Samsung has partnered with British ARM to build a new mobile application processor, in an effort to not only increase performance when running multiple applications but also drastically reduce power consumption. “Autonomy is just as important” as processing power in smartphones and tablets, both companies say.
After the Exynos 4 Quad and the Exynos 5 Dual - which Google chose for the Nexus 10 and the Chromebook, Samsung is adding the octa-core Exynos 5 Octa.
ARM's contribution was essential with a new processor technology that bears the characteristic name big.LITTLE: The Exynos 5 Ocra is a SoC (system on a chip application processor) consisting of eight cores. Four "big" ARM Cortex-15s take on the processing power-intensive processes. Four "small" Cortex-7s serve the smaller, usual workload (i.e., the majority of processes). Each core is optimized for different processes and can all work together.
Thanks to this approach, Samsung and ARM claim they have managed to increase energy efficiency by up to 70% compared to the previous quad-core Exynos, increasing the autonomy of the devices. This coexistence of different cores and the sharing of tasks has minimized battery needs without sacrificing performance, they said from the stage of CES 2013.
In a prototype tablet for demonstration purposes, they showed as an example that the Cortex-15 cores took over the playback of HD video transmitted via HD streaming technology and the design of demanding graphics in a game, when Web browsing and the design of navigation maps were the workload for the Cortex-7.
You can see the excerpt from the presentation for the Exynos 5 Octa, (12:34-27:40) in the video below:
