We put out a call for help back in February asking for support from the community to help us get our nightly builds back up to speed. The community answered our call in force! With the contributions, we were able to acquire three Dell R610 servers. Each server has dual Xeon X5675 CPUs (12 cores total) and 32 GB of RAM. These are some serious machines! We also purchased a few new devices for our team members with what was left. Your donations have helped us to grow immensely.

The servers have been installed and are now starting builds. These machines can build CM9 in about 9 minutes, pretty serious stuff. We still need to set up a scheduler to automate the process of building every target- I expect this to be done in the next few days. We’ll make another announcement when nightly builds are being made for all targets on a predictable basis.

Samsung's New Quad-Core Application Processor Drives Advanced Feature Sets in Smartphones and Tablets

Designed on 32nm HKMG process, new energy-efficient chip exceeds 1.4GHz per core

SEOUL, Korea--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., a world leader in advanced semiconductor solutions, today introduced the industry's first quad-core application processor built on the High-k Metal Gate (HKMG) low-power process technology. With unprecedented performance capabilities exceeding 1.4GHz based on the ARM® CORTEXTM A9 quad-core, the powerful, yet energy-efficient Exynos 4 Quad, allows system-level architects to integrate maximized power efficiencies into smartphones and tablets which enables double the processing power at a 20 percent lower power bill over its predecessor, the 45nm process-based Exynos 4 Dual.

"The quad-core processor offers phenomenal multitasking abilities surpassing any single or dual application processor. Since all the cores must share a single battery, the power management and efficiency in the limited battery capacity are indispensable for mobile computing devices," said Taehoon Kim, vice president of System LSI marketing, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics. "Given the diverse functionalities consumers are demanding from their mobile devices today, the Exynos 4 Quad meets those high-performance needs while keeping power consumption very low."

Multi-core processing delivers enhanced performance, enabling users to accomplish more tasks in a shorter period of time. For example, a task such as streaming video can run on one core while the other cores update applications in the background, connecting to the web and scanning virus-check simultaneously.

Benefitting from a use case where the parallel processing and workload sharing among the four cores is necessary, the Exynos 4 Quad is particularly well-suited for heavy-load applications such as 3D games, video editing, and calculation-intensive simulation.

Due to its 32nm HKMG low-power process and power-saving design, the Exynos 4 Quad has two times the processing capability over the 45nm process based Exynos 4 Dual while consuming 20-percent less power. To improve power efficiency, Samsung adopted hot-plug functionality to support on-off switching for each core as well as the per-core dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS), which offers a dramatic reduction in power consumption by adapting different levels of voltage and frequency when changing workloads.

Having identical form factor measurements (12mm X 12mm X 1.37 mm), the Exynos 4 Quad is pin-to-pin compatible with the 32nm process based Exynos 4 Dual, allowing mobile device designers to immediately adopt the new solution without additional cost, engineering or design efforts.

In addition, the new processor incorporates a full HD 30 frame per second video hardware codec engine for high resolution 1080p video recording and play-back, an embedded image signal processor interface for high-quality camera functionality and an HDMI 1.4 interface for sharp and crisp multimedia content transmission.

Samsung developed a power management IC (PMIC), the S5M8767, as a companion chip to power the Exynos 4 Quad processor. By integrating various circuitry such as nine highly efficient and programmable buck converters and 28 low-dropout regulators (LDOs) into the small package of 5.0 mm x 5.0mm x 0.4mm, the S5M8767 is designed to scale up or down the dynamic voltage depending on the clock speed in 6.25mV step for managing power delivery and maximizing battery life at the system level.

Already in production, the Exynos 4 Quad is scheduled to be adopted first into Samsung's next Galaxy smartphone that will officially be announced in May. Samsung's Exynos 4 Quad is also sampling to other major handset makers.

"The application processor is a crucial element in providing our customers with a PC-like experience on mobile devices. Samsung's next Galaxy device, which will be officially announced soon, offers uncompromised performance and ground breaking multi-tasking features, thanks to Exynos 4 Quad's powerful performance and efficient energy management technology," said Hankil Yoon, Senior Vice President of Product Strategy Team, Samsung's Mobile Communications Business.

Last year, Samsung introduced a new online hub dedicated to its Exynos processor. Designed to facilitate easy communication with industry partners and end users, the new micro-site takes you a step closer to the ultimate experience Exynos delivers; product information, user experience and information on promotion events. More information can be found at http://www.samsung.com/exynos.

Given that Google is expected to continue to cooperate with Samsung Electronics for the development of the next-generation Nexus smartphone, HTC reportedly has decided to move forward in its own way and is currently developing a customized smartphone in cooperation with Facebook slated to be launched in the third quarter of 2012 at the earliest, according to industry sources.

HTC had previously joined forces with Google to launch Google's first own-brand smartphone, the Nexus One. However, Google then shifted to cooperating with Samsung as its primary production partner for the launch of its second and third own-brand smartphones.

Since Samsung has become the top vendor of Android smartphones, Google will continue to have Samsung develop its next-generation Nexus models, leveraging Samsung's innovation ability with regard to the Android platform, and its ability to control the supply of key components, said sources.

The new Android smartphone being developed by HTC will have a platform exclusive to Facebook to enable and integrate all functions available on the social networking site, the sources indicated. Previously, HTC launched two Facebook-enabled smartphones, the Salsa and Chacha.

Facebook is expected to further expand its investments and sources of income after becoming a public company, and the launch of own-brand smartphones will be part of its development strategy, the sources commented.

During April alone, we’ve already seen malicious versions of Angry Birds Space and Instagram in the wild. Both are Android apps that are really just malware designed to generate money from unsuspecting users by sending expensive international text messages. Now the same is happening with the popular Biophilla app.

Here’s the official description of the app:

Biophilia is an extraordinary and innovative multimedia exploration of music, nature and technology by the musician Björk. Comprising a suite of original music and interactive, educational artworks and musical artifacts, Biophilia is released as ten in-app experiences that are accessed as you fly through a three-dimensional galaxy that accompanies the album’s theme song Cosmogony. All of the album’s songs are available inside Biophilia as interactive experiences: Crystalline, Virus, Moon, Thunderbolt, Sacrifice, Mutual Core, Hollow, Solstice, and Dark Matter.

Björk recently invited hackers and pirates to port her app from iOS to other platforms, but somehow I don’t think Android malware is what she had in mind. Symantec identified the social engineering scam on third-party Android app download sites and described the malware as follows:

The app itself comes in two parts: the front-end, which has the ability to stream songs, and a background service with the name ‘Market’. Upon examination of the background service (designed to activate every time the phone starts) it appears to belong to the Android.Golddream family of threats. The authors of this family of threats are known to target third-party apps with malicious versions of popular apps, drawing revenue from premium SMS scams.

To reiterate, Biophilia is not available for Android. Some may have managed to port it illegally, but please beware that they may have included malware inside. If you want to get the official iOS version, get it from the official Apple App store. Here is the direct link: itunes.apple.com/app/bjork-biophilia/id434122935.