The Exynos 2200 has been introduced! That’s the headline that probably surprised me the most over coffee this morning. After the canceled announcement of the Samsung chip on January 11, the rumor mill boiled over. Some claimed the chip would be unveiled alongside the Galaxy S22. Others said Samsung is no longer working on the processor and is using the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in the new flagship. But now the new top SoC is official and we’ll tell you what that could mean for the Galaxy S22.
- Exynos 2200 officially launched.
- SoC will power the upcoming Galaxy S22 range
- The SoC uses AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture and a tri-cluster design.
The Samsung Galaxy S22 is one of the most anticipated smartphones for 2022. The flagship is scheduled to be launched on February 8th, so Samsung wanted to give us a first taste of the power of the cell phone with the presentation of the Exynos 2200 on January 11th . But this presentation was omitted and many wondered whether the Exynos 2200 would still be an issue at all. The news from South Korea came almost exactly a week late – the chip exists and looks promising.
The previous teasers already suggested that Samsung developed the processor together with AMD. The confirmation came with the official presentation of the SoC. The announced AMD RDNA 2 architecture will be found in the Exynos 2200 and will support ray tracing. As a result, reflections and lighting effects in mobile games could appear much more realistic on the S22. Normally, ray tracing is more familiar from high-end graphics cards from computers or game consoles.
“AMD RDNA 2 graphics architecture extends power-efficient, advanced graphics solutions to PCs, laptops, consoles, automobiles and now to mobile phones. Samsung’s Xclipse GPU is the first result of multiple planned generations of AMD RDNA graphics in Exynos SoCs” – David Wang , Senior VP, Radeon Technology Group AMD
Tri-cluster design and energy efficiency in the Exynos 2200
However, the new processor should not only shine in mobile games. A high-performance Cortex-X2 core, three high-performance Cortex-A710 cores and four Cortex-A510 cores are used in an efficient tri-cluster design. The SoC thus has a similar structure to the two top dogs MediaTek Dimensity 9000 and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. In addition, the chip uses a 4 nm architecture in order to be able to work energy-efficiently.
The Exynos 2200 is still in time for use in the Galaxy S22. Now, however, further questions arise. It is still not known which models use the processor. The assumption suggests that the S22 Ultra in particular will be equipped with the SoC. In addition, it is questionable whether game developers can really exhaust the graphics performance of the AMD architecture.
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This assumption is particularly likely when Samsung uses a Snapdragon SoC in the US and other regions, as is traditional with the Galaxy S series. This would make it difficult for game developers to take advantage of the RDNA 2 architecture, even for exclusive mobile games.
When I think back to the beginning of mobile gaming, a certain Nokia snake still haunts my dreams to this day. Mobile games have come a long way since the 90’s and working with AMD is an important next step. So I’m really excited to see what mobile games will look like in a year’s time. In any case, Samsung promises us a great gaming experience with the new SoC.
Support for 8K and 200 megapixels
In addition to the gaming qualities, the SoC also looks promising in other areas of application. Samsung advertises support for 8K videos, which can also be edited via the SoC. If you have followed our test reports on the Galaxy S21 lineup, you know that this was also possible before. While the 8K video snap feature ran satisfactorily, stuttering was to be expected when cutting 8K content.
It is also exciting that the image processor of the Exynos 2200 can handle even higher resolutions. According to the Samsung website, there are a maximum of 200 megapixels, if you use two cameras at the same time, the smartphone takes 108 megapixels at 30 frames per second. These are impressive data rates, which are of particular interest for computational photography.
What do you think of the new Samsung processor? Do you think the Exynos 2200 can impact the mobile games market? Do you think the processor will be available for all Samsung Galaxy S22 models across Europe? Let us know in the comments!