Forget the rumors; Samsung unveils the 5G Exynos 2200 with AMD graphics

Forget everything you heard over the last week about Samsung putting the kibosh on the Exynos 2200 chipset. Forget everything you heard about all Galaxy S22 models being powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip. That's because this morning Samsung announced its new "premium mobile processor," the Exynos 2200.

 

The new chipset sports a powerful Samsung Xclipse graphics processing unit (GPU) powered by the powerful AMD RDNA 2 architecture. In addition, the Exynos 2200 sports the latest and greatest Arm-based CPU cores and an upgraded neural processing unit (NPU) to give the component a powerful edge in mobile gaming, photography, and social media apps.

The Exynos 2200 is built by Samsung Foundry using its 4nm process node as noted by Yongin Park, President of System LSI Business at Samsung Electronics. Mr. Park says, "Built on the most advanced 4-nanometer (nm) EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) process, and combined with cutting-edge mobile, GPU and NPU technology, Samsung has crafted the Exynos 2200 to provide the finest experience for smartphone users.

Park continues by adding that "with the Xclipse, our new mobile GPU built with RDNA 2 graphics technology from the industry leader AMD, the Exynos 2200 will redefine mobile gaming experience, aided by enhanced graphics and AI performance. As well as bringing the best mobile experience to the users, Samsung will continue its efforts to lead the journey in logic chip innovation."

Samsung calls its new Xclipse mobile GPU a hybrid graphic processor that goes halfway between mobile graphics and console graphics. Samsung says, "Like an eclipse, the Xclipse GPU will bring an end to the old era of mobile gaming and mark the start of an exciting new chapter." Ray tracing technology, previously offered only on PCs, laptops, and game consoles, will be making its mobile debut on the Exynos 2200.

Ray tracking simulates the real-life behavior of light as it bounces off surfaces and creates shadows and other effects. To get this done, Samsung partnered with AMD to create " the industry’s first-ever hardware-accelerated ray tracing on mobile GPU." David Wang, Senior Vice President of Radeon Technologies Group at AMD says, "AMD RDNA 2 graphics architecture extends power-efficient, advanced graphics solutions to PCs, laptops, consoles, automobiles and now to mobile phones.

Wang adds, "Samsung’s Xclipse GPU is the first result of multiple planned generations of AMD RDNA graphics in Exynos SoCs. We can’t wait for mobile phone customers to experience the great gaming experiences based on our technology collaboration."

The Exynos 2200 uses Arm’s latest Armv9 CPU cores which provide a major improvement over Armv8 when it comes to two hot button words in the chip business today: security and performance. The octa-core chip uses a tri-cluster design featuring one Cortex-X2 flagship core, three performance and efficiency-focused Cortex-A710 big-cores, and four power-efficient Cortex-A510 little-cores.

The chip's AI capabilities are improved with an NPU that doubles performance over last year's Exynos 2100. A fast 3GPP Release 16 5G modem supports both sub-6GHz and mmWave 5G spectrum bands. And the Exynos 2200's Image Signal Processor (ISP) supports an ultra-high resolution of up to 200MP.

Samsung adds that "at 30 frames-per-second (fps), the ISP supports up to 108 MP in single camera mode, and 64+36 MP in dual camera mode. It can also connect up to seven individual image sensors and drive four concurrently for advanced multi-camera setups. For video recording, the ISP supports up to 4K HDR (or 8K) resolution." The chip is currently in mass production and is expected to power the Galaxy S22, Galaxy S22+, and the Galaxy S22 Ultra worldwide except in the U.S., China, and Canada.