Samsung’s next flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S III, has long been rumored to sport a quad-core processor. But instead of waiting until its May 3 launch event, Samsung ended up spilling the beans on its next-generation Exynos 4 Quad processor.
The new application processor runs at 1.4 gigahertz, is built on
ARM’s Cortex A9 CPU, and was developed with the new “High-k Metal Gate”
32 nanometer process. All of that means the Exynos 4 Quad is incredibly
energy efficient, while also being a powerful little devil. According to
Samsung, the new chip will double the processing power while being 20
percent more energy efficient than the current Exynos 4 Dual.
Samsung still hasn’t confirmed the Galaxy S III by name, but the
company has made clear that the chip will be in its “next Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
Among the Exynos 4 Quad’s new features are “a full HD 30 frame per
second video hardware codec engine for high-resolution 1080p video
recording and play-back, an embedded image signal processor interface
for high-quality camera functionality and a HDMI 1.4 interface for sharp
and crisp multimedia content transmission.”
Having four cores allows the chip to better handle multitasking — one
core could deal with streaming video, for example, while another could
handle background tasks. And of course, all four cores can work together
for heavier computing loads. In an effort to be power efficient,
Samsung says the chip supports per-core voltage and frequency scaling,
and it can also turn off cores completely.
Samsung wisely made the new processor pin-to-pin compatible with the
Exynos 4 Dual, which means handset makers will easily be able to upgrade
their lines. The Exynos 4 Quad is already in production and is
currently being sampled by other manufacturers.
