Samsung Electronics has unveiled its latest high-end smartphone processor and 5G modem at its Samsung Tech Day event. The products will help the next generation of mobile devices make intensive use of video and artificial intelligence applications as well as 5G communications, Samsung said. Mass production is expected to start by year-end.
Both the Exynos 990 premium mobile processor and 5G Exynos Modem 5123 are built on the latest 7-nm production technology, using extreme ultra-violet (EUV) to provide top performance and accelerated product development options for mobile manufacturers.
The new product sees Samsung quickly ramping up its product portfolio, after the Exynos 980 with integrated 5G modem was announced only in September. The company is looking to boost the scale of its semiconductor business and sell more to other OEMs, while also gain a jump on the emerging 5G market in order to help offset the slowdown in the global smartphone market.
Samsung said new levels of mobile gaming and other graphics-intensive operations are enabled by the Exynos 990’s inclusion of an embedded Arm Mali-G77 GPU, the first premium GPU based on the new Valhall architecture, which improves graphic performance or power efficiency by up to 20 percent. This comes in addition to an overall 20-percent performance boost from an extremely powerful and flexible tri-cluster CPU structure that consists of two powerful custom cores, two high-performance Cortex-A76 cores and four power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores.
The Exynos 990 also enables on-device AI, with a top-class dual-core neural processing unit (NPU) and improved digital signal processor (DSP) that can perform over ten-trillion operations (TOPs) per second, the company said. The NPU enables localized AI in a smartphone or other mobile platform, allowing data to be processed on-device, rather than going through a network and a server, for added efficiency and security. This can also help enhance AI features such as facial recognition and scene detection for richer mobile experiences.
Eight-carrier aggregation, support for six cameras
Next-generation mobile connectivity needs are addressed by the 5G Exynos Modem 5123, one of the first 5G modem chips manufactured using a 7nm EUV process. It supports virtually all networks, from 5G’s sub-6GHz and mmWave spectrum to 2G GSM/CDMA, 3G WCDMA, TD-SCDMA, HSPA and 4G LTE. With up to 8-carrier aggregation over 5G, the modem delivers a maximum downlink speed of up to 5.1 Gbps in sub-6-GHz and 7.35 Gbps in mmWave, or up to 3.0 Gbps in 4G networks with 1024 QAM.
The Exynos 990 complements these modem speeds with a very wide memory bandwidth that supports LPDDR5 data rates of up to 5,500 Mbps. The processor also features a 120Hz refresh-rate display driver, which makes games come alive by reducing screen tearing and enabling smoother animations even on devices with multiple displays, such as foldable phones. Also on board is an advanced image signal processor that supports up to six individual image sensors with concurrent processing of three; this enables pro-grade photography, with resolution up to 108 megapixels.
