I think we have come to the point that our smartphones and tablets are more powerful than our traditional desktop/laptop computer. At their keynote address on  Thursday, January 10th at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Samsung’s Stephen Woo announced the world’s first eight-core processor for smartphones and tablets, the Exynos5 Octa.

However, it is not a true 8-core (or octa-core) as it is really 2 quad-core processors. My HTC Sensation phone only as a dual-core processor and the new (for 2012) Samsung Galaxy Note II phone/tablet as a quad-processor. The Asus Nexus 7 and Microsoft Surface tablets also have a quad-core processor. The Kindle Fire has a dual-core, not sure how the Kindle Fire HD’s OMAP processor compares.

The South Korean technology giant said it’s been created to run intense apps, while also conserving energy when users run basic tasks. Upon his demo, Woo said one of the key functions of the chip is to allow users to carry out several activities at once while also ensuring that the battery isn’t drained too quickly.

He had showcased a search for dining options on a Samsung tablet during the demo, where the device loaded several sites including Urbanspoon and Google Maps, which was done without any disruption in the browser. Woo promised no dropped frames or stutters in HD movie playback will occur.

I’ll give credit to Samsung for innovation, but do we really need to have a tablet (I can’t see this being used in phones) with two quad-core processors? May be for HD movie playback, but I think Woo meant to say that there will be no dropped frames or stutters as a result of the processor or if you are not streaming. I can still see this happening depending on the network you are connected while you’re streaming the movie.

via Tom’s Hardware