As excitement mounts for the highly anticipated launch of Samsung’s Galaxy SIII, which is expected to take place on 3 May, the company has added some fuel to the smartphone fire by showcasing its latest Exynos application processor (AP).

Like its name suggests, Samsung’s Exynos 4 Quad, is a quad-core 1.4 GHz AP, based upon the ARM Cortex A9 quad-core design and constructed on the High-k Metal Gate (HKMG) low-power process technology. The Korean tech giant asserts that this energy efficient processor will deliver double the processing power compared to its its predecessor, the 45 nm process-based Exynos 4 Dual, while consuming 20% less battery power.

Taehoon Kim, vice president of System LSI marketing, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics explains: “The quad-core processor offers phenomenal multitasking abilities surpassing any single or dual application processor. Since all the cores must share a single battery, the power management and efficiency in the limited battery capacity are indispensable for mobile computing devices.”

The benefits of multi-core processing

Samsung also stated that multi-core processing enables smartphone and tablet users to do more tasks in a shorter amount of time. For instance, users can stream a video which will run on one core, whilst the other cores update applications in the background, connecting to the internet and perform a virus scan all at the same time. The company added that its Exynos 4 Quad is particularly adept at heavy-load applications the likes of 3D games and video editing.

In addition, the new processor incorporates a full HD (1080p) 30 frame per second video hardware codec engine for high resolution video recording as well as playback, an embedded image signal processor interface for high-resolution camera functionality and an HDMI 1.4 interface for multimedia content transmission to HDTVs and monitors.

This AP boasts an identical form factor to its predecessor with the same measurements (12 x 12 x 1.37 mm), meaning that the Exynos 4 Quad is “pin-to-pin compatible” with the 32 nm process based Exynos 4 Dual. Samsung said that this will allow mobile device designers to immediately adopt its newest edition to the Exynos range without additional cost, engineering or design efforts.

Powering the Galaxy SII

Samsung said that the Exynos 4 Quad is already in production and more importantly noted that this processor is scheduled to be adopted first into its “next Galaxy smartphone that will officially be announced in May.”

“The application processor is a crucial element in providing our customers with a PC-like experience on mobile devices. Samsung’s next Galaxy device, which will be officially announced soon, offers uncompromised performance and groundbreaking multi-tasking features, thanks to Exynos 4 Quad’s powerful performance and efficient energy management technology,” concluded Hankil Yoon, senior VP of the product strategy team at Samsung’s Mobile Communications Business.

In other related news from the mobile processing front, Intel recently revealed that the next-generation in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems for some of Nissan production vehicles, will be powered by the latest generation Intel Atom processors as of 2013.