The Galaxy S III S5E4412 Processor - A Hacker’s Overview

The Galaxy S III S5E4412 Processor

The Exynos 4412 processor, aka S5E4412, has been confirmed as the application processor for the Samsung Galaxy S III. After scouring the web for publicly available data sheets, best information listing I could come up with came from 8gpad. I’d like to take a minute and talk about the S5E4412 procssor.

Lets start by breaking down the model number.  S5= Samsung 5th generation processor.  E is an unknown, however this has traditionally stood for the packging type (PoP or BGA). 44 = Exynos 4th generation and 4 cores.  The 12 is unknown to me at this time, however I do believe it deals with the video capabilities and/or revision.  Please correct me in the comments below.

This Quad-Core CORTEX A9 processor supports NEON extensions as expected.  Unexpectedly though, while it is a 32 bit processor, this bad mama-jamma supports up to 128bits internally, which is double that of  the previous Exynos models.

For those of you “connected” individuals, you should be happy to know that the processor natively supports USB-OTG, USB-Host, and USB-Device modes.  Lets all just hope that Samsung does not let us down and forget to connect a 5V line to the USB driver chip.  The processor also supports up to 4 SD Cards. For those interested in communicating directly with the processor, this processor supports Samsung’s CORESIGHT debugger at 200 MHz and 1v.  4 UART ports, 8 i2c ports and 3 SPI ports.  It also has 64KB of IROM memory that is used to initialize the processor itself.

Personally, I think it’s time that Samsung took a hard look at their configuration issues.  Given the hardware above, the features of the device could greatly be expanded with only a small change to their standard operating procedures  seen previously. I’d like to see some changes to the boot sequence.  More specifically, in that 64KB of IROM memory, there is a set of instructions which lets the device boot directly from USB.  This needs to be accessible somehow for those emergencies we at XDA-Developers have every day.  Why this is kept locked down, I will never understand.  The device should be easily revived in case of emergency, and its well within the capabilities of the device. xOM5 modification please.

Here’s hoping Samsung uses their own hardware the way it’s designed to be used!

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