Samsung’s new Exynos 9 chipset will power high-end smartphones and VR headsets

Samsung has had a good run in the display market for smartphones and other key components. One of the biggest components that Samsung manufactures is the mobile chipset – namely its Exynos series. The company has just announced the next generation of these powerful processors – the Exynos 9 8895.

These processors are powerful Octa-core chipsets that will be coming on select smartphones later this year, most notably, the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ international versions. Samsung’s Exynos line-up can be compared to the Snapdragon flagship – the 835, in terms of power and performance. In fact, the chipset has been made in collaboration with Samsung. The Exynos 9 is also based on the same 10nm architecture that is 27% faster in performance and more efficient in power consumption. What makes processor different from the regular variety of octa-core CPUs is that it is four completely custom-cores and four Cortex-A53 cores. The GPU integrated features the Mali-G71.

The chipset can support display screen resolutions up to WQUXGA (3840×2400) or 4K UHD (4096×2160). It can also support playback of 4K video at 120 fps. The chipset has impressive optics capabilities as well being able to support up to 28MP cameras, both front and rear with dual sensors. On the connectivity front, its LTE modem supports up to five carrier aggregation, making it able to deliver up to Gigabit speed, possible in 5G connectivity.

Other hardware features include a separate unit dedicated solely for security like fingerprint or iris sensors. The chipset is currently in mass production. Although the Exynos has not seen wide use from other manufacturers, it has been proven to be a great performer over the years, regarded to be more powerful and power-efficient. The chipset is also optimized for better VR performance and for use in virtual reality applications.

Ben Hur, VP of System LSI marketing at Samsung Electronics, said that this chipset is going to completely re-establish the way VR headsets are going to be operated and will have its uses in automotive entertainment systems along with smartphones. The chipset could also be possibly used in the company’s next generation of smart televisions as well.

It will definitely be first launched with the Galaxy S8 line-up, with the handset being the first to have two completely new CPUs launched with it. The clockspeed of the eight cores have not been revealed yet, but it should be something similar to the current generation of Snapdragon CPUs.

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