Samsung recently held a presentation for its next-gen dual-core Cortex-A15 Exynos 5250 processor and their refresh of the current dual-core Exynos line. The real meat of the presentation was Samsung's breakthrough mobile system-on-a-chip (SoC) with the 32nm technology. Recently, several folks, myself included, where disappointed that Samsung hasn't debuted any quad-core tech; however, the big advantage of them taking the time to perfect their 32nm process instead, is that we will see huge battery efficiency improvements.
During the presentation, Samsung showcased their Exynos 4212 Cortex-A9 based-processor, which is the 32nm refresh of the 45nm 4210 that is in the SGS2. The important thing to take from their presentation is that this new improved version of the chip was running at a higher clock speed, but had a 40% overall decrease in battery usage. That might pique your interest...
The Exynos 5250 dual-core CPU was also built on the 32nm tech, but it is a much more robust generation of tech and will likely start out at 2GHz. It too will be designed to be easy on the battery life, although at those speeds it will likely use more battery than the 4212 line. Still, it got me to thinking that I would be perfectly happy sticking with a dual-core chip over a quad-core chip, if it will give me much greater battery life. Obviously, the future goal is to create a quad-core or more chip that barely sips any energy at all, but in the interim, going with a smaller manufacturing process like the 32nm will either allow manufacturers to add more transistors on a die, thus making the chip more powerful, or it will allow them to create chips that are more efficient on energy use and heat dissipation. Sign me up for that last part!
One last bit of info gleaned from this presentation is that Samsung is actually still developing their quad-core solution, including a version for the 4000 line. It's the quad-core 1.8GHz 4412 with Mali-604 GPU. There are even some rumors that it will be this quad-core chip in the next SGS3. Samsung is also working on a beast of a chip which is the quad-core Cortex-A15 2GHz Exynos 5450 with the Mali-658 GPU, although this one will likely be just for tablets. Regardless of Samsung's quad-core designs, it's nice to see a company working to perfect their tech before over-marketing it.
Other manufacturers, like NVIDIA, may have already beat Samsung to market with a quad-core chip, but NVIDIA's tech is still running on the older 45nm structure. Perhaps, Samsung made the smart bet on the future by focusing on shrinking the die before rushing a quad-core chip to market. Only time will tell which strategy was wisest.
There are more pictures of the presentation at the source link below.
Source: PhoneArena
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