Every year, we witness the unveiling of several chipsets powering the top-tier flagship phones from Apple’s A-series processors, to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, to Samsung’s Exynos chipsets. Each chipset always aims to become the next king by bringing new improvements from more efficiency, to improved single core and multi-core tasks.
For the past 2 years, we have been stuck with the same sized 10nm chipsets but this year we are witnessing a change in size. When the chipset size changes, it is often an important thing for several reasons. The smaller the transistors are the more they can fit on the chip, which often means more power and better performance. However, this comes with a caveat. The thermal energy generated from these small transistors often leading to overheating of the phone without proper cooling. Companies often have to fix that problem with a larger heat pipe.
Apple was the first to bring a 7nm chipset to market with their A12 chips equipped in their iPhone XS and all its variants, then Huawei pitched in with their 7nm Kirin 980 powering the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro. This week, Samsung has finally announced it’s 8nm chipset, the Exynos 9820.
“The 9820 builds on the strengths of this year’s 9810 — which powered the global variants of the Galaxy S9 and Note 9.” —Samsung
The Exynos 9820 is equipped with an integrated neural processing unit (NPU) which according to Samsung performs artificial intelligent tasks such as scene detection up to 7 times faster than previous generations.
It is expected that the 9820 will improve single core performance by 20% and multi-core performance by 15% with a 40% increase in power efficiency. It also brings a 2.0 Gbps downlink with a 316 Mbps uplink which according to Samsung can download a 3.7GB in 15 seconds (given that you have the internet speed and the configuration to support that of course).
The Exynos 9820 will bring the support of recording 4K UHD video at 150 frames per seconds. It also renders the colors in 10 bits which means delivering more accurate and vivid ranges of tones and colors.
The Exynos 9820 is expected to power the Galaxy S10 as well as the next Note in international markets. It is still unclear whether or not Samsung will still use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipset in the American market.
Source: Samsung
