Samsung LSI has introduced the much-awaited Exynos 2100 chipset that will be powering the upcoming Galaxy S21 phones. This year, Samsung has moved on from its in-house Mongoose micro-architecture and used ARM’s cortex cores instead. It has faster core clock speeds than the Snapdragon 888 and claims a 30% improved multi-core performance, and 40% better graphics gains over its precursor, ie, Exynos 990.
Here’s a ready reckoner of its specs —
Exynos 2100 vs Exynos 990 Specs
| SoC | Exynos 2100 | Exynos 990 |
| Manufacturing Process | Samsung 5nm LPE | Samsung 7nm LPP |
| CPU | 1x Cortex-X1 @ 2.9GHz 3x Cortex-A78 @ 2.8GHz 4x Cortex A55 @ 2.2GHz ?MB sL3 | 2x Exynos M5 @ 2.73GHz 2MB sL2 3MB sL3 + 2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.50GHz 2x 256KB pL2 4x Cortex-A55 @ 2.00GHz 4x 64KB pL2 1MB sL3 |
| GPU | Mali G78MP14 @ ? MHz | Mali G77MP11 @ 800 MHz |
| Memory | LPDDR5 @ ?MHz ?MB System Cache | LPDDR5 @ 2750MHz 2MB System Cache |
| ISP | Single: 200MP Dual: 32MP+32MP (Up to quad simultaneous camera) | Single: 108MP Dual: 24.8MP+24.8MP |
| NPU | Triple NPU + DSP 26 TOPs | Dual NPU + DSP 10 TOPs |
| Encode/Decode | 8K30 & 4K120 encode & 8K60 decode H.265/HEVC, H.264, VP9 AV1 Decode | 8K30 & 4K120 encode & decode H.265/HEVC, H.264, VP9 |
| Modem | Exynos Modem Integrated (LTE Category 24/18) DL = 3000 Mbps 8x20MHz CA, 1024-QAM UL = 422 Mbps 4x20MHz CA, 256-QAM (5G NR Sub-6) DL = 5100 Mbps UL = 1920Mbps (5G NR mmWave) DL = 7350 Mbps UL = 3670 Mbps | Exynos Modem External (LTE Category 24/22) DL = 3000 Mbps 8x20MHz CA, 1024-QAM UL = 422 Mbps ?x20MHz CA, 256-QAM (5G NR Sub-6) DL = 5100 Mbps (5G NR mmWave) DL = 7350 Mbps |
Exynos 2100 Features
Like its competition in 2021, the Samsung Exynos 2100 is also based on a 5nm LPE (Low Power Early) extreme ultra-violet (EUV) process node. It has gotta tri-cluster CPU design (1+3+4) led by Arm’s Cortex-X1 core clocked at up to 2.9GHz, followed by three Cortex-A78 cores running at 2.8GHz, and four Cortex-A55 cores with a 2.2GHz frequency. So, Samsung has ditched its custom Mongoose architecture. And it shares a similar structure to Snapdragon 888, but with faster clock speeds from all the cores. This should result in multi-threaded performance gains.
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You can see above some of the quoted figures from Samsung’s presentation. On the graphics front, Samsung is employing Arm’s Mali-G78 MP14 GPU with support for Vulkan and OpenCL APIs. There’s also a tri-core NPU that can process up to 26 TOPS (trillion operations per second) while delivering about two times the power-efficiency of the Exynos 990.
Coming to photography, the new silicon supports up to a total of 6 camera sensors with the main sensor shooting up to 200MP, and can process data from 4 of them simultaneously. You get to record videos up to 8K @ 60FPS and 4K @ 120FPS. It also brings AV1 decoding capability. The Image Signal Processing is also content aware now which means it can automatically adjust the camera settings to take pics/clips based on the subject and object in the frame.
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Flip to the front, the display can be up to 4K 120Hz or up to QHD+ 144Hz.
Lastly, but definitely not least, the Exynos 2100 has an integrated 5G modem that covers both mmWave and sub-6GHz frequencies. Among other things, you also get Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.
The oncoming Samsung Galaxy S21 series on January 14th will be powered by the new Exynos 2100 SoC. And so soon, we will see the real-world performance of the chip.
In this event, Samsung has confirmed the partnership with AMD for using RDNA based GPU in its future Exynos designs, which we could probably see with Galaxy S22 series in 2022.
