 "Samsung revamps Exynos 5 Octa chipset with new ARM GPU")
Samsung has announced an improved version of its Exynos 5 Octa chipset for smartphones and tablets. This time around, the chipset will see a six-core ARM Mali-T628 GPU, which the company claims will be able to give twice the performance. Earlier installments of the featured SoC came with a PowerVR SGX544MP3. It should be noted that this is the first time that Samsung is roping in this particular GPU chipset for its smartphones and tablets.
According to the company, apart from improved graphics performance, the overall clock speed of both the ARM cortexes in the Exynos 5 Octa chipset will increase. While the ARM Cortex-A15 quad-core will be clocked at 1.8GHz, the Cortex-A7 quad-core will be clocked at 1.3GHz. This will result in an increase of 20 percent in the overall performance of the chipset.
The new Exynos 5 Octa 5420 will still make use of ARM’s big.LITTLE configuration, which means the higher-powered Cortex-A15 cores will be used for CPU intensive tasks, while the Cortex-A7 cores will be directed towards lower-intensity tasks. This is done to reduce the battery drain seen due to processing. As with most other smartphones sporting a quad-core processor, the chipset will make use of only four cores at a time while the SoC switches between the A15 and the A7 cores depending on the kind of work the smartphone is doing.
Samsung has announced a new Exynos 5 Octa chipset (Image credit: AnandTech)
Another addition to the new Exynos 5 Octa SoC is an increased memory bandwidth. The new SoC will support 14.9GB/s, which will be achieved through a 933MHz dual-channel LPDDR3. The improved memory bandwidth will add support for a full HD Wi-Fi display as well as 1080p video recording at 60 frames per second. The new SoC will also see lesser power being consumed due to a new multiple image compression (MIC) IP block that will help in optimising power efficiency when moving multimedia content from the device’s memory to its display.
Samples of the new Exynos 5 Octa 5420 SoC are currently available for customers on demand, but mass-production of the chipset will not begin till August. It should be noted that the previous version of the Exynos 5 Octa chipset, the 5410, was only seen in some models of the Samsung Galaxy S4, namely, the GT-19500, which provided similar performance when compared to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 used in other versions of the Galaxy S4, although there was a difference noted due to lesser battery life in the Exynos SoC-powered device. While there is no official word on which device will feature the new SoC, it is possible that the new Galaxy Note 3, which may be released later this year, will come featuring the new SoC.
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