Samsung’s next flagship might have a new AI chip, 8K video recording

This time, it’s not a rumor. On Wednesday, Samsung officially unveiled its next-generation system-on-a-chip for smartphones, the Exynos 9820. 

Highlights of the new chip, which is likely to be built into Samsung’s next flagship phone, include a new Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which will power the phone’s AI tasks, as well as video recording in 8K resolution. 

The new Exynos 9820 is built with an 8-nanometer process and has eight CPU cores, coupled with an ARM Mali-G76 graphics processing unit.  In terms of performance, the new chip should be 20% speedier in single core tasks and 15% faster in multi-core tasks than its predecessor (that would be the Exynos 9810, launched in January). 

The integrated NPU makes the chip seven times speedier than the Exynos 9810 when it comes to AI tasks. 

Other highlights include a fast LTE modem that allows for 2.0Gbps download speeds and 316 Mbps upload speeds, 8K video recording at 30fps or 4K video recording at 150fps, as well as support for screen resolutions up to 3,840×2,400 or 4,096×2,160 pixels. 

The launch follows Apple’s A12 chip and Huawei’s Kirin 980 chip, both of which are built with a 7nm process and boast similar features, most notably AI improvements. And Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip — also used by Samsung in its phones — is likely to get an upgrade later this year. 

Samsung says the Exynos 9820 should be in mass production by year’s end, which gives the company plenty of time to integrate it with its upcoming Galaxy S10 flagship, which is expected to arrive in February next year.