New details that have emerged say Samsung's next flagship, the Galaxy S8, will reportedly use a 10nm chipset called the Exynos 8895 SoC.
The rumors are part of a set of leaked documents containing the company's fabrication process for 14nm and 10nm chips, which a Samsung senior official attempted to steal. The incident resulted in a scuffle with the South Korean police. According to Daum.net, a web portal in the country, the official who stole the documents was planning to sell it to competitor brands based in China.
If rumors are true, the Galaxy S8 will use the Exynos 8895 processor with ARM's new Mali-G71, the successor to the Mali-T880 used in Exynos 8890 inside Galaxy S7 units. Because it is up to 1.8 times more powerful than its predecessor, the GPU will focus on graphics-intensive processing the likes of high-end 4K and Virtual Reality content. To do this it will utilize ARM's new Bitfrost architecture.
Details lifted from ARM's website summarize the performance metrics of the G71:
"The Mali-G71 GPU was developed expressly to meet the needs of new industry advancements such as the Vulkan cross-platform graphics API from Khronos as well as the ever growing demand for a smooth mobile VR experience," the site says.
The G71 is designed specifically to usher in significant improvements and power efficiency to work seamlessly with mobile virtual reality platforms.
"As the complexity of 3D mobile graphics content continues to increase, so too must the computational capabilities of high-end GPUs. This is essential to deliver the latest games and applications to end-users within the power and thermal envelope of mobile devices," the site says.
Rumors also point to the G71 being more powerful than the GPU in the yet-to-be-announced Snapdragon 830 chipset. If these turn out to have any weight in them, then it'll be the first time that ARM outperforms Qualcomm in the GPU race. Concrete details surrounding the 830 remain slim to this day.
The Exynos 8895 will reportedly will be clocked all the way up to 3 GHz, Tech Times has previously reported. The G71 will also be compatible with Vulkan, OpenGL ES 3.2, GPU Compute, and Android RenderScript APIs. At 16nm, the G71 runs at 850 MHz, and will provide a fillrate of 27.2 gigapixels-per-second, twice than what the T880 is capable of reaching, at the same frequency.
Rumors have also circulated suggesting that the Galaxy S8 is to sport a new 4K display. Samsung has showcased the new display in a hush hush fashion, but despite being shrouded in secrecy, details about it still have emerged. The screen will reportedly feature a 3,840 x 2,160 resolution with 806 ppi.
Of course, rumors are still by their very nature, rumors, and until Samsung breaks their silence on the Galaxy S8 in due course, everything else, however convincingly accurate, remains unsubstantiated. But, it is worthwhile to note that Samsung has been showing a keen focus on its VR front, especially concerning their partnership with Oculus for the Gear VR headsets. For what the rumors are worth, if VR is indeed the lynchpin of the Galaxy S8, then they at least make sense.
