With the New Year here, the smartphone market is abuzz with the manufacturers lining up their offerings for the year and new technologies being unveiled. The CES 2018 is the ideal platform and Samsung showcased its new processor, the Exynos 9 series 9810 SoC. Samsung claims that this SoC is its most innovative mobile processor and has shared the full details and capabilities of the processor. More importantly, the Exynos 9810 would be the processor Samsung hopes to launch its next flagships, the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ with, while the next generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC will also be featured in select markets.
Samsung has used its second-generation 10nm FinFET process technology to build this new processor and will sport 8 cores, of which 4 would be custom CPU cores and the other 4 Cortex A-55 cores. While the custom cores can offer a speed of 2.9GHz, the remaining 4 are rated at 1.9GHz. ARM Mali-G72 MP18 GPU would be the corresponding processor for graphics. In terms of the overall performance, the Exynos 9810 SoC can be expected to deliver 40% more than its predecessor.
In terms of the special features and improved capabilities of the new processor, the adaptability to AI and some of the features related to handling the cameras and imaging functions are the highlights. The Exynos 9810 has been specially developed for mobiles (smartphones), personal computing and automotive applications, where AI is increasingly getting used. The other significant improvement can be found in the 3D face recognition capability, which will get a boost with this new processor and will aid in making the devices more secure. Some of these are made possible through the neural network-based deep learning algorithms. Depth sensing for scanning faces will also be an added feature of the processor. Obviously, out in the marketplace, all these capabilities of the Exynos 9810 will be tested against equivalent products like the Apple A 11 Bionic SoC that is already functioning on Apple’s iPhone X.
As mentioned, the new Exynos 9810 will also feature a dual-ISP (Image Signal Processor) technology that will facilitate the imaging section and can accommodate up to 4 sensors in the rear and the front. This includes the feature where the out-of-focus images can be stabilized and optimized. Samsung says the Exynos 9810 SoC can put in the best performance when the cameras of up to 24MP are fitted or if there is a dual camera setup, then 16MP is the ideal rating up to which the processor can support ably.
In terms of display, the new SoC can support up to WQUXGA (screen resolution: 2400x3840 pixels) and 4K UHD (resolution: 4096x2160 pixels).
From the Indian context, since Samsung is the market leader, one can expect that the Exynos 9 series 9810 SoC and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 will dominate the top-end smartphones to be launched in the year 2018.