Samsung annuncia l'Exynos 5420 Octa: 20% più veloce e con GPU Mali-T628

Quanto è più potente il nuovo Exynos 5420 rispetto alla generazione precedente che ha animato (più o meno) il Galaxy S4? Computazionalmente parlando siamo sul 20% di prestazioni in più, grazie ai quattro core Cortex-A15 a 1,8 GHz ciascuno, e ai quattro core Cortex-A7 a 1,3 GHz (ovviamente parliamo di architettura big.LITTLE), ma è in campo grafico che c'è il vero salto prestazionale, grazie all'impiego della GPU Mali-T628, che Samsung afferma offrire il doppio delle performance grafiche.

La RAM dual-channel LPDDR3 gira a 933 MHz, con un'ampiezza di banda di ben 14,9 GBps, mentre troviamo anche una soluzione per la compressione delle immagini che rende più efficiente dal punto di vista energetico la riproduzione di contenuti multimediali, a ovvio vantaggio dell'autonomia.

Nessuno ha accennato a quando e su cosa lo vedremo in commercio, ma la produzione di massa inizierà ad agosto, in perfetto accordo con le voci che lo volevano a bordo di una delle varianti del Galaxy Note III.

Comunicato stampa a seguire.

Samsung Brings Enhanced Mobile Graphics Performance Capabilities to New Exynos 5 Octa Processor

SEOUL, Korea, July 23, 2013 – Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a world leader in advanced semiconductor solutions, today introduced the latest addition to the Exynos product family with top level of graphic performance driven by a six-core ARM® Mali™-T628 GPU processor for the first time in the industry. With mobile use case scenarios becoming increasingly complex, Samsung's newest eight-core application processor gives designers a powerful, energy efficient tool to build multifaceted user interface capabilities directly into the system architecture. Samsung will demonstrate the new Exynos 5 family at SIGGRAPH 2013 in the ARM booth, #357; Exhibit Hall C at the Anaheim Convention Center.

Samsung's new Exynos 5 Octa (product code : Exynos 5420), based on ARM Mali™-T628 MP6 cores, boosts 3D graphic processing capabilities that are over two times greater than the Exynos 5 Octa predecessor. The newest member of the Exynos family is able to perform General-Purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU) accelerating complex and computationally intensive algorithms or operations, traditionally processed by the CPU.

This product also supports OpenGL® ES 3.0 and Full Profile Open CL 1.1, which enables the horsepower needed in multi-layer rendering of high-end, complex gaming scenarios, post-processing and sharing of photos and video, as well as general high-function multi-tasking operations.

"ARM welcomes the latest addition to the successful Exynos Octa 5 series, which uses ARM's Mali GPU solution to dramatically improve graphics performance," said Pete Hutton, executive vice president & general manager, Media Processing Division, ARM. "ARM big.LITTLE™ and ARM Artisan® Physical IP technologies continue to be at the heart of the Octa series and now complement the new functionality brought by ARM GPU Compute. This combination enables unprecedented capabilities in areas such as facial detection and gesture control, and brings desktop-quality editing of images and video to mobile devices."

"Demand for richer graphic experiences is growing rapidly nowadays," said Taehoon Kim, vice president of System LSI marketing, Samsung Electronics.

"In order to meet that demand from both OEMs and end users, we developed this processor which enables superb graphical performance without compromising power consumption."

The newest Exynos processor is powered by four ARM Cortex®-A15™ processors at 1.8GHz with four additional Cortex-A7™ cores at 1.3 GHz in a big.LITTLE processing implementation. This improves the CPU processing capability by 20 percent over the predecessor by optimizing the power-saving design.

In addition, the multiple image compression (MIC) IP block inside this System-on-Chip successfully lowers the total system power when bringing pictures or multimedia from memory to display panel. This feature results in maximizing the usage hours of mobile devices with a high-resolution display such as WQXGA (2500x1600), in particular when browsing the web or doing multimedia application requiring the frequent screen refresh.

The new Exynos 5 Octa processor also features a memory bandwidth of 14.9 gigabytes per second paired with a dual-channel LPDDR3 at 933MHz, enabling an industry-leading fast data processing and support for full HD Wifi display. This new processor also incorporates a variety of full HD 60 frames per second video hardware codec engines for 1080p video recording and playback.

The new family of Exynos 5 Octa is currently sampling to customers and is scheduled for mass-production in August.