Exynos 980: Samsung’s new chip with 5G and Cortex-A77 CPU core

Barely a month after introducing the 7nm Exynos 9825, Samsung has announced a brand new Exynos 980 that claims to make your phone fly. According to the South Korean semiconductor company, this is their first artificial intelligence (AI) mobile processor that comes with an integrated 5G modem capable of blazing-fast download speeds.

Interestingly, the new mobile processor has a three-digit naming convention which is similar to Hi-Silicon’s Kirin range. The Exynos 980 is based on an 8nm FinFET process and it has an integrated 5G model that can help reduce power consumption and increase space efficiency for devices.

The new modem can support gigabit download speeds in 4G LTE (Cat.16) and up to 2.55Gbps in sub-6GHz 5G. It can also support E-UTRA-NR Dual Connectivity (EN-DC) which combines 2CC LTE and 5G connectivity to provide a higher downlink speed of up to 3.55Gbps. Also supported is 802.11ax (WiFi 6) for faster and stable wireless connectivity for online gaming and high-resolution video streaming.

In terms of CPU, the 980 is very different from the Exynos 9825 and 9820. It has 2x Cortex-A77 high-performance cores clocked at 2.2GHz and 6x Cortex-A55 efficiency cores clocked at 1.8GHz. It also uses a Mali-G76 MP5 GPU instead of a Mali-G75 MP12 that’s found on the Exynos 982X series.

One of the key highlights of the Exynos 980 is its on-chip NPU that claims to deliver 2.7 times the performance compared to its predecessor. This allows AI tasks to be processed on the device for better privacy and security instead of being off-loaded to a server.

The new chip can also support the latest 108MP camera sensor and there’s also an advanced image signal processor (ISP) that can support up to 5 individual sensors and process up to three concurrently for richer multi-camera experiences. For video recording, its multi-format codec can support 4K UHD video encoding and decoding at 120 fps and it also supports HDR10+.

From the looks of it, this new chip appears to be an upper mid-range offering that’s positioned below its current Exynos 9825 flagship. The new chip can only support up to UFS 2.1 of storage and it only supports WQHD+ display. As a comparison, the Exynos 9825 is capable of supporting UFS 3.0 storage, up to 4K UHD resolution display and it can support video recording up to 8K resolution.

According to Samsung, the Exynos 980 will begin mass production by the end of this year. We think it is unlikely to be introduced on their next Galaxy S flagship smartphone and it could be powering their updated Galaxy A series instead. You can learn more about the new Exynos chip from the product page.

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