真乄科技業的頂尖投資團隊

Samsung Electronics has started shipping the industry's first samples of a dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 processor for high-end tablet PCs. 

The 2-GHz Exynos 5250 is built on a 32-nm high-k metal gate low-power process technology and doubles the performance over the previous 1.5-GHz Cortex-A9 family with 14 bn DMIPS. It is set to go into volume production in the middle of 2012.

The Exynos 5250 was designed for 2560 x 1600 (WQXGA) resolution displays which reflects the significance of advanced display technology transitioning toward ever higher and sharper resolutions. The memory bandwidth is doubled to 12.8-Gbyte/s, a key requirement for a processor to support WQXGA resolution displays.

To maximize power efficiencies at the system level, the Exynos 5250 has an embedded DisplayPort (eDP) interface that is compliant with panel self-refresh technology (PSR) applied to the timing controller (T-CON). The embedded PSR technology enables static images to be refreshed directly from the frame buffer memory incorporated in the T-CON, resolving the need for regular display refresh instructions to be made by the application processor in cases such as reading static web pages or e-books.

The 3-D graphics processing capabilities includes stereoscopic support for high end 3D gaming, user-interfacing and 3-D video playback.

It also includes an embedded image signal processor enabling 8 megapixel resolution images at 30 frames per second, a full HD 60 frame per second video hardware codec engine for high resolution 1080p video recording and playback, a HDMI 1.4 interface and embedded booting device interfaces such as SATA, UART, USB and external ports such as USB3.0, eMMC4.5 and eSD3.0.

"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 for Device Solutions at 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."

This article was first published in our sister publication EE Times Europe.