Exynos 2100 is official: Samsung's Arm-based chip means business
The Exynos 2100, which will probably underpin the Samsung Galaxy S21 series, has been formally unveiled. The chip is based on the 5nm extreme ultra-violet (EUV) process node and as was expected, the South Korean giant has finally abandoned custom cores in favor of Arm's design.
To be more specific, the octa-core CPU features one Arm Cortex X1 core with clock speeds up to 2.9GHz, three high-performing Cortex-A78 cores, and four power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores. Samsung claims that this configuration will lead to a 30 percent improvement in multi-core performance when compared to the Exynos 990.
The move from 7nm to 5nm will result in up to 10 percent better performance or 20 percent lower power consumption. The new chip also benefits from better cache memory utilization and a stronger scheduler. The SoC also supports LPDDR5 RAM, and UFS 3.1 and UFS 2.1 storage.
The chip comes with the Arm Mali G78 GPU that improves graphic performance by a staggering 40 percent. It also embeds the advanced multi-IP governor (AMIGO) technology that prolongs battery life by optimizing power usage of the CPU, GPU, and other processers.
The silicon features an integrated 5G modem that supports both sub-6GHz and mmWave networks. It promises a maximum downlink speed of up to 5.1Gbps in sub-6 and 7.35Gbps in mmWave, or up to 3.0Gbps in 4G networks.
Samsung's new flagship chip also flaunts a new image signal processor (ISP) that supports camera resolutions of up to 200MP. It allows up to six individual sensors and it can process data from four units concurrently.
Although it's too soon to comment on the chip's performance, it looks promising on paper, and we won't be surprised if it outperforms the
Qualcomm Snapdragon 888.
To be more specific, the octa-core CPU features one Arm Cortex X1 core with clock speeds up to 2.9GHz, three high-performing Cortex-A78 cores, and four power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores. Samsung claims that this configuration will lead to a 30 percent improvement in multi-core performance when compared to the Exynos 990.
The chip comes with the Arm Mali G78 GPU that improves graphic performance by a staggering 40 percent. It also embeds the advanced multi-IP governor (AMIGO) technology that prolongs battery life by optimizing power usage of the CPU, GPU, and other processers.
The Exynos 2100 has also been treated to a new tri-core NPU which prioritizes high effective utilization over unnecessary operations. The chip can execute up to 26-trillion-operations-per-second (TOPS) with more than twice the power efficiency of the previous generation.
The silicon features an integrated 5G modem that supports both sub-6GHz and mmWave networks. It promises a maximum downlink speed of up to 5.1Gbps in sub-6 and 7.35Gbps in mmWave, or up to 3.0Gbps in 4G networks.
Samsung's new flagship chip also flaunts a new image signal processor (ISP) that supports camera resolutions of up to 200MP. It allows up to six individual sensors and it can process data from four units concurrently.
Exynos 2100 at a glance:
- Process: 5nm
- Main CPU: Arm Cortex-X1 (2.9GHz)
- Sub CPU: Arm Cortex-A78 and Cortex-A55
- Connectivity: 5G (sub-6GHz/mmWave), 4G LTE (1024 QAM), 3G WCDMA, 2G GSM/CDMA
- Memory: LPDDR5 (51.2GB/s)
- Storage: UFS 3.1, UFS 2.1
Things that are NOT allowed: