Samsung Exynos 2200 presented: Galaxy S22 with raytracing and 200 MP?
The Exynos 2200 has been unveiled! 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 along with the Galaxy S22. Others said Samsung was no longer working on the processor and would use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in the new flagship. Now, however, the new top SoC is official and we reveal what that could mean for the Galaxy S22.
TL;DR
- Exynos 2200 has been officially unveiled.
- SoC will power the upcoming Galaxy S22 lineup.
- The SoC uses AMD's RDNA 2 architecture and a tri-cluster design.
The Samsung Galaxy S22 is considered one of the most anticipated smartphones for 2022. The flagship is probably scheduled to be unveiled on February 8, and so Samsung wanted to give us a first taste of the phone's power with the presentation of the Exynos 2200 on January 11. But this presentation simply didn't happen without an official cancelation and many wondered if the Exynos 2200 would even be released. With a delay of almost exactly one week, the news came from South Korea - 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. This could make reflections and lighting effects in mobile games look much more realistic on the S22. Normally, ray tracing is found only on high-end graphics cards from computers or gaming 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
The new processor is not only supposed to shine in mobile games. An efficient tri-cluster design uses a Cortex-X2 high-performance core, three performance Cortex-A710 cores, and four Cortex-A510 cores. Thus, the SoC features a similar structure as the two top dogs MediaTek Dimensity 9000 and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. In addition, the chip uses a 4 nm architecture to be able to work energy-efficiently.
So the Exynos 2200 arrives in time for use in the Galaxy S22 after all, but now more 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. It is also questionable whether game developers will really be able to exploit the graphics performance of AMD's architecture.
This assumption is especially obvious if Samsung resorts to a Snapdragon SoC in the US and other regions, as is the tradition 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 games, a certain Nokia snake still haunts my dreams. Mobile games have come a long way since the 90s, and working with AMD is an important next step. So I'm really excited to see what mobile games look like a year from now. In any case, Samsung promises us a great gaming experience with the new SoC.
Support for 8K and 200 megapixels
Besides the gaming qualities, the SoC also looks promising in other areas of use. Samsung announces support for 8K videos, which can also be edited via the SoC. If you have followed our reviews of the Galaxy S21 lineup, you will know that this was already possible before. While the 8K video snap feature ran satisfactorily, you had to deal with stutters when editing 8K content.
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It is also exciting that the Exynos 2200's image processor can handle even higher resolutions. According to Samsung's homepage, a maximum of 200 megapixels is possible. If you use two cameras at the same time, the smartphone records 108 megapixels at 30 frames per second. These are impressive data rates, which are especially interesting for computational photography.
What do you think of the new Samsung processor? Do you think the Exynos 2200 can influence the mobile gaming market? Do you think the processor will be available for Samsung Galaxy S22 models in which markets? Let us know in the comments!
Source: Samsung
