Samsung unveils the 20nm octa-core Exynos 5430 processor

Samsung made the Galaxy Alpha official yesterday, and apart from being the first metallic Android smartphone from the Korean manufacturer, the Galaxy Alpha is also the first to be powered by Samsung's Exynos 5430 SoC. Today, Samsung has released details on its new mobile processor. As expected, the Exynos 5430 is an octa-core chip (with four Cortex-A15 cores clocked at 1.8 GHz, four Cortex-A7 cores clocked at 1.3 GHz, and the Mali T628MP6 GPU), but it's distinct from existing Exynos chips as it is the first to be built on Samsung's new 20nm process, which the company says offers up to 25 percent less power consumption compared to SoCs built on a 28nm process while not compromising on performance.

The Exynos 5430 also supports big.LITTLE HMP (Heterogeneous Multi-Processing) processing – in simple terms, this means that all the eight cores of the processor can be active at the same time, and can also be individually turned on and off as and when required. Furthermore, the Exynos 5430 supports display resolutions of WQHD (2560×1440) and WQXGA (2560×1600) – the Galaxy Alpha might have an average resolution of 1280×720, but it looks like Samsung's newest Exynos chip won't be left wanting for power on high-resolution devices (it's too bad the Galaxy Tab S is powered by the older Exynos 5420, resulting in a somewhat laggy experience.)

Samsung hasn't published full specifications of the latest Exynos chipset, though you can hit up the source link for all the official details that are available as of now. Before someone asks, we should point out that the upcoming Galaxy Note 4 will be powered by the Exynos 5433 processor, and the Exynos 5430 will likely be reserved for devices that fall a tad below Samsung's flagship phones and tablets.

Source