Samsung Exynos 2200 will be fitted to S22 models in Europe and Russia only, due to low yields of new 4 nm process says tipster

Samsung’s Exynos processors have copped a lot of heat, because, well, they generate a lot of heat. This has also made them relatively inefficient and unable to sustain peak performance for extended periods of time. The key reason for this, it seems, is that Samsung’s chip fabrication technologies have been lagging behind its chief rival, TSMC. This was most prominent in the case of the Galaxy S20 series which was fitted with the TSMC fabricated Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 versus the S20 models fitted with the Exynos 990.

The difference in performance characteristics under load closed considerably between the Snapdragon 888 and the Exynos 2100 because both were fabricated on the same Samsung 5LPE process. Again, as also seen in the new Google Tensor, which has also been fabricated on the same 5LPE process, Samsung’s fabrication technology isn’t necessarily bringing the best out of these designs. This has also highlighted that simply because a chip is fabricated on a newer node, like the 5 nm process, there is more to the equation -- this is a point Intel has been keen to highlight.

This brings us to the forthcoming Exynos 2200, which features the vaunted AMD mRDNA 2 GPU architecture and is headed in part to the upcoming Galaxy S22 series. It is manufactured on a newer first-gen Samsung 4 nm node dubbed 4LPE. The upcoming Snapdragon 898 on the other hand, is being fabricated on Samsung’s 4LPX process, which is said to be a third-gen implementation of its 5 nm node. This would, for the first time in recent memory, give the Samsung Exynos a clear edge over the Snapdragon as the preferred chip.

Customers of Samsung’s Galaxy S series will be well aware that Samsung has traditionally fitted Snapdragon chips to the US, Chinese and some other markets while the rest of the world gets the Exynos model. For ‘long suffering’ Galaxy S fans in global markets, just as it looks like the Exynos variant of the S22 series will be the preferred model, Samsung has hit yield issues for its new E2200 chip. According to the usually reliable tipster @FrontTron, this will mean that the E2200 models will only be headed to Europe, including Russia (not cancelled altogether as some sites reported might be the case). All other Galaxy S22 markets will receive the S898.

If there is a silver lining for Galaxy S22 fans it will be that both the E2200 and S898 will be the first chips to feature the all-new Armv9 architecture. It is the first all-new architecture from Arm ten years and will result in substantially improved efficiency and performance on the chip design side. This should help to offset, at least somewhat, any lingering concerns about Samsung’s fabrication technologies. Early benchmarks for both chips show marked improvements over their predecessors, but the proof of the pudding will be in its tasting as the saying goes.

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