Mongoose: The Making of Samsung’s Custom CPU Core

Samsung is seemingly ready to move to a new milestone in its brief but exciting system-on-chip (SoC) history: a custom CPU core codenamed Mongoose. It’s going to be based on ARMv8 instruction set and is expected to outperform the Exynos 7420 application processor that Samsung unveiled this year. There are some media reports which suggest that Samsung has been working on its own CPU core since 2011.

Samsung’s current Exynos 7420 chipset—used in the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge phones—has turned out to be a powerhouse processor. It’s the first mobile SoC built on 14nm node and has been reportedly 30 percent to 35 percent more efficient than most application processor in the market.

Exynos M1 is making a shift to a custom core called Mongoose

More details are emerging about Samsung’s next chipset called the Exynos M1. Below are some of the key highlights:

• Exynos M1 is going to be built on a 14nm FinFET manufacturing process.
• The new 64-bit chips will have clock speeds of up to 2.3 GHz.
• Exynos M1 might utilize a Heterogeneous System Architecture.
• The new mobile SoCs will feature Mali-T880 GPU core from ARM.

There are even leaked benchmark scores that show Exynos MI way ahead of rival mobile SoCs such as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820, Huawei’s Kirin 950, LG’s Nuclun 2 and MediaTek’s Helio X30. Samsung’s new mobile chipset scored 2,136 points in GeekBench’s single-core test and 7,497 for the multi-core test, ahead of Kirin 950’s 1,909 and 6,096 points and Snapdragon 820’s 1,732 and 4,970 points, respectively.

Moreover, Exynos M1 scored 1,698 and 5,263 points in the power-saving mode and 1,323 and 3,489 points in the ultra power-saving mode, respectively. Then, according to a preliminary GeekBench results, Exynos M1 has accomplished a single-core score of 2,136, which is roughly 45 percent better than the single-core result of its predecessor, the Exynos 7420, which scored 1,495 points.

Will Samsung Galaxy S7 have the in-house Exynos M1 or Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820?

That raises an interesting question: While Exynos 7420 has been a stellar mobile chipset, Exynos MI looks way ahead of it. That premise doesn’t go well with the media speculation that Samsung the smartphone maker might go for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 chipset instead of its own mobile SoC to power its upcoming premium Galaxy S7 handset.

More details will be available about Samsung’s new mobile SoC in the coming months. The Exynos M1 application processor is expected to be released in early 2016.

Also read:

3 Key Frontiers for Samsung’s Next Mobile SoC

Why Qualcomm Lost Samsung and Will Get Them Back