Samsung just sent out a tweet saying a new Exynos 5 Octa will be announced next week. They say it’ll be “more powerful” and “enhanced”, but don’t provide any details. I’d like to speculate on what they might unveil, so if you’re interested, then read on.
https://twitter.com/SamsungExynos/status/357862747381313537
Before I talk about the new Octa, I’d like to talk about the one that’s “out” right now. I say “out”, but you have to try really hard to find one. Most S4 owners out there have the Qualcomm variant. Why is this the case? Rumors say Samsung had issues mass producing the Exynos 5 Octa, but those are only rumors.
What is the current Octa all about? While it does indeed have eight cores, only four of them are on at any given moment. The chip essentially has two clusters. One cluster uses ARM’s Cortex A15 processors. The other uses ARM’s Cortex A7 processors. When you’re not doing something processor intensive, the A7s are used. When you need the extra juice, the A15s kick in. On the GPU side, there’s an Imagination Technologies SGX544MP3.
So what can Samsung possibly change?
If they stick to 28 nanometer transistors, then they could swap out the A15s for A7s and stick in an even faster GPU. Doing that would give them a true eight core chip that uses all cores simultaneously. And the faster GPU would be needed for higher resolution displays. MediaTek is rumored to be doing this with the MT6592.
On the other hand, if they announce a 20 nanometer chip that’ll most likely start shipping during the first half of 2014, then they could increase the clock speeds of both the CPU and GPU, though that would be a bit boring to be honest.
What about moving to 64 bit? I personally think it’s too early for that, and we’re likely not going to see 64 bit chips until early 2015. I could be wrong, of course.
Anyway, we’ll know everything we’ll need to know in a week.
