Just a week before its Samsung Mobile Unpacked 2012 event where it will announce "the next galaxy smartphone," Samsung has officially announced what SoC will be inside. The answer is Exynos 4 Quad, which is no doubt the Exynos 4412 we've heard about before. Exynos 4 Quad is built on Samsung's 32nm HKMG process and consists of 4 ARM Cortex A9s running at up to 1.4 GHz. Samsung reports 20% lower power with Exynos 4 Quad over Exynos 4 Dual (4210), though it doesn't say at what clocks or workload. In the past, Samsung has claimed 40% lower power on 32nm HKMG compared to their 4xnm process.

Samsung also notes that Exynos 4 Quad has power gating on all four A9s, in addition to per core frequency and voltage scaling. This is an interesting move away from the one frequency plane shared across all cores architecture of Exynos 4210, and to the aSMP (asynchronous SMP) architecture similar to what Qualcomm has so far exclusively used. Samsung doesn't note what GPU blocks are inside Exynos 4 Quad, however Mali400MP4 at higher clocks seems likely. Samsung notes that the Exynos 4 Quad is both package (12 x 12 x 1.37 mm) and pin compatible with the 32nm Exynos 4 Dual (4212). Lastly, Samsung Semiconductor hasn't updated its A9 series catalog page, however I woud fully expect the new SoC to pop up before day's end. 

Update: Samsung Semi has also uploaded a YouTube video demonstrating the Exynos 4 Quad and Exynos 5 Dual SoCs. Exynos 5 is shown powering a WQXGA display, and there are some clear shots of the Exynos 4 Quad running GLBenchmark Egypt.

Source: Exynos 4 Quad Minisite, Korea Newswire

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  • dagamer34 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link

    Samsung has said in the past that they will have the Exynos 5250 in production this quarter, so when do you expect products with that chip to ship? Q3? Q4?
  • aegisofrime - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link

    If this is what is going into the Galaxy S3 it's downright disappointing. I was hoping for dual-core A15s with the Mali-T648. Oh well :/

    Still, at 32nm HKMG it should be more power efficient than the Tegra 3.
  • MeSh1 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link

    Im with you dude. I wanted A15 5212/Mali-T604. I knew that was wishful thinking considering A15 got a late jump 1Q and I had a strong feeling that it wouldnt make it to the SIII. Im sure the phone will be amazing, just not the guts I was hoping for. Isnt the new RAZR HD gonna have next gen Sanpdragon (Krait)? This will be interesting.
  • retrospooty - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link

    " I wanted A15 5212/Mali-T604. I knew that was wishful thinking considering A15 got a late jump 1Q and I had a strong feeling that it wouldnt make it to the SIII. Im sure the phone will be amazing"

    Ya, but the 28nm SOC's just arent ready yet, not in any mass production scale. It was use this or wait... They chose not to wait. I am 100% sure they will have new phones releasing when 28nm chips come out. This way consumers can make the choice to wait or buy.
  • MrSpadge - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link

    Anything you want to do at 28 nm can be done at 32 nm as well. It's just going to cost a little more (assuming similar yields).
  • shompa - Monday, April 30, 2012 - link

    *hint* smaller manufacturing technique is not cheaper. Yes: You can fit more die candidates on a wafer, but the wafer prices are raised each node shrink. That is why the bulk of semi conductors use 3+ old nodes. Much cheaper at 65nm then 28.
  • ilkhan - Saturday, May 5, 2012 - link

    You do know that Krait, which has been shipping to customers for a while now, is 28nm, right? Samsung is falling behind at this point. Not using A15 in the SGSIII is an expected disappointment.
  • dagamer34 - Sunday, May 6, 2012 - link

    Looking at both HTC One X reviews, I don't think there is any clear winner in performance. Battery life perhaps, but that can always be solved with a larger battery.
  • B3an - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link

    Yeah i was also hoping for dual-core A15, it would have been faster for the vast majority of things. But quad-core is good marketing to all the idiots that don't actually know anything about this stuff.

    I just hope the screen is atleast 720p and Super AMOLED+ (non-pentile), and that the GPU is a powerful mofo to help make up for this.
  • IntelUser2000 - Friday, April 27, 2012 - link

    It's not that they got delayed or anything, you merely fell for marketing. The Cortex A9 devices claimed the same thing, that CPU was ready more than a year before release of first Cortex A9 devices.

    It goes like this in order:
    -A15 architecture standard finalized by ARM
    -A15 architecture gets first licensees
    -In production by xx vendor
    -In production for phones
    -Ready for sale

    Read this article: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5467/samsung-exynos-...

    Back in November, Samsung announced its next generation Exynos 5250 SoC based on ARM’s Cortex-A15 architecture = Translation: Samsung has silicon in fabs

    Samsung confirmed today during its earnings call that the Exynos 5250 has begun sampling and should hit mass production in Q2 2012 = Translation: Samsung will have them sent to phone vendor for implementation

    Add additional 6 months or so and vendors will implement them, because they need to acquire adequate supply, figure out how to make everything work together. Add few months more to reach customers, and do finishing touches.

    That's true for everyone, Tegra 2 phones became available for purchase 3-4 months after announcement. Intel's Medfield phone was announced by Lenovo in CES 2012, first phones just arrived now, in-line with 3-4 months delay between announcement and customer availability.

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