(iTers News) - Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd unveiled a souped-up version of Exynos 5 Octa application processor, or AP family that features a 6-core ARM Mali-T628 GPU processor.

The roll-out of the Mali GPU-embedded octa-core AP is to keep pace with increasingly growing demand for richer graphics capabilities, as a growing majority of  smart phones and table PCs come complete with a lot sharper image quality, graphic –rich 3D game apps and other perceptual UI apps.

The new Exynos 5 Octa AP also marks the industry’s first implementation of the six-core ARM Mali-T628 GPU processor into the SoC. 

The previous version of Exynos 5 Octa AP comes with PowerVR GPU from Imagination Technologies. 

Compared with the predecessor, the Mali T628 MP6 core GPU-based Exynos 5 AP    perform over two times better in 3D graphic processing capabilities.

The newest member of the Exynos family is also able to perform general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU), accelerating complex and computationally intensive algorithms or operations, which used to be the traditional workload of a CPU.

This new family member also supports OpenGL ES 3.0 and Full Profile Open CL 1.1, which enables the horsepower needed in multi-layer rendering of high-end, complex gaming scenarios, post-processing and sharing of photos and video, as well as general high-function multi-tasking operations.

“Demand for richer graphic experiences is growing rapidly nowadays,” said Taehoon Kim, vice president of System LSI marketing, Samsung Electronics.

“In order to meet that demand from both OEMs and end users, we developed this processor which enables superb graphical performance without compromising power consumption,” added he.

The Exynos 5 Octa family is the industry’s first implementation of ARM’s big.Little CPU core configuration scheme that comes complete with high-performance 4-core ARM Cortex- A15 and ultra-low power 4-core A7 to hit a balance between power and performance.   

The newest Exynos processor is powered by ARM Cortex-A15 processors at 1.8GHz with Cortex-A7 core at 1.3 GHz in a big.LITTLE processing implementation, too.

This improves the CPU processing capability by 20%, compare with the predecessor family by optimizing the power-saving design.

Its built-in multiple image compression, or MIC IP block also plays a part in lowering the total system power when bringing up pictures or multimedia from memory to display panel. This outstanding power management feature results in maximizing the operation hours of a mobile device with a high-resolution display such as WQXGA (2500x1600). In particular when it comes to browsing the web or doing multimedia application requiring the frequent screen refresh, the technology greatly helps cut power consumption.

 

The new Exynos 5 Octa processor also features a memory bandwidth of 14.9 gigabytes per second paired with a dual-channel LPDDR3 at 933MHz, enabling fast data processing and support for full HD Wi-Fi display. This new processor also incorporates a variety of full HD 60 frames per second video hardware codec engines for 1080p video recording and playback.

Samples of the new family of Exynos 5 Octa is now available, and the mass-production is scheduled to start in August