When we techies look at and compare smartphones or tablets, we look at several specifications – the first spec we look for is what we are going to look at, the display and just how good the resolution is going to be, and will accept nothing less than Full HD. That would be a 1920 x 1080-pixel resolution, however, in 2014 we will be treated to Quad HD, or a 2560 x 1440 resolution. The second item we look at is the processor, CPU, or chipset – whatever you want to call it – that, coupled with the amount of RAM, is a good indicator of how fast the device will perform.
Samsung makes their own processors under the name of Exynos, however their flagship phones sold in the U.S., the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series, normally uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors. Samsung claims it is not because of a 4G LTE conflict with the Exynos chips, but due to lack of quantities of chips available. Samsung does claim that our mobile devices would run better with their new Exynos 5 Octa processors because of three reasons – big.LITTLE HMP, Widcon, and GPGPU – so let us take a closer look at why these three items will make your smartphones and tablets run faster and more efficient.
big.Little with HMP
The main word in Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa processor is the word “Octa,” which means eight, as in eight cores. However, the eight cores are not the same size or used for the same purpose. There are four big (Cortex -A15) cores and four little (Cortex -A7) cores, hence the name, big.LITTLE technology, mixed with Heterogeneous Multi-Processing (HMP). The larger cores handle the heavy-duty processing chores such as, graphic oriented games or HD movie playback, while the little cores are for light duty jobs such as, web browsing, or social media tasks.
The HMP is what sets off Samsung’s big.LITTLE from the others – the normal configuration would assign a task to all eight cores whether that task really required all eight or not. HMP assigns tasks to all eight cores based on the task at hand, allowing the processor to maximize performance. The Exynos with HMP can run one big core and two LITTLE cores, whereas a non-HMP processor will have to run all four big cores or all four LITTLE cores. With HMP, the process is run much more efficiently, maximizing the powerful big cores when needed and the efficiently of the LITTLE cores.
Widcon Technology
Samsung’s exclusive Widcon technology in their Exynos 5 Octa allows for wide bandwidth for fast processing power that allows 30-percent faster data transfer and low power consumption for longer battery life. Conventional solutions require that the data between the DRAM and processor must travel through conventional wires, but the Widcon solution allows the data to travel direct to the processor, rather than going through a circuit board, allowing an increase in the bandwidth for faster processing and less power usage.
GPGPU
GPGPU stands for General Purpose computing by GPU and this helps produce a High Quality Display. The Exynos 5 Octa uses the GPGPU for graphics processing and the ARM experts claim:
“The result is improved performance and energy-efficiency and a more efficient use of the system as a whole, making computational photography, computer vision, advanced imaging, point-of-interest extraction and augmented reality possible because of the extended processing capacity.”
The GPGPU can handle workloads more efficiently and an increase performance and compared to its previous version, the Exynos 5 Octa’s GPU is 2.3 times faster in 3D graphics processing.
Please let us know on our Google+ Page what you think of Samsung processors – would you like to have a Samsung Exynos 5 Octa processor or a Qualcomm processor in your next Samsung devices.
Source: Samsung Tomorrow