As expected, Samsung today announced its high-end in-house Exynos 9 Series 9810 chipset ahead of CES 2018, which will be powering the South Korean giant's upcoming flagship smartphones such as Samsung Galaxy S9, S9+, and Note 9. The Exynos 9810 is an upgrade to last year's 8895 SoC. Samsung says that the Exynos 9810 SoC brings the next level of performance to smartphones and smart devices with its powerful third-generation custom CPU, faster gigabit LTE modem and sophisticated image processing with deep learning-based software.
The Samsung Exynos 9810 SoC is built on the second-generation 10nm manufacturing process, which improves the overall power efficiency and performance. The processor has new eight-core CPU under its hood, four of which are powerful third-generation custom cores that can reach 2.9 GHz, with the other four optimised for efficiency. Samsung confirmed that the single-core performance on the Exynos 9810 SoC is enhanced two-fold and multi-core performance is increased by around 40% compared to its predecessor.
Furthermore, the chipset introduces several new features to enhance user experience with neural network-based deep learning and stronger security on the smartphones. This technology allows the processor to accurately recognise people or items in photos for fast image searching or categorisation, or through depth sensing, scan a user’s face in 3D for hybrid face detection.
With the help of both hardware and software, hybrid face detection enables realistic face-tracking filters as well as stronger security when unlocking a device with one’s face. For added security, the processor has a separate security processing unit to safeguard vital personal data such as facial, IRIS and fingerprint information.
Another highlight of this Exynos 9810 chipset is the LTE modem, which is industry's first 6CA LTE modem. Following the successful launch of the industry’s first 1 Gbps LTE modem last year, Samsung again leads the industry with the first 1.2 Gbps LTE modem embedded in Exynos 9810. It’s also the industry’s first Cat. 18 LTE modem to support up to 6x carrier aggregation (CA) for 1.2 Gbps downlink and 200 Mbps uplink. Compared to its predecessor’s 5CA, this new modem delivers more stable data transfers at faster speeds. To maximise the transfer rate, the modem supports a 4×4 MIMO (Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output) and 256-QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) scheme, and utilises enhanced Licensed-Assisted Access (eLAA) technology.
Furthermore, Samsung says it has optimised the chipset to deliver a better multimedia experience on mobile phones. Thanks to a dedicated image processing and upgraded multi-format codec (MFC) built inside the chipset, multimedia will be more immersive on Exynos 9810 SoC powered devices.
The chipset is also said to deliver better image processing as compared to Samsung's earlier generation processors. "With faster and more energy-efficient image and visual processing, users will see advanced stabilisation for images and video of up to UHD resolution, real-time out-of-focus photography in high resolution and brighter pictures in low light with reduced noise and motion blur," said Samsung in a media statement.
The upgraded multi-format codec (MFC) in the Exynos 9810 SoC supports video recording and playback at up to UHD resolution at 120fps. With 10-bit HEVC (high-efficiency video coding) and VP9 support, the MFC can render 1,024 different tones for each primary colour (red, green and blue). This translates to a vast 1.07 billion possibilities of colours, or 64 times the previous 8-bit colour format’s 16.7 million.
