Chinese chip maker Allwinner is working on its very first octa-core chip that will use ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture, which includes two pairs for four cores. This in turn will allow Allwinner A80 Octa to either fire-up all eight cores at once or just four of them to prolong the battery life.
Unfortunately though, Allwinner failed to mention what “kind of cores” it will use. Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa comes with four high-performance Cortex-A15 and four battery-friendly Cortex-A7 cores, and we hope that Allwinner will follow suit. It could also opt for slower Cortex-A9 cores, though.
The Allwinner A80 Octa is due out around the end of 2013 or by the first quarter of 2014.
Before I let you go, it’s worth adding that Allwinner is known for providing some rock-solid documentation for its chips, which is the fact that enabled hackers to cram Linux on many devices that use the company’s chips. We hope they’ll continue with this practice, helping vendors launch innovative products that could go beyond Android and enable Linux to boot alongside Google’s platform.
[Via: Liliputing]