Samsung has announced the Exynos 9820, its next-generation mobile processor, that will power the company’s upcoming flagships. The mobile processor has been built using 8nm process (instead of 7nm, unlike the competition) and features a dedicated NPU. This is the first time Samsung has announced a chipset, featuring a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU).
A dedicated NPU makes a huge difference to the overall performance to the chipset. A mobile chipset with a dedicated NPU means the CPU carry out AI tasks separately.
This translates to better overall performance, a higher frame rate and reduced power consumption. Huawei’s Kirin 970 became the world’s first mobile chipset to feature a dedicated NPU, followed by Apple’s A11 Bionic which powers the iPhone X.
The chipset’s architecture consists of two custom CPUs (4th gen) and dual-core Cortex-A75 + quad-core Cortex-A55 coupled with ARM Mali-G76 MP12 GPU. It also supports resolutions of WQUXGA (3840×2400) and 4K UHD (4096×2160), either 22MP rear or 16MP+16MP dual camera systems on the back with 22MP front-facing shooters.
“The AI capabilities in the Exynos 9 Series 9820 will provide a new dimension of performance in smart devices through an integrated NPU, high-performance fourth-generation custom CPU core, 2.0Gbps LTE modem and improved multimedia performance,” said Ben Hur, vice president of System LSI marketing at Samsung Electronics.
The South Korean major claims the Exynos 9820 chipset is capable of HDR video recording in 10-bit colour and encoding and decoding 8K videos at 30 frames per second, or 4K videos at 150 frames per second. On the connectivity side, the chipset packs an LTE-Advanced Pro modem that supports LTE category 20, offering download speeds of up to 2.0gbps with 8x carrier aggregation (CA) and uplink speed of up to 316Mbps.
Samsung said the new Exynos 9820 mobile processor will enter mass production by end of the year, and is expected to power the Galaxy S10 and the company’s much-talked-about foldable smartphone. The latter phone is expected to cost $1700 and will likely to hit retail shelves in March.
