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Samsung's next-gen flagship processor to pack a dedicated neural processing unit

Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 mobile processor with NPU
Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 with NPU
Although Samsung has completed the work on its first-generation neural processing unit, it looks like the successor will be employed by the processor of the company's upcoming flagships, including the Galaxy S10. The new NPU architecture is expected to be used by the Exynos 9820 processor, which is supposed to arrive with a 2+2+4 core configuration.

Some might think that Samsung is behind its competitors in the mobile AI race, but this is not the truth. In fact, Samsung has already designed a first-generation neural processing unit but chose not to use it in any mobile processor. However, the next-gen Exynos chip for flagships will probably use a second-generation NPU designed in-house by the tech giant headquartered in South Korea.

The information is not official and comes in a rather unusual way. A LinkedIn profile that seems to belong to a former Senior Hardware Design Engineer at Samsung was spotted online and one of the interesting details it contains is that this guy claims to have worked on Samsung's second-generation NPU design. 

Huawei, for example, is already selling devices powered by the HiSilicon Kirin 970 SoC — a chip that has a dedicated NPU. If you missed all the articles on this topic that were published so far — and there are quite a few, to be honest — all you need to know is that the NPU's purpose is to handle all tasks related to artificial intelligence without the help of the main processing unit (about the same way a GPU handles graphics tasks and keeps them away from the computational cores).

Sadly, there is no official information about this upcoming Exynos chip, but some older leaks claimed that the Exynos 9820 would come with a 2+2+4 core configuration (and an NPU, we can add now). These being said, we can just sit back and wait for the next round of rumors, because Samsung's new processor should arrive next year.

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2018 10 > Samsung's next-gen flagship processor to pack a dedicated neural processing unit
Codrut Nistor, 2018-10- 8 (Update: 2018-10- 8)