Following Qualcomm, Samsung is also close to be launching a new smartphone processor with two cores. Based on ARM architecture, the new processor promises five times the graphics performance of current chips and enable 1080p video recording and playback.
Samsung i9000 Galaxy S
The excitement of processor development is switching more and more to smartphones as we are seeing substantial progress several times every year in this product category. Samsung today said that it will be ready to introduce its first dual-core processor for smartphones, tablets and netbooks in the fourth quarter of this year. Codenamed Orion, the chip integrates two variants of the ARM Cortex A9 architecture that run at a clock speed of 1 GHz. If Samsung’s claims hold up, then the application processor should be able to run demanding applications much more efficiently and reduce the overall power consumption when compared to today’s CPUs.
Multicore seems to be the trend to watch in cellphones, with Qualcomm, Nvidia and now Samsung being the main players. We are expecting multicore news also from Intel within a few weeks.
The hardware of the Samsung processor is based on a 45 nm production process and includes 32 KB of data cache, 32 KB of instruction cache as well as 1 MB L2 cache. While we have to wait to see what this processor is capable of, the pure specs are impressive and show that smartphone processors may soon be just as capable as netbook CPU.
Samsung said the processor will enable full HD video playback and recording at 1080p resolution, which is a huge step up from the 720p that is possible in today’s high-end smartphones. Also, we should remember that 1080p was a big challenge for mainstream desktop processors – and was not possible until the introduction of dual-core processors at the end of 2005 and capable discrete graphics cards at about the same time.
Even more stunning, Samsung says the chip will not just play 1080p, but will do that at a full 30 fps. Using a new graphics processor, which the company did not explain any further, the 3D graphics performance will jump by a factor of 5. A GPS unit is now directly integrated into the processor itself, there is a triple-interface controller, which means that Orion can run two screens and output data on a third screen such as a TV via on-chip HDMI 1.3a integration. In related news, Samsung also announced faster embedded NANF flash memory, which is built in 20 nm and stores 16 GB of data on a single chip. Conceivably, smartphones will integrate a dazzling 64 GB of integrated mass storage within 1 year: The new memory will be ready for mass production later this year, Samsung said.
So, how fast is this new processor? There are just estimates out there at this time, but current benchmarks indicate that dual-core smartphone processors could be changing the application landscape as soon as multithreaded software is making its way into these devices. By the way, Qualcomm announced third-generation Snapdragon dual-core processors with 1.2 GHz and 1.5 GHz that are expected to arrive late this year and we know that Motorola is planning on releasing a 2 GHz smartphone that is based on Nvidia’s dual-core Tegra product later this year as well.
Apple’s A4 processor, which is based on an ARM Cortex-A8 design, has been generally described as the most capable chip combination in the smartphone landscape today, but new benchmark results indicate that Apple may be coming under pressure at least as far as the hardware capability is concerned – especially if we are considering Samsung’s promised GPU horsepower.
The Samsung i9000 Galaxy S was just crowned as the fastest smartphone by GLBenchmark, with a performance of 1834 frames, ahead of the iPhone 3GS with 1077 frames and the iPhone 4 with 1039 frames. The performance discrepancy and the 3GS’ high score is due to a difference in screen resolution, which is led by the iPhone 4: The Galaxy S shows 384,000 pixels on its screen, versus 153,600 of the iPhone 3GS and 614,400 of the iPhone 4. The database does not include all current smartphones, including the Droid X. However, just this morning we saw the Samsung Epic 4G being listed with a not-yet-official score of 1907 frames. According to the GLBenchmark, the Galaxy S has an advantage over the iPhone 4 in the traditional GLBenchmark Pro ES 1.1, but is slightly behind in the HD version, 3D rendering quality, texture filtering and CPU floating point performance. It is ahead in integer operations, pixel fill rates, triangle drawings and lighting effects.
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