Samsung has introduced another variant of its powerful ARM-based Exynos SoC, the Exynos 5420.
An update over the 5410 that was included in some international Galaxy S4’s (and nowhere else), the Exynos 5420 sports four ARM Cortex-A15 cores clocked at 1.8Ghz and four Cortex-A7 cores at 1.3Ghz. The big.LITTLE combination, as ARM calls it, allows for the more energy-efficient cores to work asynchronously when computing needs are low, ramping up the A15 cores when necessary.
While ARM doesn’t recommend such high clock speeds for its A15 chips, citing high power consumption, Samsung’s newest chip may find its way into tablets and, later, smartphones. The company’s first Exynos 5 chip, the dual-core 5210, powers Google’s Nexus 10 tablet.
The main differences in the Exynos 5420, aside from the slightly higher clock speeds, come in the form of memory bandwidth and graphics processor. Memory bandwidth has been increased to a theoretical peak of 14.9Gbps thanks to new DDR3 chips running at 1866Mhz.
More importantly, the graphics chip returns to ARM’s six-core Mali-T628 configuration from Imagination Technology’s PowerVR SGX544Mp3, giving it a 50% performance boost over the previous SoC.
While Samsung won’t comment as to where the Exynos 5420 will venture on its foray into smart devices, its lack of built-in LTE and high power requirements should preclude it from hitting the Galaxy Note 3, though it may show up in the international model like its predecessor in the GS4.
Source: Samsung
