Samsung Exynos 1080 released, vivo's first flagship chip fully enters the 5nm era

Today, Samsung released its latest 5nm mobile processor, Exynos 1080, in Shanghai. Exynos 1080 is the third 5nm mobile processor after Apple A14 and HiSilicon Kirin 9000. It is also the second 5nm SoC with integrated 5G baseband. It is the first mobile processor to adopt Arm's latest Cortex-A78 and Mali-G78 in CPU and GPU architecture.

At the press conference, Samsung Electronics System LSI also announced that the Exynos 1080 is now in mass production, and vivo will be the first to launch terminal products equipped with the Exynos 1080 processor.

Samsung's first 5nm EUV SoC has 2x performance improvement

Exynos 1080 is Samsung's first mobile processor to use the advanced 5nm FinFET EUV process. Samsung said that the 5nm EUV process design can reduce the logic area by 30% and improve efficiency by 15%.

Exynos 1080 integrates ARM's latest Cortex-A78 core with a maximum frequency of 2.8 GHz and the high-performance Cortex-A55 core (4+4) into the CPU, increasing the single-core performance by 1.5 times and the multi-core performance by two times compared to the previous generation.

The GPU also uses ARM's latest Mali-G78, supports 4-channel LPDDR4 and LPDDR5. The performance of the Exynos 1080's GPU has also more than doubled.

At the press conference, Samsung stated that Exynos 1080 integrates Samsung's latest 5G modem, but did not mention the model (Samsung's latest baseband product is Modem 5123). Under the Sub6GHz standard, through carrier aggregation, it can support a maximum download speed of 5.1Gbps.

The modem also supports sub-6GHz bands and millimeter wave spectrum in 5G and 2G GSM/CDMA, 3G WCDMA, TD-SCDMA, HSPA, and 4G LTE to achieve maximum global network coverage and reliability. To enjoy higher network bandwidth indoors, Exynos 1080 also supports the latest WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 technologies.

Exynos 1080 uses the Amigo power-saving solution, which monitors the power consumption of each process in real time, optimizes the total power consumption during gaming and other processes, and improves power efficiency by more than 10%.

Exynos 1080 is also equipped with a high-performance NPU and DSP. The Exynos 1080 has a built-in AI solution. The image signal processor (ISP) of Exynos 1080 supports image resolutions of up to 200 million pixels and can receive signals from up to six sensors. The ISP can receive up to three input signals at the same time to provide full support for simultaneous operation of three cameras. It is worth mentioning that Exynos 1080 has exclusively customized the AISP architecture for stronger image processing capabilities, and strongly integrates the NPU into the ISP, so that each parameter can be intelligently adjusted to the optimal value through machine learning in the original RAW domain.

Recently, some media exposed the real running score information of a machine equipped with Samsung Exynos 1080. With a score of 690,000 points, it has become the processor platform with the highest running score in the world.

Qualcomm is expected to release a 5nm flagship mobile phone processor next month, which also means that 5G mobile phone flagship chips will fully enter the 5nm era.

Vivo launches Exynos 1080 for the Chinese market

Samsung Exynos processors are advanced mobile processors developed by the System LSI Business of Samsung Electronics. The System LSI Business offers a complete portfolio of products for the mobile industry, including mobile processors, image sensors, bioprocessors, security and display solutions.

Pan Xuebao, director of Samsung Semiconductor China Research Institute, said that in the past few years, Samsung has been conducting research and development for the Chinese market with its partners, with the aim of designing products that suit the Chinese market. Exynos 1080 is a product designed specifically for the Chinese market, and this is also the first independent product launch of the System LSI business unit in mainland China.

In recent years, vivo and Samsung have always maintained close cooperation. In September last year, the two parties jointly developed the dual-mode 5G AI chip Exynos 980 and released it. It was the second mobile phone chip with integrated 5G baseband after Huawei Kirin 990 5G at that time, and was first launched by Vivo X30 at the end of last year.

According to Samsung at the press conference, in the design and development process of Exynos 1080, in addition to Samsung's strong design and production capabilities, vivo also participated in the development of the Exynos 1080 mobile processor. This is the second mobile processor chip jointly developed by vivo and Samsung after Exynos980. Currently, Exynos 1080 has been mass-produced, and vivo will be the first to launch terminal products equipped with Exynos 1080 chips.

According to media reports, vivo X60 may become the first model of Exynos 1080 and will be released in the first quarter of 2021.