Samsung confirms the Exynos 2200 will bring ray tracing to phones next year

Not all variants of the Samsung Galaxy S22 will feature the Exynos 2200 chipset.

What you need to know

• Samsung has confirmed that its next-gen Exynos 2200 chipset will support ray tracing.
• The chipset will use a GPU based on AMD’s RDNA2 architecture.
• Samsung’s Galaxy S22 is expected to be the first phone to come equipped with the Exynos 2200.

Earlier this year, AMD CEO Lisa Su confirmed that the company was working with Samsung to bring ray tracing to phones. Samsung has now announced in a post on Weibo that its next-gen Exynos 2200 chipset will be the first to come equipped with ray tracing support.

The Exynos 2200 will feature a GPU based on the AMD RDNA2 architecture, codenamed “Voyager.” AMD’s RDNA2 architecture is used in not just the company’s RX 6000 GPUs but also powers the graphics in both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

The chipset itself is codenamed “Pamir” and could be announced sometime early next year. Similar to the Exynos 2100, the Exynos 2200 is rumored to feature a single high-performance core, three mid-tier cores, and four efficiency cores. As for the GPU, rumors suggest it could have 384 Stream Processors, which hints at six Ray Accelerators.

Ray tracing support will no doubt give the Exynos 2200 a slight edge over Qualcomm’s rumored Snapdragon 898 in terms of gaming. The chipset is expected to power the international variants of Samsung’s Galaxy S22 series phones. Samsung’s next flagship Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra, is also rumored to have the same chip under its hood.

Ray tracing technology simulates the physical behavior of light to enable real-time, cinematic-quality rendering in games. While the technology is currently limited to PC and console gaming, NVIDIA and MediaTek are working together to bring ray tracing to the best Chromebooks as well.

Samsung Galaxy S21

$800 at Samsung
$800 at Amazon
$700 at Best Buy

The Galaxy S21 is one of the most value-focused Android flagships Samsung has released so far. While it doesn’t have the same premium build as the S21 Plus and S21 Ultra, it does offer a vibrant 120Hz AMOLED display, great performance, and a capable triple-camera setup.