When Samsung officially announced the Samsung Galaxy Alpha yesterday, much of the attention was on the fact that Samsung was producing a metal-framed device in response to the “consumer market.” It was also officially revealed that Samsung's new Exynos 5430 octa-core processor will power the Galaxy Alpha. As we are now discovering, the new chip is actually a big step forward in terms of the technology making its way into a consumer device. It turns out the Exynos 5430 is the first 20nm high-K metal gate (HKMG) chip to be used in a smartphone.
Samsung has changed the manufacturing process for the high-K metal gate so that it comes last in the process. This helps protect the gate from the stress of high and low temperatures experienced during the rest of the manufacturing process. The new 20nm process improves upon the 28nm standard that has been used for several recent years now in most chips. The end result of these changes and improvements is a chip that should consume less energy, produce less heat, yet perform at comparable levels to existing chips. The design also opens the door to greater performance in the future as the chip is tweaked and improved.
source: AnandTech
still no LTE
Neato.