Samsung Exynos 9810 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 865

Samsung Exynos 9810

The Samsung Exynos 9 9810 is a mobile SoC for smartphones and tablets. It was announced early 2018 and should be integrated in the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S9 series (at least partly). It integrates eight CPU cores (octa core) in two clusters. The performance cluster integrates four Samsung M3 at 2.9 GHz and the power efficiency cluster four small ARM Cortex-A55 cores at 1.9 GHz. The Samsung M3 cores are based on Samsungs own design and now offer a wider pipeline, improved cache memory and bigger caches. This leads to a twice as fast single-core performance and a 40 percent improved multi-core performance according to Samsung (most likely compared to the previous Exynos 8898).

The integrated LTE modem also got a siginifcant upgrade and now supports Cat.18/13 LTE for up to 1.2 Gbps download and 200 Mbps upload. This is achieved with 6x20 MHz CA, 256-QAM in download and 2x20 MHz in upload.

As a GPU, Samsung integrates a ARM Mali G72MP18 (only 18 clusters, compared to the 20 clusters of the predecessor G71MP20). Most likely Samsung increases performance due to a higher core clock of the graphics card.

The memory controller looks similar to the 8898 and supports LPDDR4x 1800 MHz. The video engine now also supports 10 bit videos (as before 4k120 H.265/HEVC, H.264 and VP9 de- and encoding). 

The SoC is produced at Samsung in the new 10nm LPP process (the Exynos 8898 still used the 10nm LPE process) that should also help with some of the performance gains.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 865

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform is a high-end smartphone and tablet SoC that Qualcomm announced in December 2019. The SoC integrates a fast ‘Prime Core’ that clocks up to 2.84 GHz and three further fast ARM Cortex-A77 performance cores, which can reach up to 2.42 GHz. These are complemented by four power-saving ARM Cortex-A55 cores that clock up to a maximum of 1.8 GHz. The difference to the older Snapdragon 855 is the switch from Cortex-A76 to the faster Cortex-A77 architecture. The clock speeds stay the same. 

Therefore, the Snapdragon 865 takes the top spot in mobile processors for Android based systems. In some multi-core workloads, the SD865 can even perform on par with the Apple A13 SoC. Single thread, however is still a strong suit of the Apple SoCs.

Compared to the previous generations, the Snapdragon 865 does not integrate an LTE modem anymore, but has to be paired with the new X55 5G modem, that also supports LTE Cat 24/22. The Wi-Fi module however is still integrated and called FastConnect 6800 with support for Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and 8x8 MU-MIMU and 60 GHz 802.11ay with up to 10 Gbps. Bluetooth 5.1 is also supported including aptX Adaptive.

The integrated GPU is now called Adreno 650 and should offer 20% more performance than the Adreno 640 in the Snapdragon 855.

The on board Hexagon 698 DSP now offers an improved KI performance of up to 15 TOPS (up from 7 TOPS in the 855) and still uses a combination of CPU, GPU, HVX and Tensor cores. The Spectra 480 ISP is now also significantly faster. The integrated Computer Vision Engine (CV-ISP) now supports Dolby Vision, 8K videos and 200 megapixel photos.

The built-in memory controller now supports LPDDR5 with up to 2,750 MHz and LPDDR4X with 2,133 MHz.

The Snapdragon 865 is manufactured at TSMC in the new improved 7nm process (N7P, DUV-based). The process offers a 7% higher performance or 10% less power consumption compared to the old N7 process.