Samsung had a lot of nerve announcing an octa-core chip at CES this year. Not only did that chip fail to reach the United States and most European markets, but it’s not even using all eight cores at the same time. The chip is essentially two quad core processors glued to each other. When your phone needs to do something really intense, it’ll switch to the faster quad core cluster. When you’re doing stuff that’s not too crazy, like writing a text message, the lower power cluster is used.
MediaTek, who designs chips that are ending up in more and more devices making their way to international markets, recently told PC World that they’re going to launch a “True Octa-Core” chip during Q4 this year. And sure, enough, if you go to MediaTek’s website, they poke fun at Samsung’s way of counting cores. How exactly are they using all eight cores at the same time? Simple. They use eight ARM Cortex A7 cores instead of four ARM Cortex A15 and four ARM Cortex A7 cores, like Samsung does. Sadly, there are no additional details to share, like which GPU MediaTek is using, clock speeds, etc., but Q4 isn’t that far off. The real question is when will we see the first phones using this chip? That might have to be a 2014 affair.
