Very weird product the Exynos 990. Where are you getting the 30% improvement in GPU ? I only see 20% in various Samsung's press releases.
I am hoping the European version of the S11 comes with Snapdragon processor if this is what Samsung Exynos can bring. The Snapdragon 865 is supposed to integrate the 5G modem right ?
Then most likely Samsung did put that 10% to improve the effiency. You normally get either 30% more speed or 30% less power usage. It seems that Samsung did go to 20% more speed and 10z less powerusage. Sensible because their own chips have normally been more power hungry than snapdragons.
It's almost never advertised like this. Unless this is some sort of transition half-cycle and the next Note will be on something faster to be released next year it looks like almost zero improvement compared to the 9825 which was just a node bump. How does anybody in the ARM space manage single digit improvements on a hardware generation?
Yet it's physically impossible to have 20% more performance OR 10% less power. You'll have to lower the frequency and bump UP the voltage. The power saving MUST be higher than performance gain if it's a trade off.
Lol man.. easy there. I find your reaction very ironic considering all the work and writing so far. Here's a thought..what if they focused on the actual, sustained performance this time? How about that?
This largely depends on cooling solutions. The chips won't be too efficient as the efficiency gains were listed and Samsung's M cores have never been really good at this.
And what's with the external modem? How much more battery will they have to add?...or unless this has something to do with the news on multi-die development tools?
The point of the encode performance is to support creating video that you can record and play back on other devices besides just your phone. Video frame-rates above 60Hz are mostly useful for slow motion conversion - 150Hz gives you a 5x slowdown while still playing back at a fairly smooth 30fps, 120Hz 4x. I wouldn't call it a deal breaker but it *is* a thing.
And you do realise those has almost nothing to do with encoding capabilities, right? Kirin 980/990 have far inferior encoder, they do have 960fps (equivalent to 4K100) and 7680fps (4K800+). Those short videos are buffered.
And no mobile sensor to date can do more than 4K120.
...Still some hope yet! https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apparently-the-new-E... This makes sense though considering the naming which always felt off, you have very little room to fit a 980 successor if the next flagship is called 990.
Hey Andrei, any news on the Note 10 review? I am really interested in how much efficiency improvement 7nm (E9825) brings over 8nm (E9820). The numbers for the 980 aren't looking good, seems like Samsung will be trailing Qualcomm once again next year.
I don't have a Note 10 yet - it's still debatable if it's worth for us to even buy one given that the 7nm aspect is the only interesting thing to test.
Is this the last hurrah of Samsung's SoC design team? I read a few weeks ago that Samsung is closing up shop in Texas, shutting down its attempt at developing custom ARM-based cores. If so, having the modem on a separate IC makes even more sense - much less work to hook that into the next generation, straight-up ARM design generation.
Exynos SoCs are in every Samsung phone made, plus they sell to other manufacturers. It's only high-end where Samsung Mobile use 2 vendors for their phones. Do a search for Exynos in GSM Arena: https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?sFreeText=Ex... High end is only a small part of the game - but one where they need to compete still.
If you're referring to custom ARM cores, then perhaps, you're info is as good as mine. But I'd say that SoC is here to stay.
Yes, I referred to their custom core team in Texas, which was supposedly being disbanded as per news 2-3 weeks ago. So, there will be future Exynos SoCs, but those will have plain ARM designs. Not a loss, IMO, the mongoose cores didn't really have the bite they were hoping for (pun intended).
As far as I know, not a single Samsung phone sold in North America uses an Exynos SoC. They don't eat their own dogfood, probably to avoid paying patent licensing fees.
What a stupid comment! How about YOU do an unbiased search? This year alone Samsung released 6 phones with SD7xx/6xx/4xx and 8 with Exynos 7xxx/96xx. That's hardly "EVERY", and certainly not high end.
I'm not buying any new devices if they don't have AV1 hardware decode support. That is going to be the codec of choice for YouTube and a lot of other content. Hopefully the AV2 rollout will be faster since it builds on AV1, and Google was originally targeting an 18-month development cycle for VP9 successor codecs (then VP10 got rolled into AV1 and things slowed down).
