Samsung's Exynos 4 Quad Processor Coming To Next Galaxy S Smartphone

The ultramobile landscape just gets more and more interesting by the week. Samsung's next-generation Galaxy smartphone is widely expected to launch next week, but what's a new smartphone without a new CPU? Not much, as it turns out. The famed Galaxy S II will likely see an upgrade, with the Galaxy S III taking the flagship crown. But what'll be inside of it? This new chip. It's a new Exynos 4 Quad processor, clocked at 1.4GHz per core and designed on 32nm HKMG process technology. It's based on the ARM Cortex-A9 quad-core processor, which promises twice the power at a 20% lower power bill compared to its predecessor, the 45nm process-based Exynos 4 Dual. That's a major, major leap forward. Here's a bit more gloating straight from Samsung:

"To improve power efficiency, Samsung adopted hot-plug functionality to support on-off switching for each core as well as the per-core dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS), which offers a dramatic reduction in power consumption by adapting different levels of voltage and frequency when changing workloads.

Having identical form factor measurements (12mm X 12mm X 1.37 mm), the Exynos 4 Quad is pin-to-pin compatible with the 32nm process based Exynos 4 Dual, allowing mobile device designers to immediately adopt the new solution without additional cost, engineering or design efforts.

In addition, the new processor incorporates a full HD 30 frame per second video hardware codec engine for high resolution 1080p video recording and play-back, an embedded image signal processor interface for high-quality camera functionality and an HDMI 1.4 interface for sharp and crisp multimedia content transmission.

Samsung developed a power management IC (PMIC), the S5M8767, as a companion chip to power the Exynos 4 Quad processor. By integrating various circuitry such as nine highly efficient and programmable buck converters and 28 low-dropout regulators (LDOs) into the small package of 5.0 mm x 5.0mm x 0.4mm, the S5M8767 is designed to scale up or down the dynamic voltage depending on the clock speed in 6.25mV step for managing power delivery and maximizing battery life at the system level."

The real kicker is that Samsung has confirmed that the chip will be at the heart of the next-gen Galaxy phone, and better still, it's sampling to other major handset makers, so it won't be exclusive to the GSIII. Not bad, Sammy!