There has been a lot of buzz around Samsung’s upcoming mobile processor, the Exynos 8890. Starting Q1 2016, it will go head-to-head with the best SoCs in the industry including Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 and Apple’s A9X. In the previous weeks, we reported that Samsung is in the process of optimising its chipset for better performance as well as efficiency.
Now, it is being reported by Business Korea that the South Korean electronics chip giant will start mass producing the Exynos 8890 for the Galaxy S7 starting from December 2015 in its Giheung plant. The Exynos 8890 is an important milestone for the company as it will feature a custom CPU core for the first time in its processor lineup. Samsung will launch multiple variants of the Galaxy S7 with some of them featuring Exynos 8890, while others using the Snapdragon 820 chipsets.
With this introduction, Samsung will become the third brand after Qualcomm and Apple to introduce its own custom CPU cores, and that will improve the company’s position in the SoC segment. This is because it takes a lot of effort and experience in all forms of chip design including the manufacturing process. Till now, Samsung used generic ARM CPU cores in the Exynos chipsets, but starting with Exynos 8890, it will use homegrown M1 (a.k.a Mongoose) cores.
Samsung also has plans to introduce its own GPU in Exynos chipsets, but that will come at a later stage. The company is reportedly optimising Snapdragon 820 to fix its heating issues as the chipset will be manufactured by Samsung using its 14nm FinFET process. This is help the company in rising above other SoC players like MediaTek, Spreadtrum, and Huawei. Moreover, the company has reportedly hired AMD’s legendary CPU architect Jim Keller to design its next-generation Exynos chipsets.