Leaked benchmarks purport to show a widely rumored Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 tablet running Android 4.2.2 at record rates on Intel’s new Clover Trail+ architecture Atom Z2560 SOC (system-on-chip). Meanwhile, Intel released a set of host development tools called Beacon Mountain for developing Android apps on both x86 and ARM platforms.

Intel’s “Medfield” generation of Atom processors failed to generate much buzz in the Android world, but its new Clover Trail + (CT+) generation Atom Z25xx system on chip (SOC) appears to be a different story. Shortly after Lenovo announced it had begun shipping its CT+-based K900 Android smartphone in China, and ZTE announced its second CT+-based phone with its Europe-destined Grand X2 In, a leaked benchmark showed an upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 tablet running on Clover Trail+.

Lenovo’s K900 and ZTE’s Grand X2 In use Atom Z2580 SOCs
(click images to enlarge)

While the new Lenovo and ZTE smartphones run on the high-end, 2GHz Atom Z2580, the benchmarks leaked on the Japanese tech blog site RBMen indicate an Android-powered Tab 3 10.1 will run on the similarly dual-core 1.6GHz Z5260. If the benchmarks are valid, they would indicate the first major Android tablet design win for the Intel Atom, as well as the impressive performance of the CT+ generation.

Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 photo and leaked Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 photo
(click images to enlarge; via BGR)

Leaked GT-P5210 benchmarks (click to enlarge)

The Antutu benchmarks, which are claimed to come from GLBenchmark’s servers, show both WiFi-Only (GT-P5200) and 3G (GT-P5210) versions of a device, both running Android 4.2.2 (“Jelly Bean”) and featuring the Z2560’s 400MHz PowerVR SGX 544 MP2 GPU. A SamMobile report speculates that the cited 1280 x 800 resolution is for a prototype device, while the final product is likely to offer higher HD resolution.

The benchmark profile appears to match up fairly well with the previously rumored specs of a Tab 3 heir to Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, which along with the faster Galaxy Note 10.1 has been one of the best-selling 10.1-inch Android tablets to date. The alleged benchmarks indicate combined scores of 24,616, which SamMobile suggests would be roughly on par with the quad-core 1.9GHz Snapdragon 600 ARM Cortex-A9 SOC or the eight-core Samsung Exynos 5 Octa Cortex-A7 and –A15 Big.Little combo SOC.

An earlier leaked benchmark from GLBenchmark published on Samsung Mobile Press said that the 7-inch version of the Galaxy Tab 3, which has been announced as having a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, will offer a Marvell PXA986 Cortex-A9 SOC. The 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab 2, meanwhile, is expected to be announced in June or July.

In late April, an Asus ME302C tablet running a 1.6GHz Atom Z5260 was said by Caotic.It (via PhoneArena) to have appeared on GFX Benchmarks, but there is no sign of it there now. This time, the specs were not quite so impressive, although still above average. The EeePad tablet is said to offer 1920 x 1200 resolution, which would suggest a 10.1-inch tablet, and will run Android 4.2.2. It’s unclear whether it’s a Transformer model with an optional keyboard dock, or a straight-forward slate.

Asus 7-inch Fonepad (click to enlarge)

Additionally, Asus has officially announced it will upgrade its recently released, 7-inch Asus Fonepad from a low-cost “Lexington” architecture Atom Z2420 to the Mefield Z2460. The tablet is heading first to the U.K.
 

Intel releases Android development tools

At Google I/O last week, Intel continued its campaign to become a bigger Android player when it released Intel Beacon Mountain v0.5, a toolsuite for Android development on both Intel Atom and ARM platforms. Beacon Mountain is described as a setup and maintenance kit for 64-bit host development systems running Windows 7 and 8. Apple OSX support is said to be coming by the end of June, but there was no mention of Linux support.

Beacon Mountain v0.5 starts with Google’s Android SDK and NDK (native development kit), as well as Android Design. It also includes an Eclipse IDE and Cygwin.

Intel then adds its host tools, tuned for both the Atom and ARM, including:

• Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (Intel HAXM)
• Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel GPA) System Analyzer
• Intel Integrated Performance Primitives (Intel IPP) Preview
• Intel Threaded Building Blocks (Intel TBB)
• Intel Software Manager (ISM)

It appears the software is compatible only with the latest Android 4.2.2 version of Jelly Bean, which adds support for the hyperthreading technology found in Clover Trail+. The goal appears to be to increase the number of Android apps that are optimized to run on Atom processors.