Samsung is bringing ray tracing to smartphones with Exynos 2200 chipset

• Samsung revealed its next-gen Exynos chipset will support ray tracing.
• This would give Samsung an edge over rivals by taking smartphone gaming to another level.
• The Galaxy S22 series is expected to be the first smartphone with the Exynos 2200 chipset.

Samsung has announced plans for its next Exynos chipset that is expected to power the flagship Galaxy S22 series. The Exynos 2200 chipset will feature routine upgrades in performance, cameras and connectivity but its highlight will be ray tracing that will definitely take smartphone gaming graphics to another level, as seen on PC and consoles.

Ray tracing is a term familiar to the gaming world but this will be a first for the smartphone industry. It’s defined as a rendering technique that “simulates the physical behaviour of light.” Essentially, it means that ray tracing makes it possible for light in games to behave as it does in reality. It helps scenes in games look more realistic and natural. Ray tracing is currently limited to computers and consoles. But with the technology on smartphones, it would definitely give Samsung an edge over rival companies with ray tracing on its mobile chipset.

This would be the first native support for ray tracing on smartphones but you can still experience the technology through NVIDIA’s GeForce Now. This cloud gaming service lets you stream and play ray tracing enabled games like Control and Watch Dogs: Legion on your smartphone. But you still need a fast internet connection and some games require a gamepad or controller but it’s not playable to be real. The technology itself seems highly power-intensive but with native support on the Exynos chipset, it could be much smoother on smartphones. But with no smartphone games that support ray tracing it’s interesting to see how Samsung plans to make the most out of this technology.

Samsung x AMD

The Exynos 2200 GPU will be based on AMD’s RDNA2 graphics architecture. AMD’s RDNA2 is used in the company’s RX 6000 GPUs and the latest consoles as well. Samsung’s Exynos 2200 chipset will be the first to come with this graphics architecture, according to a report by GSMArena. This was first revealed by AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su at Computex 2021 earlier this year in June. The GPU will also feature variable-rate shading capabilities that will allow it to render some objects like characters with higher quality than others.

Exynos 2200 on the Galaxy S22 series

Samsung did not confirm which devices will use the Exynos 2200 chipset but it’s expected to hit the flagship Galaxy S22 series first. We could also see this chipset on Samsung’s next flagship tablet, the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra which would mean ray tracing on a tablet too. Going by Samsung’s schedule, we can expect the Galaxy S22 series to launch in early 2022.

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