Samsung reveals massively improved Exynos 5 Octa mobile processor


As predicted, Samsung has unveiled a new and improved version of its next-generation mobile processor, the Exynos 5 Octa.


Though Samsung initially announced the Exynos 5 Octa system-on-chip at CES 2013 in January, it then disappointed many of its users by omitting the chip from 70 per cent of the initial batch of Samsung Galaxy S4 devices.


Now the company has rectified the production issues with the chip and is ready to go to market with a new and vastly improved version.


The new Exynos 5 Octa SoC will retain the ARM big.LITTLE method of providing eight processing cores - four for high performance tasks and four for less intensive applications. In this way an excellent balance of performance and battery efficiency should be achieved.


This revised chip now runs on four ARM Cortex-A15 processors at 1.8GHz, with four additional Cortex-A7 cores at 1.3GHz for those lighter tasks. The result should be a 20 per cent increase in processing capability over the previous version.


However, the true boost here comes from the Exynos 5 Octa's revised GPU. It now utilises ARM Mali-T62 MP6 cores, which boost 3D graphics performance two-fold when compared to the initial stunted run of the Exynos 5 Octa chip.


Through dual-channel LPDDR3 at 933MHz, the new Exynos also boasts a huge memory bandwidth of 14.9 gigabytes per second. This "industry leading" standard enables full HD Wi-Fi display support.


Samsung's new Exynos 5 Octa SoC will enter mass production in August, so there's a chance we could see it in the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 when it takes a bow in September.


Next, read about how the Samsung Exynos 5 Octa chip works