Samsung announces the Exynos 2100, its new high-end processor for smartphones

The Exynos 2100 marks several firsts for Samsung. It is the company’s first all-in-one (SoC) processor to use ARM’s new CPU X1 cores and most importantly, it is the first Samsung has bothered to host a (virtual) conference for. launch.

On the processor side (CPU), the Exynos 2100 marks the end of Samsung’s own “Exynos” cores, which closed its US CPU division last year. Samsung now adopts the new ARM-designed X1 core directly, without adding any changes. The CPU is therefore made up of a “super” Cortex-X1 core which can go up to 2.9 GHz, three Cortex-A78 cores (the second most powerful at ARM) clocked at 2.8 GHZ and four Cortex cores. -A55, low consumption cores which can turbinate up to 2.2GHz. Samsung has never been able to do better than ARM in the area of ​​CPUs and has preferred to adopt ARM’s “pure” designs and concentrate its efforts elsewhere.

As for example in the integration of the modem: just like Huawei and now Qualcomm with its Snapdragon 888, Samsung integrates the 5G modem in its high-end processor. A modem not only compatible with Sub-6, but also mmWave – we don’t know if Samsung produces its own antennas or not.

GPU side, point of chip resulting from the partnership with AMD for the moment, but a Mali G78MP14, a variation of the most powerful graphics architecture available from ARM. Nothing has filtered as to its internal organization (a priori the suffix “14” would be the number of cores), but Samsung promises a huge performance gain. With no less than 40% more performance compared to the GPU of the Exynos 990 (Mali-G77MP11), it would mark one of the highest gains in history … but the design of the phones must still allow it to maintain this level of performance over time.

A quadruple ISP

The photographic data sheet of the Exynos 2100 is extraordinary in that the image processor (which does not have a dedicated name, like the Qualcomm Spectra), is the first in history to integrate four ISPs, it that is to say four image sub-processors capable of “plugging” into a camera module. In short: the Exynos 2100 can control and record the flows of four camera modules simultaneously! Enough to record an ultra-wide-angle, wide-angle and telephoto scene at the same time as the reverse shot of the front camera.

The limit being, as usual with engineering companies like Samsung, the software part: it will be necessary to develop or have developed apps like Filmic Pro to really take advantage of this incredible performance. On the flow side, Samsung does not communicate on the overall pixel rate that the ISP is able to manage, but on the maximum definition per sensor – up to 200 Mpix, enough to control its future 150 Mpix monster.

On the video side, 8K recording is supported up to 60 frames per second (8K60) and 4K video at 120 frames per second. The Exynos 2100 supports, for the first time at Samsung, the AV1 codec, so far only supported by the Dimensity 1000 from MediaTek.

Big AI computing power

With an announced power of up to 26 TOPS, the speed of execution of algorithms derived from AI is almost doubled compared to the previous generation (Exynos 990, 15 TOPS). If Samsung has added a third computing core, the power of 26 TOPS is understood as with Qualcomm in a global way, that is to say by combining both the NPU, the CPU, the GPU and the DSP.

On paper, the Exynos 2100 would be on par with the Snapdragon 888, but it’s hard to be sure until you’ve kicked off the benchmarks or apps. And all this theoretical power is nothing without a very (very) fine software integration, as Apple has proven, which displays lower numbers (the A14 displays 14 TOPS, although we do not know if it is only the Neural Engine or the whole chip), but the exemplary implementation on the driver side works wonders.

5nm power

If Samsung was able to integrate so many more powerful elements in addition to a 5G modem, it is because the chip is engraved not in 7 nm LPP (EUV engraving) as for the previous Exynos 990 but in 5 nm LPE (low power early, EUV improvement of the previous node). And unlike the rest of the industry which subcontracts its production, here Samsung manufactures its own chips since it is the only company in the world, with the Taiwanese TSMC, to master mass EUV engraving in 5 nm.

Even if Samsung’s processes in the field are known to be a step below TSMC, which is ahead in its roadmap, 5 nm engraving gives a big boost either in terms of energy consumption or in terms of raw power at constant consumption.

It now remains to compare the chip against its enemy / partner, the Snapdragon 888, which will equip part of the Galaxy S21, especially those sold in North America.