Samsung Exynos 9810 SoC Launched With AI Features, Better Face Recognition Capabilities

Samsung on Thursday, ahead of CES 2018, announced the new Exynos 9 Series 9810 SoC built on its second-generation 10nm FinFET process technology. The South Korean giant has claimed that the Exynos 9 Series 9810 is its most innovative mobile processor yet, meant for AI applications and richer multimedia content. The new SoC is claimed to enhance single-core performance by two-fold and multi-core performance by around 40 percent compared to its predecessor. The Exynos 9 Series 9810 SoC is currently in mass production, and is expected to be launched with the Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ later this year.

"The Exynos 9 Series 9810 is our most innovative mobile processor yet, with our third-generation custom CPU, ultra-fast gigabit LTE modem and, deep learning-enhanced image processing," said Ben Hur, vice president of System LSI marketing at Samsung Electronics. "The Exynos 9810 will be a key catalyst for innovation in smart platforms such as smartphones, personal computing and automotive for the coming AI era."

The Exynos 9810 has introduced features like neural network-based deep learning algorithms and stronger security. Samsung says that the technology will help the processor to accurately recognise people or items in pictures for fast image searching. It will also allow deep sensing to scan a user's face in 3D for hybrid face detection, utilising both hardware and software. "Exynos 9810 enables a depth sensing feature to scan user's face in 3D for face tracking filters as well as strong security when unlocking a device with one's face," the company said.

Additional security features include a processing unit that safeguards user information like facial, iris and fingerprint data. It also features firewalls that isolate internal sub-systems from each other. It will be interesting to see how chip performs against the Apple A11 Bionic SoC that is being used on the iPhone X, which made headlines with its Face ID 3D facial recognition feature. Notably, the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ are also expected to be powered by the recently unveiled Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC in some regions.

Samsung's Exynos 9810 SoC sports a 3rd generation custom CPU that Samsung has upgraded with wider pipelines and optimised cache memory. Samsung claims that the custom CPU delivers a clock speed of up to 2.9GHz which indicates higher computing power. As for the configuration, the Exynos 9810 SoC bears four custom CPU cores clocked at 2.9GHz and four Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 1.9GHz. The Exynos 9810 features the latest ARM Mali-G72 MP18 GPU that brings more realistic graphics with 20 percent more power than its predecessor. The SoC supports LPDDR4x RAM.

Meanwhile, the advanced MFC (Multi-Format Codec) contains 10-bit HEVC (H.265), H.264, and VP9 codecs that offer 64 times more colours than the conventional 8-bit colour format. The Exynos 9810 features a dual-ISP (Image Signal Processor) that support up to 4 image sensors such as a dual-camera in the rear along with a camera and an iris sensor in the front. The imaging sub-system enables advanced stabilisation and real-time out-of-focus photography in high-resolution image and video. The SoC supports up to 24-megapixel front and rear cameras, or up to 16-megapixel dual cameras.

The Samsung Exynos 9810 SoC supports displays up to WQUXGA (2400x3840 pixels) and 4K UHD (4096x2160 pixels) in resolution. As for storage, the Exynos 9810 SoC supports UFS 2.1 and SD 3.0.

When it comes to streaming of 'high-quality virtual reality content', the Exynos 9810 has downlink and uplink speed of up to 1.2Gbps (LTE Cat.18 6CA) and 200Mbps (LTE Cat.18 2CA) respectively. The new SoC also supports 4K UHD video recording and playback with the frame rate up to 120fps. Additionally, the audio subsystem has also been upgraded for the audio quality of up to 32bit/384kHz. Other specifications include

Exynos 9810 SoC, along with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 will likely debut on the upcoming Galaxy S9 phones. Qualcomm, on December 5, had already announced the Snapdragon 845 SoC as its next premium mobile processor at the Snapdragon Technology Summit. These new SoCs have been designed to power the next-generation Android flagship devices that will launch in 2018.