Samsung Galaxy S21: Will Exynos 2100 Challenge Apple Silicon And Qualcomm Snapdragon?

After a tumultuous year for the smartphone industry and the world alike, things seem to be getting back on track. The ongoing CES 2021 is a shining example of that, as technology majors from around the world have lined up to showcase their new products. Samsung, in the midst, is set to unveil its new flagship smartphones - the Galaxy S21 series.

The launch will take place at the Galaxy Unpacked 2021 event later today. To be held virtually, the event will see the introduction of the Galaxy S21 series, including Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21+ as well as Galaxy S21 Ultra. At the heart of the series will be Samsung¡¯s latest Exynos processor - Exynos 2100 - meant to take on the flagship Snapdragon 888 chipset by Qualcomm.

But will the new flagship processor by Samsung be enough to compete with the Snapdragon 888 in terms of performance and connectivity? Here is what Samsung says:

Samsung Galaxy S21 Exynos 2100

Samsung Exynos 2100 Mobile Processor

Samsung announced the new Exynos 2100 just two days prior to the scheduled Galaxy Unpacked 2021. The new mobile processor comes as the company¡¯s first premium 5G-integrated mobile processor built on the 5-nanometer (nm) extreme ultra-violet (EUV) process node.

Samsung says that the new chip¡¯s computation and graphic processing performance have been improved over the previous iterations. The 5nm EUV process technology allows up to 20-percent lower power consumption or 10-percent higher overall performance than the 7nm predecessor.

For further enhancement, the chip offers improved cache memory utilization and a stronger scheduler. The octa-core CPU comes in a tri-cluster structure made up of a single powerful Arm Cortex-X1 core that runs at up to 2.9GHz. Coupled to this are three Cortex-A78 cores and four power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores delivering more than 30-percent enhancement in multi-core performance than the predecessor.

Graphic performance on the Exynos is improved by more than 40-percent, thanks to the Arm Mali-G78, which supports the latest APIs such as Vulkan and OpenCL. The Exynos 2100 also integrates advanced multi-IP governor (AMIGO) technology, to optimize power usages of CPU, GPU, and other processes.

Samsung says that the newly-designed tri-core NPU on the Exynos 2100 has architectural enhancements, allowing it to perform up to 26-trillion-operations-per-second (TOPS) with more than twice the power efficiency than the previous generation.

(Representative Image: Reuters)

In terms of photographic capabilities, Exynos 2100¡¯s advanced image signal processor (ISP) supports camera resolutions of up to 200-megapixels (Mp). It can connect up to six individual sensors and is able to process four concurrently . With a multi-camera and frame processor (MCFP), the ISP can combine feeds from multiple cameras to improve zoom performance, enhance image quality for ultra-wide shots and more. With AI acceleration, the ISP offers a feature that quickly recognizes scenes, faces and objects and optimally adjusts the camera settings to capture the image with better detail.

As for connectivity, the Exynos 2100¡¯s integrated 5G modem supports 5G¡¯s sub-6GHz and mmWave spectrums from 2G GSM/CDMA, 3G WCDMA and 4G LTE. The modem delivers a maximum downlink speed of up to 5.1-gigabits per second (Gbps) in sub-6-gigahertz (GHz) and 7.35Gbps in mmWave, or up to 3.0Gbps in 4G networks with 1024 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) support.

Samsung says that the Exynos 2100 is already in mass production and with the Galaxy S21 series, the world will have its first glimpse on the practicality of the chipset.