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​Samsung begins mass production of 10nm Exynos 9 processors

The super-premium application processor (AP) was made through the 10-nanometer FinFET process and will likely power the upcoming Galaxy S8.
Written by Cho Mu-Hyun, Contributing Writer

Samsung Electronics will begin mass production of Exynos 9 (8895), a premium application processor for smartphones with a high performance LTE modem that uses its 10-nanometer FinFET process.

Performance is enhanced 27 percent and power consumption is 40 percent lower compared to its predecessors that used the 14-nanomter process, Samsung said.

The Exynos 9 has 5CA (carrier aggregation) technology embedded -- a modem that can group five LTE bands -- which will allow it Gbps download rates.

It will allow up to 1Gbps (Cat.16) data download rates and 150Mbps (Cat.13) upload speeds.

The processor has Samsung's self-developed 64-bit CPU and ARM's Mali-G71 GPU, which will allow for processing of UHD and VR videos.

The tech giant applied HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) technology that allows the CPU and GPU to use the same architecture to be interconnected, maximizing use. This will be used for AI and deep learning, the firm said.

It has multi format code (MFC) that allows filming and playing at 120fps.

The Exynos 9 also has a separate processing unit that handles security for iris-scanning and fingerprint scanning, and another embedded Vision Processing Unit (VPU) for enhanced vision.

The chips were being produced as of January and will be on premium smartphones and other smart devices, the company said. It will likely power the upcoming Galaxy S8.

The company announced that it successfully manufactured a 10-nanometer processor last year.

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