It is getting to that time of the year where companies announce their new flagship chipsets which will power the best phones in the coming year.

Samsung hasn’t technically announced their flagship chipset, but the one down from it, making it the successor to the Exynos 980.

The Exynos 980 was announced at IFA 2019 and was the first commercially available chipset to feature the Cortex A77 CPU. While many companies use the Qualcomm based chipset (such as the SD765G) or MediaTek, only four phones have been launched with the Exynos 980. Two from Vivo which are not available in western markets then the Samsung Galaxy A71 5G and Samsung Galaxy A51 5G.

Vivo X60 will launch with Exynos 1080 this year

Vivo has managed to get first dibs on the latest chipset with the Vivo X60 launching before the end of the year in the Chinese market.

Even though this is not a flagship chipset, it has beaten the current cream of the crop thanks to its ARM Cortex-A78 cores and Mali-G78 GPU

Chipset Comparison

So far we don’t know too much about the chipset, Samsung has just teased the details but I will update this post as and when new information comes in.

The Samsung Exynos 1080 will be the first chipset to launch on the 5nm fabrication process, the other chipsets in this comparison are all on 7nm. All unannounced 2021 flagship chipsets will be on the 5nm and likely many of the mid to upper range options.

CPU

• Samsung Exynos 1080:
  • 2 x ARM Cortex-A78 @ unknown frequencies
  • 6 x ARM Cortex-A55 @ unknown frequencies
• Samsung Exynos 980:
  • 2 x ARM Cortex-A77 @ 2.2GHz
  • 6 x ARM Cortex-A55 @ 1.8GHz
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 865+:
  • 1x 3.1 GHz – Kryo 585 Prime (Cortex-A77)
  • 3x 2.42 GHz – Kryo 585 Gold (Cortex-A77)
  • 4x 1.8 GHz – Kryo 585 Silver (Cortex-A55)
• MediaTek Dimensity 1000+
  • 4x 2.6GHz Cortex A77
  • 4x 2GHz Cortex A55

I have assumed this is a 2×6 design because the Exynos 980 is, and this is what both Qualcomm and Samsung have traditionally used for their mid-range chipsets. Similarly, I have assumed the Coretex-A55 because ARM hasn’t announced a new high-efficiency core to replace it.

Furthermore, it is worth noting that in the year coming there will be another Arm CPU that sits about the A78 in the form of the Cortex-X1. It is likely that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 875 and Exynos 2100 will use this for a single core, with the others being A78

GPU

• Samsung Exynos 1080:  Mali-G78 unknown number of processors
• Samsung Exynos 980: Mali G76 MP5
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 865+: Adreno 650
• MediaTek Dimensity 1000+ : Mali-G77 MP9

While the Exynos 980 launched with the latest CPU at the time, it used the slightly older Mali G76 GPU, so the Exynos is jumping up by two generations, so at the very least it will offer a massive performance improvement compared to its predecessor.

Benchmarks – Antutu

We don’t have any official benchmarks, but prolific leaker Ice Universe has stated that the Exynos 1080 achieves over 650,000 in Antutu. If true, this would put it at least 5% ahead of the official score for the Asus Rog 3 which features the latest Snapdragon 865+ chipset, and is currently classed as the most powerful phone on the market.

Then if you look at the current flagship Samsung Exynos 990 on the Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G, that only scores 527,353 which would make the Exynos 1080 23% more powerful (which makes me a little sceptical of the leaked benchmark number).

Posted by Mighty Gadget Blog: UK Technology News and Reviews