Samsung Exynos 990 SoC, 5G Exynos Modem 5123 Leverage 7nm-EUV Process

Samsung Exynos 990

Samsung Electronics has announced two silicon products manufactured using a 7-nm process and extreme ultra-violet (EUV) technology with namely Exynos 990 mobile processor for premium smartphones, and 5G Exynos Modem 5123. Samsung Exynos 990 Preliminary specifications: CPU – Octa-core, tri-cluster CPU structure 2x Exynos M5 custom cores 2x high-performance Cortex-A76 cores 4x power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores GPU – Arm Mali-G77MP11 GPU with Valhall architecture AI Accelerators – Dual-core neural processing unit (NPU) and digital signal processor (DSP) that can perform over 10 TOPS Memory I/F – LPDDR5 data rates of up to 5,500 Mbit/s Display – 120Hz refresh-rate display driver Camera – Up to 108MP in total thanks to an ISP that supports up to 6x image sensors with concurrent processing of three Media – 8K30 / 4K120 encode & decode of H.265/HEVC, H.264, VP9 The GPU is said to improve graphic performance or power efficiency by up to 20 percent, […]

Linux on DeX Won’t Be Available on Android 10 as Samsung Scraps the Initiative

Linux on Dex

Desktop mobile convergence was talked a lot a few years with the hope that smartphones would eventually be used as a phone while on the go, and an efficient desktop or laptop replacement at the office or the home. Canonical was heavily involved in making convergence happen with Ubuntu Touch, but over two years ago they eventually had to drop all development efforts focusing on IoT and the Cloud instead. Samsung came up with its own Linux on Galaxy offering in 2017, which officially launched as Linux on Dex beta nearly a year ago, and allowed users, mostly developers, to run a Linux Desktop while their Samsung Android smartphone was connected to a monitor. Linux on Dex is Dead This looked promising, but Android Police reports some beta users received an email from Samsung explaining that the beta program had ended and that Linux on DeX will not be supported […]

Samsung Exynos 9611 SoC Targets AI Powered Smartphones with a Pro-grade Camera

Samsung Exynos 9611

Silicon vendors are all launching new mobile processors with “advanced AI capabilities”, and Samsung has just announced another one of those processors with Exynos 9611 that upgrades on Exynos 9610 introduced last year. The company claims “the Exynos 9611 mobile processor brings intelligent performance for the next-generation experiences from artificial intelligent applications to pro-grade camera”, but I’m actually unable to find any differences between the two processors, except the Cortex-A53 cluster’s  maximum frequency has been boosted to 1.7 GHz instead of 1.6 GHz, and possibly support for 64MP single cameras. Exynos 9611 key features and specifications: CPU – Up to 2.3GHz quad-core Cortex-A73 cluster and up to 1.7GHz quad-core Cortex-A53 cluster. GPU – Mali-G72 MP3 Memory – LPDDR4x Storage – UFS 2.1, eMMC 5.1 Display – Up to WQXGA (2560×1600) Camera – 24MP single camera (up to 64MP),  16+16MP dual camera Video – 4K UHD 120fps encoding and decoding with […]

Sm@rtDock 15 Touch is a 15″ 2-in-1 Laptop Dock for Samsung DeX Devices and Smartphones with a USB-C Port

Sm@rtDock 15 Touch

We’ve already covered several laptop docks for smartphones such as  NexDock 2. AFAICR, all those modes would come with a full laptop body with non-touch display and keyboard. “Losing the wires” company offers something slightly different with their Sm@rtDock 15 Touch as it aims to convert Samsung DeX smartphones into 2-in-1 hybrid laptops. That means the 15″ display comes with a touchscreen, and the keyboard is separate. Sm@rtDock 15 Touch kit includes the following items and features: 15.6″ LCD display Full HD/1080p resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels) with 10 point capacitive touch USB – 1x USB-C port to smartphone, 1 x micro-USB port for peripherals, 1x USB- C charge port Video Output – Mini-HDMI in for use as a secondary display for another device Battery – Up to 4 or up to 7 hours life (model specific) Dimensions – 356 x 224 x 9mm Weight – 900g (without case) UK […]

