Samsung Integrates AI, 8K Video Recording Into Smartphone Chip

Samsung has unveiled its plans for a next-generation flagship smartphone processor, called the Exynos 9820, said to offer a significant speed boost and improved energy efficiency, when compared to older Exynos models.

The chip is likely to be used in European versions of the Galaxy S10, as well as all other models of the handset outside the US, and as such it gives a glimpse into some of the capabilities that handset is likely to include.

It’s the successor to the Exynos 9810, used in its current Galaxy S9 flagship smartphone.

The new chip should offer a 20 percent speed boost over current devices for single-core applications, Samsung said, while multi-core performance should be up by 15 percent.

Performance

Alternatively, the chip represents a 40 percent efficiency boost, meaning longer battery life.

For gaming use, the Exynos 9820 is designed to deliver 40 percent faster graphics or 35 percent improved efficiency.

The chip uses eight cores arranged into three clusters, two being fourth-generation Samsung-developed processors, with the others based on ARM’s Cortex-A75 and Cortex-A55 designs.

The custom cores are designed for raw processing power, while the A75 is tuned for performance and the A55 is designed for efficiency, Samsung said.

Samsung has reduced the chip’s manufacturing geometry to an 8nm process from the 9810’s 10nm process, helping to improve efficiency.

But rivals such as Apple’s A12 Bionic, found in the iPhone XS, and Huawei’s Kirin 980, in the Mate 20 Pro,  are already using a 7nm process.

The chip includes an integrated neural processing unit (NPU) for carrying out AI tasks onboard seven times faster than its predecessor.

Built-in AI tasks include automatically adjusting camera settings or detecting objects within images.

8K video recording

The chip supports displays with resolutions of up to 3840 x 2400 or 4096 x 2160, single lens cameras of up to 22MP, dual-lens cameras up to 16MP. Devices with up to five cameras are supported.

The chip supports 8K video recording at 30 frames per second or 4K video at 150fps, meaning higher-quality slow-motion capture.

Mobile download speeds can theoretically reach 2Gbps with 8x Carrier Aggregation (CA) and a 316Mbps uplink, if this network infrastructure is available.

But the chip doesn’t include built-in 5G support, meaning that if Samsung is planning to include 5G in the S10, as has been rumoured, it will have to include the necessary technology elsewhere in the device.

Samsung said it plans to bring the Exynos 9820 into mass production by the end of this year.