Samsung has announced the Exynos 980 mobile processor, which happens to be the company's first SoC with an integrated 5G modem. By combining a 5G modem and mobile processor into a single chip, the Exynos 980 will take up less space in a smartphone and will also be more power efficient. Samsung hopes that its 5G-integrated Exynos 980 will make 5G more accessible to a wider audience.
"With the introduction of our 5G modem last year, Samsung has been driving in the 5G revolution and paved the way towards the next step in mobility," said Ben Hur, vice president of System LSI marketing at Samsung Electronics.
The Exynos 980 chipset is based on an 8nm FinFET process and is Samsung's first AI mobile processor with an integrated 5G modem. To recall, Samsung launched the Exynos 9820 SoC without an integrated 5G modem and later announced the Exynos 5100 as a standalone 5G modem which would go on to feature on the Galaxy S10 5G. With the Exynos 980, there will be just one chipset that will come equipped with a 5G modem.
Samsung says the Exynos 980 will help reduce power consumption and will also increase the space efficiency within a device. The new mobile processor's 5G modem will support 5G to 2G networks, offering fast gigabit downlink speed in 4G LTE and up to 2.55Gbps in sub-6GHz 5G. Additionally, the Exynos 980 also supports the new Wi-Fi 6 standard to offer faster and more reliable speeds for streaming and online gaming over Wi-Fo networks.
In terms of specifications, the Exynos 980 features an octa-core CPU with two high-performing Cortex A77 cores clocking at 2.2GHz and six Cortex A55 cores at 1.8GHz. The chipset also comes equipped with a Mali G76 GPU and features an integrated NPU (Neural Processing Unit) for advanced AI capabilities. The Exynos 980 can also support up to 108-megapixels camera resolution, encoding and decoding of 4K UHD video at 120 fps and HDR10+.
The new Exynos 980 chipset with an integrated 5G modem will go into mass production by the end of the year, and we should see the chipset power the first batch of Samsung 5G phones early next year.
Gloss