Not long after we broke the news on the Samsung Galaxy S3 benchmark leak, the South Korea-based conglomerate unveiled its next powerhouse, the Exynos 4 Quad SOC. And not only is it confirmed to ship with the next Galaxy phone, but it is also in the process of sampling to other smartphone and tablet manufacturers.
The new processor from Samsung is designed based on the quad core ARM Cortex A9 SOC. And being built on the HKMG low-power process technology, the chip is apparently capable of packing in clock speeds of over 1.4GHz, making it twice faster with 20% lower energy consumption than its 45nm process-based Exynos 4 Dual.
“The quad-core processor offers phenomenal multitasking abilities surpassing any single or dual application processor. Since all the cores must share a single battery, the power management and efficiency in the limited battery capacity are indispensable for mobile computing devices,” expressed Taehoon Kim, vice president of System LSI marketing, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics. “Given the diverse functionalities consumers are demanding from their mobile devices today, the Exynos 4 Quad meets those high-performance needs while keeping power consumption very low.”
Since the processor packs in multiple cores, it’s likely to be an ideal choice for 3D gaming, video editing, and running intensive simulation. This new addition to the Exynos family wraps in a video hardware codec engine for delivering full HD 1080p video in 30fps recording and playback. There’s also an HDMI 1.4 interface that’s accompanied by an image signal processor which is embedded onto the SOC.
According to the company, the Exynos 4 Quad processor is already in the production stage. And as previously noted, it’s expected to arrive with the Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone that should go official in May. And who knows, since it’s said to be pin-to-pin compatible with the Exynos 4 Dual SOC that’s based on the 32nm process as well, we might even see a few older devices getting beefed up in the future.