Samsung unveils Exynos 2200 mobile processor with AMD’s GPU

Samsung Electronics said Tuesday it has teamed up with California-based chip maker Advanced Micro Devices to unveil its flagship Exynos 2200 processor chips for mobile phones, in a delayed announcement by a week.

The partnership with AMD in Samsung’s processor business has boosted energy efficiency and graphic processing performance compared to predecessors like Exynos 2100, the company said.

Manufactured in Samsung‘s cutting-edge 4 nanometer extreme ultraviolet lithography process, the new chip adopts Xclipse graphics processing unit, under AMD’s chip architecture codenamed RDNA 2.

The new GPU will offer an enhanced mobile phone gaming experience, but Samsung did not disclose the degree of improvement in graphics performance in numbers compared to Exynos 2100, launched in 2021. The predecessor used UK-based semiconductor design firm Arm’s Mali-G78 GPU.

With Xclipse GPU, Exynos 2200 features a hardware accelerated ray tracing to produce realistic lighting effects for graphically rendered scenes for the first time in the industry, Samsung said in a statement. Moreover, the new chip enables a technique called variable rate shading to optimize GPU workload. Also, Xclipse GPU comes with advanced multi-IP governor to make the chip more power-efficient.

“With the Xclipse, our new mobile GPU built with RDNA 2 graphics technology from the industry leader AMD, the Exynos 2200 will redefine mobile gaming experience, aided by enhanced graphics and AI performance,” said Park Yong-in, president of System LSI business at Samsung Electronics that oversees the Korean tech giant‘s fabless chip operation.

Also, AMD is walking an unprecedented path to employ RDNA 2 graphics architecture to mobile phones’ graphic performance. Previously, the architecture has been used for other electronic devices such as PCs, laptops, consoles and automobiles.

”Samsung’s Xclipse GPU is the first result of multiple planned generations of AMD RDNA graphics in Exynos system-on-chips,” David Wang, senior vice president of Radeon Technologies Group at AMD, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Exynos 2200 is one of the industry‘s first to integrate Arm‘s Armv9 core precessing units to add a boost to its octa-core features. Also, its neural processing unit‘s performance has doubled with a more powerful on-device artificial intelligence offering higher precision, Samsung said.

Exynos 2200 was initially poised for an announcement on Jan. 11. The plan was scrapped as a result of “consultations with its partners,” according to Samsung.

Now all eyes are on whether the Exynos 2200 would power Samsung‘s new flagship phones. Samsung did not disclose whether the new processor chip would be mounted on its forthcoming Galaxy S22 series smartphones, which market watchers expect to launch at the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2022 event in February.

Also, anticipation for the new chip is high, as there are market rumors that Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon mobile processors might be featured on Samsung’s new Galaxy phones, instead of Samsung’s own processors.

By Son Ji-hyoung (consnow@heraldcorp.com)