Samsung’s custom-designed cores rely on 64-bit ARMv8 architecture. Samsung did not tell us, but we think these cores are the ones we saw under the Mongoose codename. The first generation

Exynos 7420 was based on four Cortex A57 and four A53 cores, but this new generation has in house developed flavours. Samsung is using four of its Mongoose custom faster performance cores and four power saving Cortex A53.

It is hard to know how fast they will be until Samsung reveals the addition data and performance numbers from it. The launch seems like a carefully planned event and it comes just days after Snapdragon 820 was demonstrated and Huawei unveiled its Kirin 950 octa core.

Samsung told us to expect a 30 per cent performance improvement and 10 percent better power efficiency compared to the Exynos 7 Octa. This is still not enough data to make a guess if it will be faster than the quad core Snapdragon 820.

According to Samsung, Exynos 8 Octa is a one chip solution that includes an integrated modem. The modem part supports LTE Cat 12 download speed and Cat 13 upload speeds. This translates to 600 Mbit download and 150 Mbit uploads and it is a match with Qualcomm’s X12 modem and specification. This is a big deal for Samsung as it is easier to have one SoC that does multiple things including SoC application processor and modem. This puts more pressure on Qualcomm in its potential game to get the Snapdragon in Samsung Galaxy S7.

The graphics part is powered by an ARM Mali T880 GPU. This is a popular part as MediaTek is using it for its upcoming Helio X20 deca core. Samsung didn’t reveal how many shader cores are they using in their chip.

Dr. Kyushik Hong a Vice President of System LSI marketing at Samsung Electronics said.

“The Exynos 8 Octa is a leading-edge application processor for next-generation mobile devices that incorporates Samsung’s mobile technology leadership in CPU, ISP, and modem as well as process technology. With our custom designed CPU cores and the industry’s most advanced LTE modem, consumers using mobile devices with the Exynos 8 Octa will experience a new level of mobile computing.”

In the old days they said “big boys have fabs” now it seems the big boys must have custom cores too. Now it is up to Lenovo, Meizu to go after its own cores it seems.

The mass production of Samsung Octa 8 will begin in late 2015 and probably shipping in devices in early 2016.