Samsung Exynos 1080 flagship chip: 5nm EUV process

       On the afternoon of November 12, Samsung held a press conference in Shanghai and officially launched the new generation Exynos 1080 processor.

　　This 5nm process processor is not only equipped with the latest Cortex-A78 CPU, but also uses the Mali-78 GPU, while taking into account the characteristics of high performance and low power consumption. The vivo mobile phone will be the first to launch the Exynos 1080 processor.

Samsung announces vivo's first new flagship chip

　　This year is a year of change for mobile phone chips, which will move from 7nm to 5nm. Previously, Huawei announced the Kirin 9000 and Apple launched the A14 processor, kicking off the competition for 5nm processors. Samsung, which was relatively marginal in the 7nm era, finally released a big move this time. Exynos 1080 has also become the third processor to use the latest 5nm process technology after Apple A14 and Kirin 9000 chips.

       Samsung's new generation flagship chip Exynos 1080

　　Samsung's Exynos 1080 processor uses the latest 5nm process technology, which is currently the most advanced scientific research technology. A more advanced process means that more transistors can be integrated per unit area. Every 1nm increase in transistor width will bring performance improvements and reduced power consumption. Compared with Samsung's 7nm process technology, Samsung's 5nm process has increased the density of transistors by more than 80%, which can bring stronger performance and lower power consumption.

　　In addition, Exynos 1080 uses EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography), which is considered to be the best manufacturing process for the next generation of CPUs so far. Compared with 8nm LPP (mature low power consumption), the 5nm EUV process used by Exynos 1080 has a 14% performance improvement and a 30% reduction in power consumption; compared with 7nm DUV (deep ultraviolet lithography), the performance is improved by 7% and the power consumption is reduced by 18%.

　　In addition to the advanced process technology, Samsung Exynos 1080 chooses ARM's latest flagship core in terms of CPU and GPU. First of all, the CPU of Samsung Exynos 1080 has 1 highest performance Cortex-A78 core, 3 high-performance A78 cores and 4 high-efficiency A55 cores. Among them, the A78 core is ARM's latest flagship CPU core this year. At the same power consumption, its performance is 20% higher than that of A77.

Exynos 1080 uses an octa-core CPU architecture

　　Samsung said that the Exynos 1080 with this 1+3+4 core combination can easily handle the performance required for multi-tasking, and its performance is twice that of its predecessor, the Exynos 980.

　　In terms of graphics processing, Samsung Exynos 1080 uses the Mali-G78 GPU core, which is also ARM's latest flagship core in 2020. According to official data, the performance of Mali-G78 is 25% higher than that of Mali-G77. Exynos 1080 uses a 10-core architecture and can render more than 130 frames per second. At the same time, it supports a display refresh rate of up to 144Hz at FHD+ resolution.

       Samsung Exynos 1080 GPU performance improvement

　　In terms of 5G, which users are more concerned about, Samsung Exynos 1080 integrates Samsung's latest SA/NSA dual-mode modem. According to official data, the modem supports a maximum download speed of 5.1Gbps.

　　In addition, it is not only backward compatible with 2G, 3G, and 4G networks, but also supports 5G NR Sub-6 and millimeter wave.

　　In terms of AI processing, Samsung Exynos 1080 has built-in NPU and DSP AI solutions. This solution allows smartphones to quickly and accurately identify scenes and objects. In addition, Samsung has introduced the capabilities of the NPU into the ISP, which can intelligently adjust various parameters through machine learning in the original RAW domain, allowing the ISP to better adjust white balance, exposure, chroma, saturation, clarity, etc.

　　In terms of imaging capabilities, Exynos 1080 has added a hardware-level time-domain noise reduction module (TNR). This module can replace the noise reduction processing part in the super night scene algorithm, and has hardware-level night scene noise reduction capabilities when HDR is turned on for night scene recording. With the support of the new ISP architecture, through high-speed continuous shooting hardware, Exynos 1080 supports the output of up to 30 frames per second of 12-megapixel ultra-clear and ultra-fast continuous shooting pictures. In addition, this chip also supports 10-bit color gamut video shooting, a maximum image resolution of 200 million pixels, and 6 cameras can be recorded simultaneously.

　　In other aspects, Samsung Exynos 1080 uses Game Governor intelligent game acceleration to improve game heating and frame drops. Exynos 1080 also supports HDR 10-bit game image quality and has dynamic frame rate adaptation function. The chip also supports Wi-Fi 6 technology, Bluetooth 5.2 technology, LPDDR5 memory and other most advanced technologies and hardware specifications.

　　Like last year's Exynos980, this time Exynos1080 is also jointly developed by Samsung Semiconductor and vivo. So vivo will be the first to use Exynos1080, but the specific model has not yet been announced.

　　Sina comments:

　　Recently released flagship processors such as Apple A14, Kirin 9000, and Samsung Exynos 1080 are all 5nm process products. It can be seen that processors using 5nm process will soon become the standard for flagship mobile phone terminals.

　　Samsung's Exynos 1080 SoC is flagship-level in hardware specifications, and judging from the exposed AnTuTu score of 690,000, it is at the same level as other flagship chips of current brands. As for the performance of smartphones equipped with this chip and what kind of applications it can derive, it still requires cooperation between Samsung and mobile phone manufacturers.

　　In addition, Samsung has gradually begun to change its strategy for mobile chips. It no longer privatizes chips, but opens them to more manufacturers. At today's press conference, Samsung announced that vivo will be the first to launch the Exynos 1080 chip, and it will not only supply it to its own Samsung mobile phones. Compared with Samsung's mobile phone market share of less than 1% in China, cooperation with vivo can accelerate the optimization of this chip and its popularization in the Chinese market. Of course, Samsung's entry will directly compete with Qualcomm and MediaTek, and will also bring new vitality to smartphones.

　　If Qualcomm Snapdragon is currently the most important chip manufacturer in the Android phone camp, then Samsung Exynos will undoubtedly be the market disruptor next year.