Consumer Electronics giant Samsung have all but confirmed a big Galaxy S III announcement next month in revealing their new Exynos 4 Quad SoC. Building on the 45nm Exynos 4 Dual used in the Galaxy S II, the 32nm Exynos 4 Quad is still based on the ARM Cortex-A9 SoC but will operate at 1.4GHz per core and feature two additional cores. This adds up to a smart device with significantly more grunt that it's predecessor, so long as applications are developed which can take advantage of the chip's extra potential.
Battery life is another area of particular note in mobile devices, and that hasn't gone unnoticed by Samsung. The Exynos 4 Quad will generally be more power-efficient due to the 32nm process upon which it is built, but other features lead Samsung to claim that it actually uses 20% less power than the 45nm Exynos 4 Dual. It's not clear exactly how they are measuring this metric (most likely on a performance per watt rather than full-load standpoint) but it should mean that with similar workloads the Galaxy SIII will utilise less power than an SII.
In order to keep efficiency high when moving to a quad-core base, the Exynos 4 Quad feature per-core on/off switching and dynamic voltage and frequency adjustment. A power management IC (PMIC), the S5M8767, has been developed specifically for the Exynos 4 Quad and allows voltage adjustment in increments of 6.25mV, keeping battery consumption as low as possible.
Other than that, the SoC will include 30 frames-per-second HD 1080p video encode/decode and an HDMI 1.4 interface for content display. The Exynos 4 Quad is pin-compatible with the older Exynos 4 Dual, which should significantly ease manufacturer transition.
Already in production, the Exynos 4 Quad is scheduled to be first-adopted into Samsung’s next Galaxy smartphone that will officially be announced in May. Samsung’s Exynos 4 Quad is also sampling to other major handset makers.
For more information on Samsung's latest announcement visit the Official Samsung Blog
