Well look what we have here, Samsung has begun teasing a new version of the Exynos 5 Octa processor. This is the processor currently found in some models of the Galaxy S 4, however it is also expected to be the processor used in the still-unannounced Galaxy Note III. We aren’t expecting Samsung to announce the Note III until September, however this Exynos update is coming next week.

That being said, the details as to what we can expect are on the light side. Samsung took to Twitter using the @SamsungExynos account with talk of this being a “new” Exynos 5 Octa and one that is more powerful and enhanced. They have also said this is the next step in the evolution. Basically, this is just what you would expect from a teaser – enough to leave you wanting more.

Looking back, the original Exynos 5 Octa chips were mentioned in early 2013. There was talk in January during CES and then again in March when Samsung announced production would begin during the second quarter. These chips feature an 8-core processor that will be split between four Cortex A15 cores and Cortex A7 quad cores.

The key with the setup is that only four of these eight cores are active at any given time. Which cores are active depends on the current task. Samsung originally noted the Cortex A15 side would handle tasks to include heavy duty apps such as graphic-rich games and the Cortex A7 side would handle the lighter tasks to include emailing, web searching and mapping.

The current version of the Exynos 5 Octa has the A15 at 1.6GHz and the A7 at 1.2GHz. With a bit of speculation based on the more powerful and enhanced comment from Samsung and it doesn’t seem all that crazy to expect an increase in clock speeds. Of course, the official answer will be arriving next week.

6 COMMENTS

  1. Exynos is overrated. My SGSIII with Qualcomm S4 processor clocked at 1.5GHz is noticeably faster in every day use than my Note II with Exynos clocked at 1.6GHz. The difference is night and day.

    • Well, I don’t agree with you.
      My Note 2 seems performs better than my S3, but it could be just a perception.

      • It’s an irrelevant comparison anyways. The Note 2 uses an Exynos Quad based on 4x Cortex A9 cores. The SGS3 uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 chip based on 2x Krait cores. The Krait cores will perform better than the A9 cores, but there are more A9 cores than Krait in this comparison. In general, the Krait cores should (and will) feel faster than the A9 cores, but if you’re doing something particularly multithreaded, than the A9 cores win in raw performance. The Exynos Octa is based on Cortex A15 (for the performance side, which is what matters in this discussion), so it will wipe the floor clean with even a quad core Snapdragon S4. The new Snapdragon 800’s will give it a run for its money though, even though the 800’s Krait is technically not as high performance as the A15. The reason? the 800’s can be clocked super high.

        But, most importantly for this discussion, the SGS3 has about the same amount of GPU power as the Exynos Quad, which means that it will feel about the same for day to day use, unless something is wrong with your S3. (too much bloatware, etc.)

        In summary, the S4 Krait in the SGS3 is faster for day to day use than the Exynos Quad in your Note 2 in terms of raw performance, but the new Exynos Octa is not a chip to be trifled with. It is very powerful.

      • There is also a issue of optimization. Even largely single-threaded tests like Sunspider are noticeably faster in Note 2 compared to Qualcomm-based S3 on same browser.

  2. LTE? The same thing happened with the S3 where the Exynos didn’t come on all versions because it wasn’t LTE compatible, but that was fixed when the Note 2 dropped.

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