Samsung recently launched their latest phones in the Galaxy S21 lineup which includes the S21, S21+ and S21 Ultra, with either the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC (System on a Chip) for the US/China/Korea market or Samsung’s home-grown Exynos 2100 SoC for the rest of the world. While Samsung made huge improvements over the Exynos 990 with their Exynos 2100, They are on par with the Snapdragon 888 in raw CPU power, and are lagging behind in raw GPU power by a large margin. But they want to fix that, and push even further and compete with Apple’s A14 Bionic which was just released last year with the Apple iPhone 12 lineup.
The New Exynos chip: What we know so far
In Samsung’s push to be better than Qualcomm, they partnered with AMD to make GPUs. I was expecting an AMD GPU to be in the latest Exynos, but was a tad disappointed that they stuck with the Mali GPU, but I now feel hopeful that the new chipset will be featuring the AMD GPU and they are even competing with Apple’s A14 Bionic!
Now, a Korean website Clien claims that Samsung is developing the new Exynos chip, which aims to achieve the performance of Apple’s A14 Bionic. Further, it’s being said that a new smartphone with this chip will be launched in the second half of the year.
A while back, Samsung reported that they would be launching a new chipset in the near future that would use an AMD GPU, but didn’t give a specific timeline.
The early performance results of the new GPU from the Korean site show some impressive results.This is an ambitious plan. The source also claims that performance targets can be improved based on the release timeline. If Samsung plans to announce the new Exynos flagship SoC later, it can continue to use AMD’s expertise to optimize the power consumption and heat dissipation of the chipset.
Unnamed Exynos chipset under development
- Manhattan 3.1 – 181.8FPS.
- Aztec normal – 138.25FPS
- Aztec High School – 58FPS
IPhone 12 Pro with A14 Bionic
- Manhattan 3.1 – 146.4FPS
- Aztec Normal – 79.8FPS
- Aztec High School – 30.5FPS
As seen in the performance metrics above, the new chip beats the A14 Bionic his result is likely to be obtained when the SoC is running at unrealistic power. So reducing the wattage seems to be the current goal of Samsung and AMD. According to the source, Samsung may announce the new flagship Exynos chipset using AMD GPUs in the second quarter of 2021.
This news suggests that Samsung may change the previous practice and schedule of releasing new flagship chips. Plus, we may see new models apart from the Note series. But there is another assumption as well: Samsung may test this chip on other brand products, such as VIVO. Samsung already confirmed earlier that there will be no Note series, or that they are cancelling it for good.
So it will be interesting to see where Samsung uses this new chip in. Maybe Samsung could create a new gaming lineup with the new processor just like other brands with their separate gaming phones like Asus ROG series, ZTE Nubia Red Magic series, Xiaomi Black Shark, Lenovo Legion, etc.
