2010–2016: Pre-Mongoose Era In 2010, Samsung launched the Hummingbird S5PC110 (now Exynos 3 Single) in its
Samsung Galaxy S smartphone, which featured a licensed Arm Cortex-A8
CPU. This Arm Cortex-A8 was code-named Hummingbird. It was developed in partnership with
Intrinsity using their
FastCore and Fast14 technology. In early 2011, Samsung first launched the Exynos 4210 SoC in its
Samsung Galaxy S II mobile
smartphone. The driver code for the Exynos 4210 was made available in the
Linux kernel and support was added in version 3.2 in November 2011. On 29 September 2011, Samsung introduced Exynos 4212 as a successor to the 4210; it features a higher clock frequency and "50 percent higher
3D graphics performance over the previous processor generation". Built with a
32 nm high-κ metal gate (HKMG) low-power process; it promises a "30 percent lower power-level over the previous process generation". On 30 November 2011, Samsung released information about their upcoming SoC with a
dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 CPU, which was initially named "Exynos 5250" and was later renamed to Exynos 5 Dual. This SoC has a memory interface providing 12.8 GB/s of memory bandwidth, support for
USB 3.0 and
SATA 3, can decode full
1080p video at 60
fps along with simultaneously displaying
WQXGA-resolution (2560 × 1600) on a mobile display as well as 1080p over HDMI. This SoC was used in some
Chromebooks from 2013. Samsung Exynos 5 Dual has been used in a 2015 prototype supercomputer, while the end-product will use a chip meant for servers from another vendor. On 26 April 2012, Samsung released the Exynos 4 Quad, which powers the
Samsung Galaxy S III and
Samsung Galaxy Note II. The Exynos 4 Quad SoC uses 20% less power than the SoC in Samsung Galaxy S II. Samsung also changed the name of several SoCs, Exynos 3110 to Exynos 3 Single, Exynos 4210 and 4212 to Exynos 4 Dual 45 nm, and Exynos 4 Dual 32 nm and Exynos 5250 to Exynos 5 Dual. In 2010 Samsung founded a design center in
Austin called Samsung's Austin R&D Center (SARC). Samsung has hired many ex-AMD, ex-Intel, ex-ARM and various other industry veterans. The SARC developed high-performance, low-power, complex CPU and System IP (Coherent Interconnect and memory controller) architectures and designs. In 2012, Samsung began development of GPU IP called "S-GPU".
2016–2020: Mongoose Era After a three-year design cycle, SARC's first custom CPU core called the M1 was released in the Exynos 8890 in 2016. In 2017 the San Jose Advanced Computing Lab (ACL) was opened to continue custom GPU IP development. SPEC2006 benchmark result showed that it has performance advantage comparing with counterparts of Snapdragon 845 (Cortex-A75) at their respective peak clock speed, and by lowering the clock speed to 1.79 GHz it matched the power efficiency versus Cortex-A75 of Snapdragon 845. However, Samsung Galaxy S9 with Exynos 9810 was criticized in early period of their release due to the poor CPU core scheduler settings. In 2019, Samsung revealed Exynos 9820 with fourth-generation custom core named Exynos M4 (Cheetah). It has been manufactured on Samsung 8 nm LPP process. Unlike the past flagship Exynos series with 4+4 dual-cluster settings, Exynos 9820 implemented 2+2+4 core cluster configurations. Benchmark result presented that Exynos 9820 had performance parity but worse efficiency over Snapdragon 855. Later, Samsung announced Exynos 9825, a revised SoC manufactured on their first 7 nm manufacturing process named 7LPE. Exynos 9825 came equipped with
Samsung Galaxy Note10 series and
Samsung Galaxy F62/M62. In 2020, Samsung released last Mongoose-based SoC, named Exynos 990. Exynos 990 came with their fifth-generation custom core (Exynos M5) codenamed Lion. However, M5 showed less performance and worse power efficiency against Cortex-A77 of Snapdragon 865. On 1 October 2019, rumors emerged that Samsung had laid off their custom CPU core teams at SARC. On 1 November 2019, Samsung filed a
WARN letter with the
Texas Workforce Commission, notifying of upcoming layoffs of their SARC CPU team and termination of their custom CPU core development. SARC and ACL will still continue development of custom SoC, AI, and GPU.
2021–present: Cortex and RDNA Era On 3 June 2019,
AMD and Samsung announced a multi-year strategic partnership in mobile graphics IP based on AMD Radeon GPU IP. However, AnandTech reported 2022. In August 2019, during AMD's Q2 2019 earnings call, AMD stated that Samsung plans to launch SoCs with AMD graphics IP in roughly two years. The first SoC to use Radeon GPU were Exynos 2200, introduced in January 2022, with a custom Xclipse 920 based on AMD's
RDNA 2 microarchitecture. In June 2021, Samsung hired engineers from AMD and Apple to form a new custom architecture team. In October 2021, Google released their Pixel 6 series of phones based on Google's
Tensor SoC, which was made in collaboration with Samsung. In 2024, Samsung officially announced Exynos 2400, with RDNA 3 microarchitecture-based Xclipse 940. In the same year, along with Exynos 2400, Samsung released Exynos 1480, with RDNA 3 based Xclipse 530, marking the end of Arm Mali GPU era in their mid-range processors. == Current Exynos SoCs (2020–present)==