Samsung Electronics on Thursday unveiled its latest Exynos 8 Octa 8890 chipset that will be installed in its next Galaxy smartphone lineup, tentatively called the Galaxy S7, next year. 

The new chip is the company’s first premium one-chip solution that integrates modem and radio frequency technology into a single chip. Qualcomm is the market leader in such chips. 

The one-chip solution boasts better performance at lower energy consumption than the alternatives. But few companies make chips of this kind due to their tricky manufacturing requirements. 

With Samsung joining the bandwagon, the Korean tech giant is expected to further flex its muscles especially against Qualcomm in the soaring mobile processor market.

According to Samsung, the Exynos 8 will be 10 percent more power efficient than its predecessor Exynos 7 Octa 7420 and has a 30 percent increase in performance.

The integrated LTE modem supports Category 12 network speeds, theoretically pegged at 600 Mbps downloads and 150 Mbps uploads.

“The Exynos 8 is a leading-edge application processor for next-generation mobile devices that incorporates Samsung’s mobile technology leadership in CPU, ISP (image signal processor) modem and process technology,” said Hong Kyu-shik, vice president of Samsung’s system LSI marketing.

“With our custom-designed CPU cores and the industry’s most advanced LTE modem, consumers using mobile devices with the new chip will experience a new level of mobile computing.”

Compared with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 820 unveiled on Wednesday, there is no big difference in performance, which means their fiercer competition next year.

This year the U.S. chipmaker battled talk of its Snapdragon 810 processor overheating in some devices. Following the disputes, Samsung ditched Qualcomm chips to use its own chip for its Galaxy S6 phones.

But industry watchers say that the Galaxy S7, to be launched in February, would be outfitted with chips both from Samsung and Qualcomm due to supply constraints.

With the chip production starting December, Samsung’s chip business has also gained new momentum, extending its product lineup beyond memory chips.

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)