Huawei Kirin 990 & Samsung Exynos 980 are the First Mobile SoCs with Integrated 5G Modem

Samsung Exynos 980

[Update: post edited on September 6, 2019 with more details about Kirin 990 5G following the official launch of the processor] We’ve already seen mobile phones and laptops with the latest 5G cellular connectivity such as Samsung Galaxy S10 5G or Lenovo Project Limitless 5G laptop, which internally are designed with an Arm SoC plus a separate 5G modem chip. But as IFA 2019 is about to start, both Huawei and Samsung claim to have introduced the world’s first SoC with an integrated 5G modem with respectively Huawei Kirin 990 and Samsung Exynos 980. We should note that MediaTek is working on their own 5G SoC as well. Samsung Exynos 980 Samsung has already made the announcement so we have Exynos 980 key features and specifications: CPU – Octa-core processor with two Arm Cortex-A77 cores @ 2.2GHz, six Arm Cortex-A55 cores @ 1.8GHz GPU – Mali-G76 MP5 GPU Integrated NPU […]

Samsung Galaxy Book S Snapdragon 8cx Laptop to Launch soon for $1,000

Snapdragon 8cx laptop

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx was announced as the first Snapdragon processor specifically designed for connected mobile PCs (aka laptops with cellular connectivity) last December. Earlier this year we got confirmation 8cx would support 5G connectivity as an option, and in May, we got news Lenovo Limitless 5G laptop was coming and got some benchmarks showing Snapdragon 8cx with performance similar to an Intel Core i5 Kaby Lake-R processor (15 Watt TDP) while offering much longer battery life. It’s Samsung turn to announce their Snapdragon 8cx laptop with Samsung Galaxy Book S that will be available this fall for $999 and up. Samsung Galaxy Book S specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Compute Platform with eight 64-bit Armv8 cores in two clusters: Kryo 495 Gold cores (Cortex-A76 class) @ 2.84 GHz + Kryo 495  cores (Cortex-A55 class) @ 1.8GHz ; 7nm process; 7W TDP System Memory – 8GB RAM (LPDDR4X) Storage – […]

MBCFET Process Technology to Enable 3nm Chips in 2021

Planar FinFET GAA MBCFET Transistor

We often read new processor are manufactured with a FinFET process. The new process was created due to short channel effects in traditional planar transistors, and FinFET (Fin Field-effect transistor) was introduced to enable further voltage scaling but with the process node becoming smaller and smaller, electrostatics effects started to cause problem. A solution was to use GAA (Gate All Around) nanowires to limit those effects, but those are apparently really hard to integrate into silicon, so Samsung ended up using thin layers (nanosheets) instead of nanowires enabling greater current per track in their GAA implementation called MBCFET (Multi-Bridge Channel Field-Effect Transistor). While FinFET starts to encounter limitations under 4-5nm, MBCFET will enable manufacturing of chips using a 3nm process. Silicon designers can get started straight away as Samsung Foundry has recently announced the release of their 3GAE PDK (Process Design) version 0.1. Compared to 7nm FinFET technology, Samsung’s 3GAE […]

e.Foundation to Sell Refurbished Phones Running Google-Free /e/ Android OS

Google Free Android Smartphone

Most Android phones come with Google services, which is both a boon and a curse, as those services are often convenient, but they come at the loss of your privacy.  For example, most people get all upset and lost if a firmware image for an SBC is shipped without Google Play Store, but yet at the same time they worry about their privacy providing all their data to a single company like Google. There must be a better way, and that’s what the e.foundation is attempting with /e/ operating system based on Android, but without any of the Google Services, and targetting your typical end-users, as opposed to geek. /e/ operating system aims to provide privacy both inside the phone, and via cloud services unrelated to Google. It is a fork of LineageOS 14.1 itself a fork of AOSP, and replaces Google services and apps with programs such as MicroG […]

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