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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  • phoenix_rizzen - Friday, April 27, 2012 - link

    From the benchmark comparisons with Tegra3, it'll probably be something like:
    - Krait better at low-thread-count CPU-intensive tasks
    - Exynos better at high-thread-count CPU-intensive tasks
    - Exynos better at GPU-intensive tasks
    - Krait better at saving battery power

    Where it will really get interesting is when the S4Pro ships (Krait CPU cores plus Adreno 3xx GPU). As that is when you'll really see the power of the Qualcomm SoCs.

    (Or, so the theory goes.)
  • 1ceTr0n - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link

    You complain about the newest phone having a quad core CPU in comparison to dual core which won't perform as well in comparison to quad core phones once ICS is fully implemented in most phones.

    Please go back to iPhone.
  • Impulses - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link

    Four slower cores vs two significantly faster cores... Would you rather have a C2Q or a dually i3/i5?
  • cosminmcm - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link

    A C2Q, definitely.
  • Exodite - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link

    I'd say that's a poor call.

    To use Anandtech's own bench... http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/50?vs=289

    And that's with the 9550 vs. the 2100, where the latter realistically should be a 2125 or 2130 today.
  • snoozemode - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link

    What are you doing with your phone that won't run good on the SGS3? Playing a home-made ported Mass Effect 3?
  • SydneyBlue120d - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link

    So we need to start a petition to Google to use the 5250 in the Google Phone 2012 version? It is rumored Samsung will be another time the partner, so we can hope in 5250:
    http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120425PD205.html
  • Zink - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link

    They always do new phones with the new Android. I seems possible that Android 5 and A15 CPUs could be ready for Q3.
  • SilentSin - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link

    Stupid marketing gimmicks..Give me two faster cores over 4 slow cores eating up die and power real estate any day. I'm not running crysis on my phone. On the video, watch the power consumption part closely at the bottom: the comparison is between *dual* 45nm vs. *dual* 32nm and the savings aren't all that great mW-wise (don't fall for the old % trick). I can only imagine what it would look like with all four cores going balls out. Another year of phones with shite battery life. Color me unimpressed.
  • S20802 - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link

    Didn't you read this bit...
    "power gating on all four A9s, in addition to per core frequency and voltage scaling"
    A power gated core is as good as no core when no threads are scheduled on it and the under used core will be downclocked and undervolted.

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