Exynos 4 Quad 1.4 GHz 32nm HKMG Announced for Next Galaxy Smartphone
by Brian Klug on April 25, 2012 10:34 PM EST- Posted in
- Samsung
- Android
- Exynos
- SoCs
- Exynos 4 Quad
Just a week before its Samsung Mobile Unpacked 2012 event where it will announce "the next galaxy smartphone," Samsung has officially announced what SoC will be inside. The answer is Exynos 4 Quad, which is no doubt the Exynos 4412 we've heard about before. Exynos 4 Quad is built on Samsung's 32nm HKMG process and consists of 4 ARM Cortex A9s running at up to 1.4 GHz. Samsung reports 20% lower power with Exynos 4 Quad over Exynos 4 Dual (4210), though it doesn't say at what clocks or workload. In the past, Samsung has claimed 40% lower power on 32nm HKMG compared to their 4xnm process.
Samsung also notes that Exynos 4 Quad has power gating on all four A9s, in addition to per core frequency and voltage scaling. This is an interesting move away from the one frequency plane shared across all cores architecture of Exynos 4210, and to the aSMP (asynchronous SMP) architecture similar to what Qualcomm has so far exclusively used. Samsung doesn't note what GPU blocks are inside Exynos 4 Quad, however Mali400MP4 at higher clocks seems likely. Samsung notes that the Exynos 4 Quad is both package (12 x 12 x 1.37 mm) and pin compatible with the 32nm Exynos 4 Dual (4212). Lastly, Samsung Semiconductor hasn't updated its A9 series catalog page, however I woud fully expect the new SoC to pop up before day's end.
Update: Samsung Semi has also uploaded a YouTube video demonstrating the Exynos 4 Quad and Exynos 5 Dual SoCs. Exynos 5 is shown powering a WQXGA display, and there are some clear shots of the Exynos 4 Quad running GLBenchmark Egypt.
Source: Exynos 4 Quad Minisite, Korea Newswire
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phoenix_rizzen - Friday, April 27, 2012 - link
And, besides, you'd want to wait for the A7 cores to be finalised and shipping in 2+1 or 4+1 big.LITTLE setups (2 or 4 A15 cores with 1 A7 core). That's when the fun will really begin. :)2+1 for phones, 4+1 for tablets, and never merrier shall we be. :D
apinkel - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
Glad it's finally a been announced. All the speculation of an exynos 5 (and the 1080p screen) for the GSIII was getting a bit out of hand.I'm curious how this will do from a battery life and performance standpoint as compared to the snapdragon S4 and tegra 3. I'm looking pretty hard at an S4 based phone but I am interesting in seeing how the 4412 does.
ilkhan - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
Slightly disappointed, but I'll still be getting one just to have a more powerful phone in the meantime until an A15 phone pops up. Possibly the next Nexus? Who knows.A15+T604+Big.Little would make for an amazing SoC.
Zink - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link
Over on Engadget everyone is going on about 4 cores crushing the competition but I was really hopping this would be an renouncement for all of the above being in production and coming out in a few months. I don't see how this will provide more than an incremental update to the user experience performance wise. The screen might be better but for browsing and apps I can't see a pin compatible processor with some extra cores really being noticeable over the GSII.teiglin - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link
Yeah, the extra two cores provide so little benefit for phone applications it's silly. Looks like I'll be getting a One XL when they're available instead of waiting for this--at least the S4 cores are a bit faster than the A9s and manufactured on a comparable process.It is unsurprising if you put it into an Intel-like "tock" context--this is just a tock with a smaller process, more cores, and slightly higher clock speeds, and we'll have to wait another year for a tick in the GS4, with A15s and mali6xx.
Reikon - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link
Actually this would be more like Intel's tick. Tock is for major architecture changes. Tick is for process node changes.TheHappyStick - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link
I believe that this would count as a "tick" actually but it does seem that most ARM SoCs are moving to a similar tick-tock release schedule.richworks - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link
It was back in November that Samsung officially announced that the Exynos 5 series are being shipped to consumers... Why haven't Samsung decided to use the A15 cpus? What's holding them back from releasing the SGS 3 with 5250? I am genuinely curious to know why...Aenean144 - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link
They are not ready. Q4 2012 is likely the earliest for mass production for a couple of reasons. Cortex-A15 SoCs likely require mature 32/28 nm nodes for shipping mass quantities of them. TAANSTAFL. Higher performance requires more power. To get an A15 SoC into a phone platform, it'll need lower voltage, lower power circuitry. A more mature node can do that better in mass quantities. As of today, nobody has a mature 28/32 nm node except for Intel.Secondly, semiconductor vendors are notoriously optimistic for when they can ship things. Samsung shipped prototype parts to hardware vendors, not consumers. It'll take awhile before a prototype chip is turned into a working platform containing radio chips, power management chips, I/O chips, etc. 6 months to do that is ridiculous optimistic. Try 1 year.
Mosea - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link
I will be very interested how it performs compared to Qualcomm MSM8960 processor with Adreno 225 GPU in HTC One XL. I think the best Anrdoid phone will be a competition between these two.