Phones should support as many satellite navigation systems as possible for redundancy and accuracy, including GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, etc.
Hell, I'd just like to have an FM tuner. Or better yet, an OTA TV tuner.
But "GLONASS and VHF support!" doesn't sell flagships, I guess. They HAD it in previous Snapdragon SoCs, but didn't even bother to flip it on, much less ship the phone with an app that uses it :(
Apple only joined AOMedia last year, Samsung this year, Qualcomm/Huawei/Mediatek nowhere to be found. I wouldn't even expect A14 to have full AV1 support. You'll have to wait another 12 years at least for any Android vender to adopt AV1.
Is there even a stand-alone AV1 ASIC encoder out there that is affordable? I fully agree with you though that current hardware support for AV1 encoding and even just decoding is sorely missing.
"The increase seems quite meagre given the process improvement as well as the new GPU architecture, it seems very unlikely Samsung will be unable to catch up to Apple’s newest chipsets – and Qualcomm is expected to have a big generational jump as well."
Should it be "it seems very unlikely Samsung will be ***able*** to catch up to Apple's newest chipsets" instead?
Is there any feasible reasoning as to why companies (mainly Intel and AMD) are not scaling *up* the size of their CPU size overall.? I understand why Samsung would want to consistently shrink theirs, power efficiency-to-performance, etc. But, AMD and Intel are working with far larger spaces within their constructs. I see absolutely no reason why Intel couldn't simply double their CPU size (in theory here, we're talking layman terms) and get a solid buff on all fronts.
Probability of non-recoverable failures increase quickly with the area of a chip. Space efficiency (% of the wafer used for chips) decreases after a certain size when margins for cuts become small in comparison to the chips. Thermal expansion-contraction considerations.
Yes, certain types of chips should be bigger. Server (data center) multi-cpu arrangements should use the whole wafer, without cuts (of course they cannot expose the whole wafer so some kind of substrate with connectors will be needed). But the parts where only production costs are >>$25K are not for consumers.
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Lodix - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link
Very weird product the Exynos 990. Where are you getting the 30% improvement in GPU ? I only see 20% in various Samsung's press releases.I am hoping the European version of the S11 comes with Snapdragon processor if this is what Samsung Exynos can bring. The Snapdragon 865 is supposed to integrate the 5G modem right ?
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link
We were distributed press releases with 30%. I inquired about the discrepancy and which number would be correct.If the 20% is accurate, then it's absolute garbage in terms of improvements.
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link
I got confirmation the 20% is correct, RIP.B3an - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link
Yeah that's embarrassing. Samsung SoC's have been going downhill since atleast the S9 now (i had to get the Snapdragon import).And maybe update this part:
"The new Valhall architecture promises to be a very large performance jump"
Because it's obviously not a "very big" performance jump and i was like WTF when i read 20%.
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link
It was *meant* to be a big jump: https://www.anandtech.com/show/14385/arm-announces...The fact that it doesn't look to pan out is a disappointment.
Kishoreshack - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link
When is the Note 10 plus review coming?Andrei please do a display analysis of Asus Rog Phone 2
BlakeBB - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
"Big Jump" is for Samsung what "Great Leap" was for China.haukionkannel - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
Then most likely Samsung did put that 10% to improve the effiency. You normally get either 30% more speed or 30% less power usage. It seems that Samsung did go to 20% more speed and 10z less powerusage. Sensible because their own chips have normally been more power hungry than snapdragons.s.yu - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
It's almost never advertised like this. Unless this is some sort of transition half-cycle and the next Note will be on something faster to be released next year it looks like almost zero improvement compared to the 9825 which was just a node bump. How does anybody in the ARM space manage single digit improvements on a hardware generation?levizx - Friday, October 25, 2019 - link
Yet it's physically impossible to have 20% more performance OR 10% less power. You'll have to lower the frequency and bump UP the voltage. The power saving MUST be higher than performance gain if it's a trade off.darkich - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
Lol man.. easy there. I find your reaction very ironic considering all the work and writing so far.Here's a thought..what if they focused on the actual, sustained performance this time? How about that?
