Speed Most Wanted on a reference product has shown that the chop is able to render great graphics performance and real-time response speed.

Will this be in the upcoming Galaxy S IV? Given the timely nature of the announcement and the fact the the Galaxy S IV is most likely due in May, we say it's very likely. Not only that, we are expecting to see high-powered Samsung tablets and perhaps more mobile devices from the Korean company in the near future as well.