LG working on eight-core 'Odin' chip for Optimus GII smartphone: Report

Post all the MWC hoopla surrounding LG, here's some interesting news outside of Barcelona. According to a report by the Korea Times, LG is planning to use its own in-house processor codenamed Odin that is likely to power the company's next Optimus GII  flagship smartphone.

Citing an LG official, the report mentioned, "LG Electronics is going to mass-produce the Odin processors by using finer 28-nanometer level processing, applying high-k metal gate (HKMG) technology. The processors will be used in LG's next flagship Optimus smartphone ― the Optimus GII ― which will probably be unveiled in this fall's IFA trade fair."

Odin reportedly resembles Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa design, as it is known to use eight cores - four 1.8 GHz Cortex-A15 and four 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 - designed in an ARM big.LITTLE architecture to provide superior performance/power consumption ratio.

The A15 cores will handle more intensive processing capabilities pertaining to graphics and 3D gaming, while the A7 cores are for simpler task processing such as web-surfing.

The company spokeswoman, G.W. Kim said that LG has begun moving into various chip-related products to strengthen its competitiveness in smartphones. The company officials further said, "CEO Koo Bon-joon is injecting more resources in smartphone-related projects to fully revive the business. LG is striving to transform itself into a major fabless chip-making firm by increasing the number of its qualified chip designers and giving authority to associated divisions."

The official also mentioned that the company has collaborated with Taiwan's TSMC for the 28nm manufacturing process. LG currently relies on third-party chip foundries like the Nvidia and Tegra line of SoCs. The official stated that LG plans on being independent when it comes to both finished goods and manufacturing parts quoting Samsung as an example.

Samsung, however, may have a different story to tell. The recently leaked specs of the Galaxy S IV reveal that the company might be ditching its own Exynos Octa 5 chip for a Snapdragon 600 under the hood.

Samsung reportedly seems to have run into some overheating issues with the processor and the company believes that the problem will not be fixed in time for the Galaxy S IV launch, hence the decision to switch to Qualcomm's chip.