Samsung Exynos 2100 SoC launched with integrated 5G modem, ARM Mali-G78 GPU, faster NPU and more

Unlike Qualcomm, Samsung isn't one to make a hullabaloo around its processors. If anything, Samsung had even less of a reason to do so this year, given the Exynos 990's colossal failure. However, Samsung's upcoming Exynos 2100 processor showed us that it could take Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 head-on, and that's why Samsung had planned a dedicated launch event for it today (January 12).

Previous leaks already told us what the Exynos 2100 had in store for us. For starters, it is a 5nm chip manufactured using Samsung's in-house EUV process. Its CPU uses tri-cluster structure comprised of one ARM Cortex-X1 super core clocked at 2.9GHz, three Cortex-A78 and four Cortex-A55 cores. Samsung claims that the Exynos 2100 is up to 30% faster than its predecessor (Exynos 990), which is quite a significant leap in performance.

Moving on over to the GPU side of things, the Exynos 2100 uses the same ARM Mali-G78 found on the Kirin 9000. However, it uses only 14 of the available 24 cores, presumably due to battery life and thermal concerns. Early tests on the Kirin 9000's Mali-G78 MP24 found it to be a massive power hog. Samsung has addressed that issue by using its in-house AMIGO (advanced multi-IP governer) to balance performance and efficiency. Nonetheless, it manages to outperform its predecessor (ARM Mali-G77) by up to 40%. Whether or not it will be able to trade blows with the Snapdragon 888's Adreno 660 remains to be seen.

As expected, the Exynos 2100 also comes with an improved NPU (neural processing unit) for AI-related tasks. It can perform 26 TOPS (trillion operations per second), which puts in on par with Qualcomm's latest Hexagon 780 NPU. The Exynos 2100 also comes with an integrated 5G modem that supports both sub-6GHz and mmWave networks. Samsung claims that it can hit peaks speeds of up to 5.1Gb/s on the former and 7.3Gb/s on the latter.

Lastly, the Exynos 2100's ISP can process a single 200MP image at a time. That is quite a bump up from the Exynos 990's 108MP limit. The ISP can process inputs from up to four cameras and supports up to six camera sensors in total. It can record 8K video at 60 fps and 4K at 120 fps, something even the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 can't pull off.

It'll be interesting to see how the Exynos 2100 performs in the real world. Thankfully, we won't have to wait too long for it, as Samsung will debut the chipset alongside the Samsung Galaxy S21 series on January 14. Lastly, Samsung has also confirmed its highly-anticipated collaboration with AMD (at around the 12:50 mark in the attached video) and has stated that its 2022 flagship chipset will come with a Radeon GPU.