Samsung annuncia l’Exynos 5 Octa: 8 Core CorteX A15 e sbaraglia la concorrenza

Se in questi giorni abbiamo visto annunci importanti a livello di processori, sembra che Samsung abbia sbaragliato la concorrenza. Ovviamente non possiamo ancora sapere le prestazioni del nuovo processore Coreano, ma già il nome promette qualcosa di unico. Si chiama Exynos 5 Octa e in pratica è un processore formato da ben 8 core fisici che lavorano in sincronia. Tutti i Core sono realizzati con processo produttivo a 28nm ma non sono tutti uguali.

Il Quad Core principale è una potentissima unità da 1.8GHz Cortex-A15 che viene affiancata da un Quad Core da 1.2GHz Cortex-A7. Come detto tutti e 8 i processori sono realizzati con processo produttivo a 28nm e sono quindi di ultimissima generazione e in grado di offrire una potenza davvero elevata. Qualcomm ha annunciato lo Snapdragon 800 che riesce a spingersi fino a 2.3GHz di clock ma i 4 core A7 della soluzione Exynos 5 Octa potrebbero portare benefici importanti in termini di consumo energetico. Non resta che attendere i primi benchmark e sperare che Galaxy S4 possa beneficiare di questa nuovissima architettura hardware.

Samsung ha mostrato durante la presentazione alcune sequenze di gaming 3D affermando che le prestazioni sono doppie rispetto agli altri competitor concorrenti. Inoltre il produttore rilancia affermando che l’architettura ARM big.LITTLE che caratterizza questo SoC permetterà un risparmio energetico fino 70% rispetto all’Exynos 5 dual core montato sul Nexus 10.

Hands-on demo with TI’s OMAP5 platform at MWC (video)

It’s TI’s time to brag. We first met OMAP5 when the company’s VP of the OMAP division, Remi El-Ouazzane, unveiled the developer’s reference platform on our stage at CES. While there, he boasted OMAP5 as “the greatest platform on Earth right now,” but we were given only a few insights into the platform’s capabilities. Now, TI is back with a new wave of demos that better show the prowess of OMAP5 — a system-on-chip design that houses a dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 CPU clocked at just 800MHz, two Cortex-M4 cores for low-power processes, along with a PowerVR SGX 544 GPU that handles 3D compositions, and a number of accelerators such as TI’s IVA-HD, which supports both video encoding and decoding and plays 1080p video at a whopping 60fps. We were shown a demo of all these capabilities humming in unison on a 1080p display, along with a complex HTML5 mashup that adds credence to the company’s latest benchmark report. Photography geeks should know the system supports up to 14 megapixel cameras, and is able to process ten shots per second at that setting. We’re told to expect devices based on the OMAP5 platform by the end of the year, and if you’re anything like us, it’s going to be one hell of a wait. Hop the break for the demo.

New Samsung chip has two of everything: two cores, 2GHz, 2560 x 1600 graphics

Sammy’s current Cortex A9-based chips are hardly slackers — the Galaxy Note already proved that to any lingering doubters. Nevertheless, the next-gen Exynos 5250 SoC promises to double that sort of performance, by harnessing two Cortex-A15 chips clocked at 2GHz each, along with a GPU that can output resolutions of up to 2560 x 1600 (WQXGA). It’s like big.LITTLE computing, except without the LITTLE. Samsung reckons it’ll start mass producing the 5250 for use in high-end tablets by the second quarter of next year, which should be just in time to stop NVIDIAfrom getting too cocky.

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ARM hopes to strengthen grip on mobile PCs, take 50 percent of the market by 2015

We’ve already heard rumors that chip designer ARM has been trying to get its wares into the Macbook Air. While we can’t add anything to that particular story, we do have further evidence that ARM is going beyond smartphones and tablets in order to target bigger form factors. The company’s president, Tudor Brown, has just appeared at Computex to declare that ARM wants to conquer the “mobile PC market”, where the company currently only has a 10 percent share. He’s aiming for 15 percent by the end of this year, and an Intel-provoking 50 percent by 2015. “Mobile PC” is a pretty ambiguous category, but we think it’s safe to assume the focus is on low- and mid-power netbooks and ultraportables. Such devices could potentially run off ARM’s forthcoming multi-core chips — like perhaps the quad-core beast inside NVIDIA’s mind-blowing Kal-El processor, or the more distant Cortex-A15. It’s hard to imagine these tablet-centric chips ever competing with Intel’s top performers, but four years is a mighty long time in this business.