Samsung Galaxy S4 - era of powerful mobile processors – Processor

Let me continue from my previous blog on Samsung Galaxy S4. So what is that most exciting part of Samsung Galaxy S4? It is its heart and brain –  its central processor Exynos 5 Octa. This mighty processor packs 4 cores of Cortex A15 and 4 core of Cortex A7 in a small chip using 28 nanometer process.

You must be wondering why I am raving so much about this processor. That is, because this is where I think future of computing is going to be. I firmly believe that server side computing will eventually move to cloud and remote hosted server farms. Personal and on-premise computing for small and medium size business  will eventually shift to computer powered by such processors.

As stated earlier, Exynos5 Octa packs quad cores of 1.8 GHz A15 and quad core of 1.2 GHz A7. Even though Samsung press release does not clearly states this, it appears that these processors are arranged in a big.LITTLE architecture that allows all core to be used concurrently but with heavy duty tasks going to power hungry and more powerful A15 cores and lighter tasks getting assigned to A7 cores. In addition, this processor comes with a Tri-core SGX544MP3 533 MHz GPU capable of delivering 51.2 GFLOPS of processing power.

Such processors are really powerful, capable of supporting high end graphics processing, voice recognition, and if needed, algorithms for optimization and computing. I foresee such processors also getting a foothold in business computing. I look forward to other releases of octal core and higher density processors from competitors.

PS: Yesterday I received my Freescale quad core processor based little toy computer from China. It is an inexpensive tiny little thing, but packs more computing power than an average entry level laptop.

Samsung Galaxy S4 : Era of Powerful Mobile Processors – Phone

 

 

Even though I have been in industry for over two decades and can claim to be very familiar with technology, I still keep getting amazed by new innovations in semiconductor, communication & mobile technologies. Yesterday Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy S4 phone. This phone comes with several exciting cool features. In case you haven’t yet seen this phone, here is a list of some of the cool features

1. Dual camera -  13 mega pixel front camera with tons of cool camera applications.
2. Language translator – A very useful feature that translates voice and text on the fly
3. Smart pause/smart scroll – Another great innovation – this enhancement of Galaxy S III’s Smart Stay feature senses when you look at the screen or away from it, automatically scrolling pages up or down, and pausing and resuming videos.
4. Smart watchON – That makes your phone a remote for other gadgets in your home
5. Air view/Air Gesture – A great usability feature that lets you control your phone by hand gestures without actually touching it. With hand gestures you can accept or reject calls, browse web and photos and do several other tasks
6. Temperature and humidity sensors – These new sensors nicely complement “S Health” application that come with Galaxy S4

Quality and variety of features in Samsung Galaxy S4’s bundled application  are now rivaling and even exceeding those coming with Apple’s products. It will be interesting to see next product from Apple. As of now I plan to buy Samsung Galaxy S4.

 

PS: I have not yet mentioned the stuff that is most exciting to me. This exciting stuff is Exynos 5 Octa processor that powers this baby. I will write more about that processor in another blog.