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Exynos 1080 announced: Samsung's first 5nm chip is also the first to use Cortex-A78 cores

By Anam Hamid

Published: Nov 12, 2020, 11:22 AM

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Exynos 1080 announced: Samsung's first 5nm chip is also the first to use Cortex-A78 cores

Samsung today formally announced the highly anticipated Exynos 1080 midrange chipset. As expected, the SoC is based on the company's 5nm EUV FinFET process technology. Usually, the smaller the node, the more transistors can fit onto a chip, and this boosts performance and efficiency.

Exynos 1080 performance

Samsung's current chip for midrange phones, the Exynos 980, was manufactured using the 8nm FinFET process. The 8nm node was the Korean giant's last DUV-base process technology and it served as a stopgap while the 7nm technology was being developed.

It appears that the Exynos 1080 offers 30 percent increase in logic area efficiency and is 15 percent more power efficient than the Exynos 980.

It is an octa-core chip with one Arm Cortex-A78 core clocked at 2.8GHz for peak performance, three Cortex-A78 cores for balanced performance running at 2.6GHz, and four Cortex-A55 cores for efficiency with clock speeds of 2.0GHz. The chip supports both LPDDR4x and LPDDR5 RAM, and UFS 3.1 storage.

Samsung says that the neural processing unit (NPU) and digital signal processor (DSP) allows the chip to run up to 5.7 trillion operations per second, and this should come in handy for supporting a wide range of AI apps.

The new Exynos silicon also boasts a power-saving mode called Amigo which monitors and optimizes power consumption in real time to improve efficiency by up to 10 percent.

Per the company, the single-core performance has improved by 50 percent and the multi-core performance has doubled when compared to the previous generation.

Exynos 1080's GPU seemingly performs 2.3 times better than Exynos 980's GPU

The new chip integrates the Mali-G78 GPU, which is 10 percent more efficient than flagship Exynos 990's G77 GPU.

The SoC is capable of driving WQHD+ displays with a refresh rate of 90Hz, or FHD+ screens at 144Hz. HDR10+ is also supported.

A 5G modem is embedded within the chip and it is compatible with both mmWave and sub-6GHz networks, enabling maximum downlink speeds of 5.1Gbps. Other connectivity options include Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6.

The Exynos 1080 can handle up to a 200MP single sensor or dual 32MP + 32MP cameras, and offers 4K video recording at 60fps.

The chip is already in mass production and will first be used by a Vivo handset early next year. It was unveiled in China and it seems very likely that it's exclusive to the country.

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Anam Hamid is a computer scientist turned tech journalist who has a keen interest in the tech world, with a particular focus on smartphones and tablets. She has previously written for Android Headlines and has also been a ghostwriter for several tech and car publications. Anam is not a tech hoarder and believes in using her gadgets for as long as possible. She is concerned about smartphone addiction and its impact on future generations, but she also appreciates the convenience that phones have brought into our lives. Anam is excited about technological advancements like folding screens and under-display sensors, and she often wonders about the future of technology. She values the overall experience of a device more than its individual specs and admires companies that deliver durable, high-quality products. In her free time, Anam enjoys reading, scrolling through Reddit and Instagram, and occasionally refreshing her programming skills through tutorials.