The Kirin 9000 from Huawei, the Snapdragon 888 from Qualcomm, and Samsung’s Exynos 2100 are the processors that will dominate this year’s high-end Android smartphones. Today we compare all three and see how they match up.
Exynos 2100
Samsung has unveiled its new mobile processor called the Exynos 2100 it’s the latest chipset that will feature in its 2021 flagship phones. The Exynos 2100 is Samsung’s first flagship chip with an integrated 5G modem and its second to be built on the 5nm EUV process.
It should be noted that Samsung has always used both Snapdrag and Exynos processors this year both the Exynos 2100 and Snapdragon 888 are fabbed at Samsung’s 5nm EUV foundries. This means neither chipset has a process-related advantage. We’ll compare the two chips (and a couple of others) in a minute.
The Exynos 2100 adopts ARM’s new high-performance Cortex-X1 core and runs it at up to 2.9 GHz. Joining it are three A78 cores, plus four power-efficient A55 cores. Samsung claims that this CPU is 30% faster in multi-core tasks compared to the Exynos 990.
Kirin 9000
Huawei’s flagships are powered by the latest Kirin 9000 chipset it was unveiled last year on the Huawei Mate 40 Pro. It’s fabbed on a 5nm process and features four Cortex-A77 cores, one of which is clocked at the record-breaking 3.13 GHz, and four A55 cores. The GPU is a Mali-G78 with 24 cores, which is the maximum configuration possible.
There’s also the integrated 5G modem, of course. Local connectivity is blazing fast too, Wi-Fi 6+ can soak up 160 MHz of bandwidth – that translates to a whopping 2.4 Gbps transfer speed. You’ll need the right router (and Huawei has one to sell you), but those are practically 5G speeds.
Snapdragon 888
The Snapdragon 888 mobile processor made huge strides for 5G: for starters gone is the separate 5G modem in 2019’s Snapdragon 865, the new flagship chipset’s 5G modem is now fully integrated just like the competition.
The Snapdragon 888 will feature Qualcomm’s X60 modem, bumping up from a 7 nm to a 5nm process which means better power efficiency. There are also improvements in 5G carrier aggregation (being able to use more 5G frequencies) across the mmWave and sub-6GHz bands of the spectrum. With the 5nm architecture, Qualcomms also looks to have some gains in power efficiency.
Qualcomm new flagship processor comes with the company’s sixth-gen AI Engine (fabricated on a “pimped up” Qualcomm Hexagon processor). But does this mean? According to the company, there will be both power efficiency for AI tasks and more performance gains. When it comes to the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), the Snapdragon 888 has been upgraded to boost performance. It is still unclear what kind of improvements to expect, but we believe this will be more pronounced in gaming and imagery.
Mobile Processor Comparison Table
| Exynos 2100 | Snapdragon 888 | Kirin 9000 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Process | Samsung 5 nm EUV | Samsung 5 nm EUV | TSMC 5 nm EUV |
| CPU (prime) | 1x Cortex-X1 @ 2.9 GHz | 1x Cortex-X1 @ 2.84 GHz | 1x Cortex-A77 @ 3.13 GHz |
| CPU (big) | 3x Cortex-A78 @ 2.8 GHz | 3x Cortex-A78 @ 2.42 GHz | 3x Cortex-A77 @ 2.54 GHz |
| CPU (little) | 4x Cortex-A55 @ 2.2 GHz | 4x Cortex-A55 @ 1.8 GHz | 4x Cortex-A55 @ 2.05 GHz |
| GPU | Mali-G78 MP14 | Adreno 660 | Mali-G78 MP24 |
| NPU | 26 TOPS | 26 TOPS | ? |
| ISP (simultaneous cameras) | 4 | 3 | ? |
| 5G modem | 7.35 Gbps (mmWave), 5.1 Gbps (sub-6) | 7.5 Gbps (mmWave), sub-6 | 6.5 Gbps (mmWave), 4.6 Gbps (sub-6) |
