With the A12 Bionic and Kirin 980, Apple and Huawei, respectively, have jumped on to the 7nm bandwagon. The two remaining prominent chip manufacturers remaining are Samsung and Qualcomm, and both are expected to unveil their flagship SoCs in the coming months. Now, some interesting information has surfaced about Samsung’s chipset.
Citing industry officials, a report by ET News has claimed that the chaebol’s upcoming top-tier Exynos SoC, based on the 7nm fabrication process, will have a dual-core Neural Processing Unit. The dual-core NPU will be used for handling AI-based tasks. Also, a tweet by leakster Ice Universe says that Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S10 series will have world’s first EUV dual-core NPU chip on the flagship Exynos 9820 (the likely identifier of the chipset).
Samsung Galaxy S10 will use Samsung's self-developed world's first 7nm EUV dual-core NPU chip on Exynos 9820. One of the features of the AI chip is to enhance the camera and work with the ISP for the Galaxy S10 camera.
— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) November 5, 2018
As per the ET News report, this EUV is some sort of ‘next-generation exposure equipment. It’s suitable for more detailed semiconductor circuit pattern implementation and can reduce complex multi patterning process to realize high performance semiconductors and improve productivity.’
The tipster (Ice Universe) further mentions that the AI-chip will be used to enhance the camera performance on the upcoming Galaxy S10 line-up, in tandem with the Image Signal Processor (ISP) on the smartphones.
Watch: Samsung Galaxy Note 9 First Look
Majority of the modern smartphones (including even mid-rangers) today use (as claimed by OEMs) some sort of AI-processing to enhance camera performance. It’ll be interesting to see how Samsung’s own NPU helps in enhancing the imaging quality on the upcoming Galaxy S10 line-up of flagship smartphones.
