Samsung is making its belated entrance into the tablet market with Orion. A dual-core processor for tablets and netbooks as well as smartphones, Orion features a 7-inch touch screen weighing 0.8 pounds, 1080p video playback capability and recording, and the ability to power three displays.
"Samsung's new application processor incorporates a rich portfolio of advanced multimedia features implemented by hardware accelerators," the company said in a press release Tuesday morning. "Using an enhanced graphics processing unit (GPU), the new processors are capable of delivering five times the 3D graphics performance over the previous processor generation from Samsung."
Samsung's previous processor generation, Humingbird, powers Android-based Galaxy S smartphones.
Orion's processing boasts speeds of up to 30 frames per second along with improved 3D graphics performance. This great leap forward is attributable to two 1-GHz ARM Cortex A9 cores as well as Samsung’s 45-nanometer technology, which prevents the new high-powered processor from draining battery life. The trend toward dual-core processors will make mobile devices significantly more powerful, but may pose problems with battery durability for that very reason.
Confident it has achieved the balance between processor power and battery life, Samsung will make Orion available to select customers as soon as late 2010, and will initiate mass production during the first half of 2011.
Meanwhile, the company projects sales of up to 25 million smartphones by year's end, a massive increase compared to earlier estimates, due mostly to its devices' recent allegiance to Google Android.
As for the emerging market for dual-core smartphone processors, Samsung can expect to face increasingly stout competition. Intel is looking to establish a presence in smartphone technology with its recent acquisition of Infineon's wireless unit, known primarily for powering Apple's iPhone, and the release of its new duo-core Atom processors. Qualcomm may soon enter the arena as well with a dual-core version of its Snapdragon mobile processor.
The next generation Apple iPad, which is based on the same architecture, may also be powered by a dual-core processor. Had Samsung offered the Orion dual-core A9 sooner, it could have hoped to challenge the lead position of the Apple iPad with a more powerful Android tablet.
However, Orion does have the advantage of running Google Android 2.2 operating system, or Froyo, meaning it can play Flash video, which Apple's devices can not.
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