s.yu - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
This largely depends on cooling solutions. The chips won't be too efficient as the efficiency gains were listed and Samsung's M cores have never been really good at this.s.yu - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
And what's with the external modem? How much more battery will they have to add?...or unless this has something to do with the news on multi-die development tools?brucethemoose - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
Well then they would bang on about that in the marketing. Samsung is not modest.Ultron22589 - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
Nobody said 30%..its written in this article that exynos 990 has ipc improvements of 20%..the 23-30 % ipc increase mentioned is for snapdragon 865shabby - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link
Finally some advancement in ddr, no more ~30gb/sec limit.nandnandnand - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link
"4K120 encode & decode"It regressed. Throw it into the garbage where it belongs.
HardwareDufus - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
oh yeah... totally garbage,because you absolutely must have better than 4k 120hz performance on your 6" cell phone screen.
my god, I swear technology is being wasted on the least appreciate generation in the history of humanity....
good grief....
Spunjji - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
The point of the encode performance is to support creating video that you can record and play back on other devices besides just your phone. Video frame-rates above 60Hz are mostly useful for slow motion conversion - 150Hz gives you a 5x slowdown while still playing back at a fairly smooth 30fps, 120Hz 4x. I wouldn't call it a deal breaker but it *is* a thing.levizx - Sunday, November 3, 2019 - link
And you do realise those has almost nothing to do with encoding capabilities, right? Kirin 980/990 have far inferior encoder, they do have 960fps (equivalent to 4K100) and 7680fps (4K800+). Those short videos are buffered.And no mobile sensor to date can do more than 4K120.
s.yu - Friday, October 25, 2019 - link
...Still some hope yet!https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apparently-the-new-E...
This makes sense though considering the naming which always felt off, you have very little room to fit a 980 successor if the next flagship is called 990.
ss96 - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link
Hey Andrei, any news on the Note 10 review? I am really interested in how much efficiency improvement 7nm (E9825) brings over 8nm (E9820).The numbers for the 980 aren't looking good, seems like Samsung will be trailing Qualcomm once again next year.
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link
I don't have a Note 10 yet - it's still debatable if it's worth for us to even buy one given that the 7nm aspect is the only interesting thing to test.WPX00 - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link
Didn't you guys buy the Note 9 last year even though that had no H/W improvements over the S9+'s 9810?Kishoreshack - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link
sooo many reviews pendingplease do a Asus Rog Phone 2 display analysis
Note 10 plus review
Pixel 4 XL review
One plus 7T series overview
s.yu - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
Buy it, test it, return it :)levizx - Sunday, November 3, 2019 - link
You can return grey import for no reason?eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link
Is this the last hurrah of Samsung's SoC design team? I read a few weeks ago that Samsung is closing up shop in Texas, shutting down its attempt at developing custom ARM-based cores. If so, having the modem on a separate IC makes even more sense - much less work to hook that into the next generation, straight-up ARM design generation.Bender316 - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
Exynos SoCs are in every Samsung phone made, plus they sell to other manufacturers. It's only high-end where Samsung Mobile use 2 vendors for their phones. Do a search for Exynos in GSM Arena:https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?sFreeText=Ex...
High end is only a small part of the game - but one where they need to compete still.
If you're referring to custom ARM cores, then perhaps, you're info is as good as mine. But I'd say that SoC is here to stay.
rpg1966 - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
Err, are you forgetting about all the Samsung phones with Qualcomm SoCs?eastcoast_pete - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
Yes, I referred to their custom core team in Texas, which was supposedly being disbanded as per news 2-3 weeks ago. So, there will be future Exynos SoCs, but those will have plain ARM designs. Not a loss, IMO, the mongoose cores didn't really have the bite they were hoping for (pun intended).Guspaz - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
As far as I know, not a single Samsung phone sold in North America uses an Exynos SoC. They don't eat their own dogfood, probably to avoid paying patent licensing fees.phoenix_rizzen - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
Canadian Galaxy phones used Exynos SoCs for awhile. The S6 and S7 shipped with Exynos. And several of the A-series phones use Exynos SoCs in Canada.They might not use Exynos SoCs for US phones, but they definitely do use them in North America.
levizx - Friday, October 25, 2019 - link
What a stupid comment! How about YOU do an unbiased search?This year alone Samsung released 6 phones with SD7xx/6xx/4xx and 8 with Exynos 7xxx/96xx. That's hardly "EVERY", and certainly not high end.
https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=201...
https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=201...
