Samsung's Exynos Mongoose custom CPU cores - 45% faster than A57

What is different about Samsung from other smartphone manufacturers? The South Korean giant produces a majority of its smartphone components in-house, including processors. We have seen the Exynos 7420 in the Samsung galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, the processor has reported exceptional performance, better than any Qualcomm or Mediatek chipset. The Exynos 7420 is based on Cortex A53 and A57 cores.
Now there are reports pointing towards the development of a custom core CPU design going on at Samsung.

The new chip is being hailed as Samsung Mongoose is built on an entirely different architecture and provides about 45% better single-core performance compared to the Exynos 7420. These new 64-bit chips would have clock speeds up to 2.3 GHz and will be based on ARM v8 instruction set. Further, the chips would be manufactured using the 14nm FinFET technology, same as the Exynos 7420.The first Mongoose chip, allegedly called the Exynos M1, might utilize a Heterogenous System Architecture.

The first set of Mongoose chips are likely to enter production in the next 9 to 12 months, as reports suggest. Samsung would be double careful with the chips, after the problems being faced by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 chipset.
If all goes well, we might get to see the new chipset on next year's flagship, the Galaxy S7.

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Solid State Drives are known for their blazing speeds compared to traditional hard drives, the only two trade-offs that consumers have to make right now is spending more funds for lesser amounts of storage. Now, it appears that those limitations will be removed in the near future, thanks to a new form of memory technology.

This particular technology will be used in all forms of flash memory products, and the two companies that have made the announcement concerning the technology were Intel and Toshiba.

The two tech firms have stated that they are working on a 3D NAND memory chip that will be stacked onto each other in order to store more data. Unlike single plane chips, which are currently used in current generation solid state drives, 3D NAND will be able to increase speeds as well as the total lifespan of the storage product.

Toshiba has stated that it has created the world’s first 48-layer NAND, yielding a 16 GB chip with boosted speeds and reliability. The Japanese tech company has now created flash memory on the 15 nm process, which happens to be the smallest lithographic process for manufacturing such memory.

While the firm has given manufacturers engineering samples, products sporting the new form of NAND flash memory will not be arriving for at least 12 months or more. Side by side, leading manufacturer of desktop, laptop and server processors, Intel has partnered up with Micron in order to start mass production of 32-layer NAND chips. Both companies are sampling large memory chips in the 32GB variant, with 48 GB ones arriving very soon.

According to Micron, the chips could be used to make gum-stick sized M.2 PCI-E SSDs that could boast storage up to 3.5 TB in storage, while SSDs featuring the 2.5 inch form factor could house 10 TB or more.

Samsung was the first company to introduce 3D NAND form of flash memory in its 850 model SSD, so Toshiba, Intel, and Micron will be taking the fight to the South Korean phone giant, assuming those companies can price their storage products aggressively in order to gain an advantage.

Samsung tablets to feature Iris Recognition technology

The South Korean smartphone maker seems to be working on the next iteration of the Galaxy Tab series and the tablets are alleged to feature an Iris Recognition technology. The Stanford Research Institute (SRI) has reportedly struck a licensing deal with Samsung that will allow the company to use the Iris on the Move (IOM) technology in its mobile products.


The first product to feature this technology will be a Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 that will have an IOM module on it. The device is reported to be unveiled at SIA New Product Showcase at ISC West 2015 to be held in April at Las Vegas, and will be available for for purchase soon after.

SRI claims that the iris-based recognition is 1000 times more accurate than fingerprint sensors, as per some tests. SRI has also signed a supply agreement to start and production and sales of the IOM products for enterprise and B2B applications.

We have long been hearing rumors about Samsung's flagship smartphones coming with iris scanners. With this IOM technology, that might turn out to be true as early as this year. It will be featured on the Galaxy Note 5 perhaps.

What is USB Type-C ?

USB type-C is the new hot industry standard connector and cable used to power the new MacBook. The USB-C connector was developed by the USB Implementers Forum, the group of companies that has developed, certified, and shepherded the USB standard. It counts over 700 companies in its membership, including Apple, Dell, HP,  Intel, Microsoft and Samsung. This is important, because it's more likely to be accepted by the majority of PC manufacturers. Contrast this with the Apple-promoted (and developed) Lightning and MagSafe connectors, which have limited acceptance beyond Apple products.

So, is it like the Micro USB?
Yes, the USB-C connector looks like a micro USB connector at first glance, but it's slightly thicker to accommodate its best feature: like Lightening and MagSafe, the USB-C connector has no up or down orientation: as long as the connector is lined up right, you won't have to flip the connector to plug it in! The cables also have the same connector on both ends, so you won't ever have to figure out which end to plug in, unlike the older USB cables we've been using for the past 20 years.

Is this USB 3.1?
Yup, this is USB 3.1, which is theoretically twice as fast as USB 3.0.
It's fully compatible electrically with USB 3.0, though obviously it won't plug in physically without an adapter. By the way, it's about as fast as the original specs for Thunderbolt (10Gbps).

What about those adapters?
The MacBook doesn't come with any adapters aside from the charger and a single USB-C cable. Others will be available separately. Apple's USB-C to USB 3.0 adapter will be $19, but the one that will give you the most utility is the decidedly expensive $79 USB-C AV Multiport Adapter , which gives you USB 3.1 Gen 1 (the old connector), USB-C pass through for charging, and an HDMI port. Since USB-C is an industry standard connector, cheaper adapters are inevitable.

What else does it support?
The USB-C connector in the MacBook supports DisplayPort, HDMI, power, USB, and VGA. Notably absent is Thunderbolt, which is superseded by USB-C just as FireWire was replaced by Thunderbolt .
USB-C to Ethernet is a no-brainer, but you may have to daisy chain an older USB-to-Ethernet adapter to your USB-C adapter for the time being.

Image courtesy: AnandTech