Samsung Is Ready To Begin Mass Production Of 5nm Exynos Chipsets: Report

29 May 2020, 09:17 by https://www.facebook.com/ADSoomeet

Samsung could begin the mass production of 5nm Exynos chipsets as early as August this year. Citing some industry sources, ZDNet Korea reports the company has completed all preparations needed for the mass production of its next-generation mobile SoC.

Samsung had last month announced that it could start the mass production of 5nm chipsets in Q2 2020. The company is now seemingly ready to begin. In the press release, Samsung also said it would start focusing on the development of the GAAFET-based 3nm process node this year.

As for the 5nm EUV chips, its semiconductor arm is reportedly waiting for the confirmation from the smartphone division on whether or not to use them in the Galaxy Note 20 series. The new flagships are likely to arrive sometime in August, along with the second-generation Galaxy Fold.

The South Korean giant also recently started building a new 5nm chip production line in Pyeongtaek, South Korea. It plans to start operations in this facility by the second half of 2021.

Samsung's 5nm chipsets might feature Cortex-A78 CPU cores

Samsung launched the Galaxy S20 series earlier this year with the 7nm Exynos 990 processor in most markets. This variant showcased relatively weaker performance and higher power consumption compared to the Snapdragon 865 variant. The latter launched only in South Korea, China, and the US.

The company was criticized heavily for this performance gap. It is now expected to make major improvements to the Exynos 990 successor in order to catch up with the Snapdragon chips, or at least narrow the gap.

The new SoC, which will be reportedly called Exynos 992, will use ARM's Cortex-A78 CPU cores and Mali-G78 GPU architecture for improved performance.

ARM's new CPU cores bring a 20-percent increase in performance over the Cortex-A77 cores found in Exynos 990.

They also offer 50 percent energy savings when compared to earlier-generation devices. The new GPU architecture further offers 25 percent better performance than the existing Mali-G77 solution.

ARM recently confirmed that its new CPU and GPU will be used in chipsets built on a 5nm process. However, reports suggest they'll not make it into chipsets before 2021. ZDNet Korea, meanwhile, reports Samsung's Exynos 992 is coming this August featuring the new ARM architectures.

The report also states that Samsung might use the Exynos 992 chipset only in the South Korean version of the Galaxy Note 20.

But it's highly unlikely that all overseas Note 20 models will get a Snapdragon chipset. Clearly, there are some inconsistencies in the report, so you should take this information with a pinch of salt.