SydneyBlue120d - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
AV1 encoding?L1 + L5 satellite frequency support?
tuxRoller - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
Nope to the av1.Keep on asking!
nandnandnand - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
I'm not buying any new devices if they don't have AV1 hardware decode support. That is going to be the codec of choice for YouTube and a lot of other content. Hopefully the AV2 rollout will be faster since it builds on AV1, and Google was originally targeting an 18-month development cycle for VP9 successor codecs (then VP10 got rolled into AV1 and things slowed down).Phones should support as many satellite navigation systems as possible for redundancy and accuracy, including GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, etc.
brucethemoose - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
Hell, I'd just like to have an FM tuner. Or better yet, an OTA TV tuner.But "GLONASS and VHF support!" doesn't sell flagships, I guess. They HAD it in previous Snapdragon SoCs, but didn't even bother to flip it on, much less ship the phone with an app that uses it :(
levizx - Friday, October 25, 2019 - link
Apple only joined AOMedia last year, Samsung this year, Qualcomm/Huawei/Mediatek nowhere to be found.I wouldn't even expect A14 to have full AV1 support. You'll have to wait another 12 years at least for any Android vender to adopt AV1.
levizx - Friday, October 25, 2019 - link
*2yearseastcoast_pete - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
Is there even a stand-alone AV1 ASIC encoder out there that is affordable? I fully agree with you though that current hardware support for AV1 encoding and even just decoding is sorely missing.zer0hour - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
Yucks. Looks like another generation to skip Samsung, given that I live in a country that gets Exynos rather SD.Fengshui - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
Is the following line an error?"The increase seems quite meagre given the process improvement as well as the new GPU architecture, it seems very unlikely Samsung will be unable to catch up to Apple’s newest chipsets – and Qualcomm is expected to have a big generational jump as well."
Should it be "it seems very unlikely Samsung will be ***able*** to catch up to Apple's newest chipsets" instead?
Pyronick - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
Still no hardware AV1 decoding. :(anactoraaron - Thursday, October 24, 2019 - link
So the ISP supporting 108MP seems to confirm rumors that there will be a 108MP camera in the s11. Interesting.s.yu - Friday, October 25, 2019 - link
That much is pretty certain. MIX Alpha gets the debut but then it's Samsung.caesartx - Friday, October 25, 2019 - link
It is weird they decided to prop up the release given their entire SARC CPU team was laid off lol.M5 is likely their final part?
WastedElf - Sunday, November 3, 2019 - link
Is there any feasible reasoning as to why companies (mainly Intel and AMD) are not scaling *up* the size of their CPU size overall.? I understand why Samsung would want to consistently shrink theirs, power efficiency-to-performance, etc. But, AMD and Intel are working with far larger spaces within their constructs. I see absolutely no reason why Intel couldn't simply double their CPU size (in theory here, we're talking layman terms) and get a solid buff on all fronts.peevee - Tuesday, November 5, 2019 - link
Probability of non-recoverable failures increase quickly with the area of a chip.Space efficiency (% of the wafer used for chips) decreases after a certain size when margins for cuts become small in comparison to the chips.
Thermal expansion-contraction considerations.
Yes, certain types of chips should be bigger. Server (data center) multi-cpu arrangements should use the whole wafer, without cuts (of course they cannot expose the whole wafer so some kind of substrate with connectors will be needed). But the parts where only production costs are >>$25K are not for consumers.
Jayden77 - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
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Oliseo - Sunday, November 10, 2019 - link
OEMs should support their phones longer than the current 3 years.For a multitude of reasons that should be apparent to anyone.
That they keep getting a free pass by the press makes my skin crawl.
Aran19 - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
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