LG has been rumored for a while to be working on its own processors, and it seems that they will arrive soon, probably sometime next year. This new chip they are working on is called “Odin”, and will have a quad-core version, that is targeted at smart TV’s, and an octo-core version, that’s targeted at smartphones and tablets.
The quad-core version is supposed to come with a Mali T604 GPU, which is the same GPU found in the Exynos 5250 inside the Nexus 10 and Samsung’s ARM Chromebook. The 8-core version will be paired with the Mali T760, which was targeted for the 2nd half of the year, and is specifically “optimized for Android”, according to ARM.
This is where things get a little confusing, though. The most confusing part is them using Mali T604 for the quad-core version, which is an old GPU, that wasn’t even rated very highly at the time. If they wanted the quad-core version of the chip to be a more mid-range chip, then why didn’t they just use the lower-end Mali T720 that’s coming out at the same time with Mali T760?
The second confusing thing, is that this is starting to sound less like 2 versions of the same chip, and more like 2 very different chips. The quad-core 2.2 Ghz one might arrive earlier in some of LG’s smart TV’s that will probably be announced at CES 2014 (hopefully with the privacy setting working properly this time), while the 8 core one will probably arrive in the second half of 2014, considering it’s going to use the Mali T760 GPU.
It would also make very little sense for LG to make its own ARMv7 chip at this point, when everyone else is trying to move to ARMv8. Releasing a 32-bit CPU in an LG G3 next year wouldn’t do LG any favors, if by then most OEM’s will be using 64-bit chips in their flagship devices. So it’s very likely the 8-core chip will in fact be 64-bit (could be either custom LG core, or Cortex A57/A53 combination), while the quad-core one that will be used in smart TVs will probably remain 32-bit, especially if it comes out in the first half of 2014.