Samsung has announced its latest system-on-chip (SoC) for next-gen smartphones and tablets. Built using a 32-nm process, the Samsung Exynos 5250 will be one of the world's first hardware platforms to utilize the ARM Cortex-A15 CPU with a duo of cores running at 2GHz each that deliver support for WQXGA (2560 x 1600) resolution and stereoscopic 3D.
Samsung Exynos 5250 can be considered as the successor of ARM Cortex-A9-based Samsung Exynos 4210, which powers Samsung's high-end device, the Galaxy S2 smartphone. Of course, such a high resolution support makes the 5250 a likely choice for tablet makers, while high-end smartphones may also benefit from its power.
Samsung Exynos 5250 features memory bandwidth as high as 12.8 GB/s, while overall computing performance is reportedly twice that of the Exynos 4210 (14,000 DMIPS in 5250 vs. 7,500 DMIPS in 4210). The new solution is also reportedly four times more powerful in terms of graphics than the previous platform from Samsung.
Unveiled more than a year ago, ARM Cortex-A15 CPU offers up to 2.5GHz clock speeds and up to four cores. Apart from Samsung, Texas Instruments has also revealed an upcoming Cortex-A15-based hardware solution, the TI OMAP 5 platform.
Mass production of Samsung Exynos 5250 is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2012.
