You know how the Samsung Exynos 5 Octa mobile processor have always been labelled as not truly an octa-core processor because it can’t use all eight cores at one go? Well, the company recently announced its Heterogeneous Multi-Processing (HMP) solution for its processor that allows Exynos 5 Octa to fully maximize the benefits of the ARM big.LITTLE technology.
This means that with HMP, all 8 cores will be able to function at the same time – four little cores to handle the “lite always on apps and tasks”, and four big ones for the “heavy, graphics intensive stuffs”.
“It’s usually assumed that the big CPU will do all the performance-critical work, however, power-efficient little cores can handle many significant workloads all on their own, so the workload is balanced within the system. big.LITTLE processing is designed to deliver the right combination of processors for a specific job. An eight-core processor with HMP is the truest form of the big.LITTLE technology with limitless benefits to the users of high-performance, low-power mobile products.” – Taehoon Kim, Vice President of System LSI marketing, Samsung Electronics.
The HMP solution for Exynos 5 Octa application processors will be available later this year. Samsung made no mention as to whether the update will arrive for existing devices using the processor like the Galaxy S4. Samsung isn’t the first to have a “true” octa-core processor, back in July, Mediatek also announced its “first true octa-core processor”. Will more cores help improve the overall performance of a device? Qualcomm doesn’t think so, but hey, a healthy competition between these manufacturers can only mean good news for us consumers, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwbeb08W27U
(Source: Engadget 1, Engadget 2, Samsung)
