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Samsung brings back Exynos for its high-end smartphones

Published: 06 Oct. 2023, 11:07 Updated: 06 Oct. 2023, 19:09

PARK EUN-JEE
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Park Yong-in, system LSI business head at Samsung Electronics, delivers a presentation at the company's Tech Day event in Silicon Valley on Thursday. [SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS]

Samsung Electronics has brought back its Exynos chip series for high-end smartphones after it suspended the adoption due to poor performance.

The Korean chipmaker unveiled the latest Exynos 2400 on Thursday, which will be integrated into the upcoming Galaxy S24 line. The demonstration was held at Samsung's Tech Day event in Silicon Valley, which brought together people from 300 partners and clients.

Samsung detailed the improvement in the performance of the central processing unit (CPU) and neural processing unit (NPU) without specifying that of the graphics processing unit (GPU).

The new application processor achieved a 1.7 times increase in CPU performance, a 14.7 times boost for NPU compared to its predecessors.

As for GPU, it only mentioned that the feature is based on the RDNA 3 architecture developed by AMD.

With the launch of the Exynos 2400, the Galaxy S24 models will be powered by both Samsung’s own processor and Qualcomm‘s latest Snapdragon chipset, depending on the model or region.

Some industry watchers predicted that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will be fitted in the Galaxy S24 Ultra models while the Exynos 2400 will be used in the S24 standard and plus lines.

“Generative AI has quickly emerged as perhaps the most significant trend of the year, demanding more powerful foundational technologies to process data and bring AI to life,” Park Yong-in, president of the company's LSI business, said.

“We are paving the path toward a new era of proactive AI, leveraging our Samsung System LSI Humanoid platform, which seamlessly converges our capabilities across a broad spectrum of logic semiconductors, from powerful computational IPs, connectivity solutions to sensors emulating the five human senses,” he said.

The performance of Exynos 2400 is critical since its predecessors showed subpar performance and leading to its suspension last year.

The Exynos 2200 chip deployed in Galaxy S22, for instance, got busted in last year because of overheating — which Samsung tried to resolve with a pre-installed game optimizing service (GOS) app that throttled the phone's other functions. The in-house chipset was instantly thrown out the window.

As a result, the next series, the Galaxy S23, was entirely powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen chipset manufactured by TSMC's 4-nanometer technology.

A complete reliance on Qualcomm chips, however, led Samsung to spend 5.75 trillion won in mobile application processor (AP) purchases in the first half of this year, according to the company's semiannual report.

In the meantime, the chipmaker also presented a new automotive processor named the Exynos Auto V920, slated for mass production in 2025. It was demonstrated running several applications across multiple displays.

BY PARK EUN-JEE [[email protected]]