Speaking of that 28 nanometer quad core cortex A7 Allwinner A40 chipset, one of their phone customers has done let the cat out of the bag and we are also looking at Mali 658
or better graphics to go along with that new chipset. Quad core A7 will be significantly faster than a single or dual core A8 or A9 as each of the four A7 cores can do the same amount of work as a A8 core can do, PLUS they get to offload associated video processing tasks to the 8 graphics cores in the Mali 658 processor.
This is Apple's favorite trick, offloading CPU tasks to the GPU to speed up the overall workflow of getting it up on the screen quickly.Because the A40 will ship out at 28 nanometer it will be functionally as fast as a quad core A9 is right now (which is built at 40 nanometer).
This is not going to be a shabby slow low cost SOC at all, it will be the equal to any of the pre A-15's SOCs out there, including the last year's Apple, the one that drives the retina display in the 10" tablet. But later on next year it will actually be the bottom of the new food chain and
it will wind up being quite inexpensive.
Yield will drive this little chip out of the gate first out of the A-15 family -- the 12 cores on the same silicon A40 (4 cpu and 8 gpu) will be the same physical size as a single current A8 chip is now. Still, the new 28 nanometer process means a lot more computer power can go on the same POP package size -- which means you can get a LOT MORE of them off of a standard substrate wafer compared to their bigger A-15 brothers.
And since they are simple and easy lithography (compared to an A-15 big-LITTLE package) you will get a lot more of them at the end of each production day.Demand for this A40 chip will be HUGE, as until big-LITTLE really takes off good at the end of next year this quad core Allwinner SOC will be a really commanding "bottom end" to the phone and tablet markets. It will require LESS POWER than existing single core chips, so it will need same size or smaller batteries. Phones will be faster and slimmer.
And that is Allwinner's key market segment, the bottom end of the food chain. They aim and plan to take it for at least a year, then they let somebody else vie to have it for six months while they prepare their next assault to be good for another year.
Allwinner sells a LOT of chips with this philosophy, they get ARM do a good hard micro and they
very early on selectively buy up the bottom of the heap (defined as best processing power for the best battery life)
and then immediately go into full production on a fully supported (ARM guaranteed) design putting it out at a commandingly low price.
People kept saying that the A10 came out of nowhere and simply took over .... and they were right.
Think of them as the Apple of the Low End.
And because of this speed to market you will see little oriental companies advertising their new A7 quad core Allwinner A40 phones before the big boys even have their very expensive A-15 stuff out on the deluxe deep end of the pool. 
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