Samsung announces industry's first dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 SoC

On November 30, Samsung announced new dual-core 2 GHz Exynos 5250 processors, based on ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore. Built using 32nm high-k metal gate low power technology, they are capable of executing 14 billion instructions per second (Dhrystone MIPS), almost double the performance of leading Cortex-A9 processors.

"The ARM Cortex-A15 brings unparalleled performance to our Exynos processor family and the exploding mobile marketplace," said Dojun Rhee, vice president of System LSI marketing, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics. "Designers need an application processor platform that delivers full high definition multimedia capabilities, fast processing speed and high performance graphics to meet end users’ expectation for a connected life on the go. The advanced low-power, high-performance processor technology of the new Exynos 5250 continues to deliver an unprecedented level of performance for users to enjoy a completely new mobile experience."

Exynos 5250 has support for 2560 x 1600 (WQXGA) displays, giving mobile users much crisper video. It has the added bonus of providing paper-clear reading of eBooks and web pages. The embedded DisplayPort additionally means that those static pages are refreshed directly by the frame buffer memory, removing the need for the application processor to send refresh instructions. This in turn helps to improve overall efficiency.

3D graphics applications benefit from a four-fold performance over the dual-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A9 processor. Stereoscopic 3D video playback provides an additional improvement for some high-spec 3D games.

Memory bandwidth has doubled to 12.8 GB/s, helping to provide the high-resolution graphics mentioned above, 3D graphics and faster data processing.

Additional features include:

• Embedded Image Signal Processor, offering 30 fps at 8MP image size
• Full HD video hardware codec, giving 60 fps of 1080p video recording and playback
• HDMI 1.4
• SATA, UART, USB
• external USB 3.0, eMMC 4.5, eSD 3.0

Samsung are currently providing customers with samples, and expect mass-production by Q2 2012.