Samsung has announced its latest premium mobile processor ahead of its scheduled February 8 Unpacked event, promising to "change the way we experience mobile gaming." The Exynos 2200 comes packing in-house graphics based on AMD RDNA 2 architecture with hardware-based ray tracing.
Ray tracing is an image rendering technology that makes for more realistic lighting and reflection effects in virtual scenes, and has made its way into a number of computer graphics cards and games consoles over the last few years.
And it's gaming on the move that Samsung is looking to power with the Exynos 2200, though the mobile processor is expected to improve "the overall experience in social media apps and photography" as well.
In addition to hardware-accelerated ray tracing, the AMD RDNA 2 architecture that the Xclipse 920 GPU is built around also enables variable rate shading, allowing developers to lower the shading rate in areas of a rendered scene where overall quality won't be an issue, freeing up GPU resources to focus on more important areas.
Samsung is one of the first to make use of Armv9 CPU cores for improved security and performance, with the processor made up of a single Arm Cortex-X2 core, three Cortex-A710 cores and four Cortex-A510 cores. And an upgraded neural processing unit is reported to offer double the AI performance of its predecessor.
A redesigned signal processor has been developed to support image sensors up to 200 megapixels, which translates to up to 108 megapixels at 30 frames per second for a single camera module, 8K video resolution at up to 60 fps, or 4K at up to 120 fps. And naturally, multi-camera setups can be figured into the handset design too.
Elsewhere, the chipset will support QHD+ displays at up to 144 Hz or 4K visuals at 120 Hz, and HDR+ is on offer for improved color, contrast and depth. It's compatible with LPDDR5 memory and UFS 3.1 storage, and there's cooked-in 5G with support for mmWave and sub-6GHz wavebands that could offer speeds of up to 10 Gbps.
"Built on the most advanced 4-nanometer EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) process, and combined with cutting-edge mobile, GPU and NPU technology, Samsung has crafted the Exynos 2200 to provide the finest experience for smartphone users," said Samsung's Yongin Park. "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."
The Exynos 2200 processor is currently in mass production, though there's no official word on whether it will make it into the upcoming Galaxy S22 handset.
Source: Samsung
