Samsung announces Exynos 2200 with 'Xclipse' GPU

Samsung has announced its latest in-house mobile flagship chipset, Exynos 2200, that’s expected to power the upcoming flagship Galaxy smartphones.

Samsung has just made its newest in-house chipset, the Exynos 2200 official. The Exynos 2200 will power Samsung flagships like the upcoming Galaxy S22 series in non-Snapdragon regions like India.

The new chipset also comes with a powerful new Xclipse GPU. Here’s all you need to know about the Exynos 2200.

The chipset is built on the most advanced 4nm EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) process combined with improved Neural Processing Unit (NPU) and GPU technologies.

The Exynos 2200 has a 1+3+4 configuration that starts with an Arm Cortex X2 “flagship” core. This is followed by three Cortex-A710 “big” cores that are “performance and efficiency balanced,” while four power-efficient Cortex-A510 “little” cores round out the CPU.

Like Qualcomm’s competing chip, these ARMv9 cores are built on a 4nm process.

Samsung Exynos 2200: CPU details--

On the CPU front, the Exynos 2200 uses the latest Armv9 cores. It’s an octa-core setup that includes four efficient Cortex-A510 cores, three Cortex-A710 cores and one high-performance Cortex X2 core.

The CPU also features an updated NPU. The company claims that the Exynos 2200 features double NPU performance compared to its predecessor, Exynos 2100 , to offer better calculations and AI performance. The NPU now offers much higher precision with FP16 (16bit floating point) support in addition to power efficient INT8 (8 bit integer) and INT16.

The Exynos 2200 also comes with a fast 3GPP release 16 6G modem that supports both sub-6GHz and mmWave (millimeter Wave) bands. It also supports E-UTRAN New Radio-Dual connectivity that enables it to use both 4G LTE and 5G NR signals to offer speeds up to 10Gbps.

Samsung Exynos 2200: GPU details--

As already mentioned, the Exynos 2200 is the first chip to feature an AMD RDNA 2 architecture with Xclipse GPU

The AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture enables this chipset to offer PC and console-level graphics performance with hardware-accelerated ray tracing (RT) and variable rate shading (VRS) that were previously only available on PCs, laptops and consoles.

Samsung Exynos 2200: Camera details

The latest Exynos chip comes with a redesigned image signal processor (ISP) and it now supports the latest image sensor of up to 200MP. The ISP also supports a 108MP sensor at 30fps in single camera mode. 64MP + 36MP in dual camera mode.

The chipset can handle up to seven image sensors and run four of them simultaneously. For video recording, the ISP supports up to 4K HDR (or 8K) resolution.

CPU: The latest from ARM--

For the CPU, the Exynos 2200 follows the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 closely, in that both have made the jump to the ARMv9 architecture that was introduced in March 2021. Qualcomm’s Kryo chip in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is based on the ARMv9 architecture-based CPU designs, and Samsung uses the same CPU designs on the Exynos 2200.

Much like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, the Exynos 2200 features a Cortex-X2 prime core, three Cortex-A710 performance cores, and four Cortex-A510 efficiency cores. Samsung has not revealed the exact clock speeds, so we will have to wait on a device to release to get access to that information.

Either way, we expect a much smaller delta in performance between these two flagship chips this year than it has ever been in the recent past.

Exynos 2200: NPU--

Samsung’s press release isn’t too heavy on the details for the NPU, and we reckon that this could become a point of difference between Qualcomm and Samsung’s offering this year. NPU’s have grown in importance as smartphones have relied more on AI and ML for their functions, and if the Google Tensor chip on the Pixel 6 series is any indication, the results are worth watching out for.

For the Exynos 2200, Samsung claims the upgraded NPU has doubled in performance compared to its predecessor. The NPU now offers “much higher precision with FP16 (16bit floating point) support in addition to power efficient INT8 (8bit integer) and INT16.”

Modem--

The Exynos 2200 comes with a 3GPP Release 16 5G modem, with support for both sub-6GHz and mmWave. The claimed top speed is 7.35Gbps download on mmWave, but with the E-UTRAN New Radio – Dual Connectivity (EN-DC) feature, the modem can boost speeds to up to 10Gbps by utilizing both 4G LTE and 5G NR signals.

Security--

For safekeeping, the Exynos 2200 comes with Integrated Secure Element (iSE) to store private cryptographic keys as well as to play a role as RoT (Root of Trust). Also, an inline encryption HW for UFS and DRAM has been reinforced to have user data encryption safely shared only within the secure domain. We hope to get more details on these features once the chip makes its way onto a device.

Exynos 2200: ISP--

The Exynos 2200’s ISP supports camera resolutions up to 200MP, opening the door for a future Samsung device to ship with an ultra-high res camera if Samsung wanted to. At 30fps, the ISP supports up to 108MP in single camera mode, and 64+32MP in dual camera mode. Further, the ISP can connect to up to seven individual image sensors, and even drive four of them concurrently — this should open the door for more versatile camera setups as well as better and seamless switching between lenses.

With the help of the NPU, the ISP can realize a more content-aware camera experience, such as ML-based AI recognition for multiple objects, the environment, and faces within scenes.

For video recording, the ISP supports up to 4K HDR, and up to 8K resolution recording. The Multi-Format Codec (MFC) on the Exynos 2200 allows for up to 4K @120 and up to 8K @30 encoding, and up to 4K @240 and 8K @60 decoding. The MFC integrates the AV1 decoder, so you get better power efficiency and longer playback time.

Exynos 2200: Release and Availability--

Samsung mentions that the Exynos 2200 is in mass production. There’s no mention of any timeline or device estimates, which is rather intriguing if you have been following the leaks and news around this new SoC. The Exynos 2200 was originally supposed to launch on Jan 11, 2022. But the day went by with no announcement.

Samsung had even deleted the date announcement tweets, fueling speculation that the Exynos 2200 may not materialize after all. Samsung had to clarify that the new chip will be unveiled alongside the Galaxy S22 launch. And here we are a week later with the chip being announced, but no devices being named.

The Exynos 2200 is currently in mass production, as per Samsung, and will most likely debut with the Galaxy S22 Series that, again is expected to launch early next month.