Hot on the heels of Apple’s announcement that it plans to buy Intel’s 5G modem business for $1bn, Samsung Electronics has released the production schedule for the Exynos 980 - its first mobile processor that includes a built-in 5G modem.
- Check out the latest 5G stocks news for 2019
When it goes into mass production later this year, the Exynos 980 will include two of the latest high-performance Cortex-A77 CPU cores and six efficient Cortex-A55 cores, enabling the Exynos 980 to deliver the fast and complex computing power required in the 5G era. And it will have the ability to power realistic gaming and AR/VR experiences. The processor also comes with the top-of-the-line Mali-G76 GPU.
5G revolution
"Samsung is pushing to make 5G more accessible to a wider range of users and continues to lead innovation in the mobile 5G market."
Ben Hur, VP of System LSI
“With the introduction of our 5G modem last year, Samsung has been driving in the 5G revolution and paved the way towards the next step in mobility,” said Ben Hur, vice president of System LSI marketing at Samsung Electronics. “With the 5G-integrated Exynos 980, Samsung is pushing to make 5G more accessible to a wider range of users and continues to lead innovation in the mobile 5G market.”
Based on advanced 8-nanometer (nm) FinFET process technology, the Exynos 980 is Samsung’s first artificial intelligence (AI) mobile processor with an integrated 5G modem. And the processor's integrated neural processing unit (NPU) processes AI tasks on the device instead of offloading them to the server, offering increased data privacy and security.
Rather than being coupled with a separate 5G modem, Samsung claims that the 5G-enabled Exynos 980 will not only help to reduce power consumption, but will also increase the space efficiency within a device. And the new processor’s modem will support 5G to 2G networks, providing a fast gigabit downlink speed in 4G LTE and up to 2.55-gigabits per second (Gbps) in sub-6-gigahertz (GHz) 5G.