Samsung Unveils The New Exynos 8 Chip, Still Trails Behind Apple’s A9

The South Korean electronics and telecom giant, Samsung, has officially unveiled its most recent iteration of the Exynos “octa-core” chip — the Exynos 8.

Unfortunately for Samsung, although the new 64-bit ARMv8 based chip incorporates a custom Samsung SoC, preliminary tests have indicated that the chip is still trailing in comparison to its closest rival.

Samsung’s existing high-end chipset, the Exynos 7, is currently powering the company’s flagship Galaxy S6 device line-up, which coupled with 3GB of RAM, puts the S6 family on par with Apple’s A9 chip — at least as multi-core scores are concerned.

In terms of single core scores, however, Samsung’s current Exynos 7 has been lagging far, far behind Apple’s A9. Single core scores in Apple’s iPhone 6s handset suggest that Apple’s A9 hums along upwards of 90-percent faster than those in Samsung’s limited edition Galaxy S6 Edge.

It’s important to understand, also, that multicore performance is most often talked about specifically in relation to benchmark tests, because, most of the time, phones are only drawing upon a single core for operating power, anyways.

This makes too many cores a liability, in other words, seeing as how the extra cores either have to be left idle, activated at the expense of battery life. Apple’s two core chips, such as the A9, however, provide faster performance when only one of the cores is in use. Apple also has a much greater capacity when it comes to extending battery life, even though the company still utilizes smaller battery packs.

Samsung Exynos 8 vs. Apple’s A9: A game of Cat and Mouse.

Samsung has yet to begin shipping products that utilize its new Exynos 8 chip, although the company has delivered a press release, effectively touting that the upcoming chip is “a leading-edge application processor for next-generation mobile devices.”

Ironically enough, Samsung’s press release also notes that the company only expects about a “30 percent improvement in performance” over the Exynos 7 architecture.

Even considering its “30 percent” improvement in processing power, Samsung’s Exynos 8 would, conceptually speaking, deliver Geekbench scores that render existing iPhone 6s models about 48 percent faster in single core performance.

Moreover, Apple currently has a showoff chip of its own — the A9X, which boasts single core performance that’s almost twice that of the Exynos 8. And that chip, currently powering iPad Pro, has only two cores. It’s gaining attention, indeed, not just because it’s faster than Samsung’s chips, but because it’s also much faster than some of Intel’s processors designed exclusively for hybrid tablet-laptops solutions.