Samsung to show an 8-core big.LITTLE chipset next year

[wicked]

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Samsung is rumored to put a quad Cortex-A15 CPU inside the Galaxy S IV with the Exynos 5450 chipset, but EETimes is reporting that the Korean company has a more interesting chipset in the works - the first one to use ARM's big.LITTLE technology. This tech pairs a number of powerful Cortex-A15 cores with the same number of low-power Cortex-A7 cores (similar to NVIDIA's fifth core in Tegra 3). The chipset seamlessly switches between the high and low power cores depending on the load (but it can't run all at the same time).

The chipset in particular will pack four A15s clocked at 1.8GHz and four A7s clocked at 1.2GHz. The A7s will reportedly match a quad-core Cortex-A8 CPU (not that such exist), while the four A15s should offer a big increase over the already powerful A15 duo that powers the Nexus 10. The chip will be built on a 28nm process and pack 2MB of cache.
We're sure that there will be plenty of rumors that this will be the chipset in the Galaxy S IV, but it's more likely to see it in a tablet first.


Source: EE|Times

 

[FoxKat]

So the advantages are obviously greater horsepower on demand with the quad A15 cores at 1.8GHz, but the ability to conserve power by running on the quad A7 cores at 1.2GHz during less intensive demands. It's a shame they can't run simultaneously for the extra boost the A7s would add to the mix during extreme demand, but then as the old saying goes..."give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile!" :biggrin:

 

[Xplorer4x4]

Seems a bit over kill to me. I can appreciate the concept but I think Nvidia has it right with the 4 big/1 little idea. I could maybe understand 4 big/2 little but anything more seems like it would just be pointless. What could you do that could be using 4 little cores? Let's say you are some how using 50% of all 4 little cores. How is this any more efficient then using say one full core on the big chip?

 

[FoxKat]

Seems a bit over kill to me. I can appreciate the concept but I think Nvidia has it right with the 4 big/1 little idea. I could maybe understand 4 big/2 little but anything more seems like it would just be pointless. What could you do that could be using 4 little cores? Let's say you are some how using 50% of all 4 little cores. How is this any more efficient then using say one full core on the big chip?

I tend to agree with your analysis. Being able to back down from 4 cores to one would have a considerable impact on power consumption. I'm curious to see how much less power the 4 LITTLE cores consume over the 4 LITTLE big cores.

Sent from my DROID2 using Tapatalk 2

 

[johnomaz]

I'm with both of you. I'm on my dual core S3 and it still feels quite powerful. I get how more cores can be more battery efficient but needing to have a small CPU to use when you don't need the power to me feels...expensive and not needed. I'd rather have less core but powerful cores than have to have two sets.