The Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge Review
by Joshua Ho on April 17, 2015 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Mobile
- Galaxy S6
- Galaxy S6 Edge
Exynos 7420: First 14nm Silicon In A Smartphone
This generation more than any generation in recent memory has been a time of significant movement in the SoC space. We were aware of the Exynos 7420 well before it was announced in the Galaxy S6, but for the most part I expected to see Snapdragon 810 in at least a few variants of the Galaxy S6. It was a bit surprising to see Samsung drop Snapdragon SoCs completely this generation, and judging by the battery life of the Galaxy S6 it seems that Samsung had their reasons for doing this.
For those that are unfamiliar with the Exynos 7420, this SoC effectively represents the culmination of their efforts in semiconductor manufacturing and integrated circuit design. On the foundry side, Samsung is leveraging their vertical integration to make the first SoC on their 14nm LPE (Low Power Early) process, which seems to be solely for Systems LSI until they can no longer use all production capacity.
We previously mentioned that Samsung’s 14nm process in general will lack any significant die shrink due to almost unchanged metal interconnect pitch, but this assumption was in comparison to their 20nm LPM process from which the 14nm LPE process borrows its BEOL (back end of line) from. Opposite to what we thought, the Exynos 5433 was manufacturered on a 20LPE process which makes use of a quite larger metal layer. The result is that one can see a significant die shrink for the 7420 as it is, according to Chipworks, only 78mm² and a 44% reduction over the Exynos 5433's 113mm². This is considerable even when factoring in that the new SoC had two added GPU shader cores. Beyond the swap from a LPDDR3 memory controller to a LPDDR4 capable one, the only other at first noticeable major functional overhaul on the SoC seems to be that the dedicated HEVC decoder block has been removed and HEVC encoding and decoding capability has been merged into Samsung's MFC (Multi-Function Codec) media hardware acceleration block.
Galaxy S6 PCB with SoC and modem in view (Source: Chipworks)
The move from a planar to FinFET process is crucial. Although this is covered in more detail in previous articles, the short explanation is that planar processes suffer from increasing power leakage at smaller process nodes as the bulk of the silicon becomes relatively more massive than the gate that controls the flow of current. This causes decreased power efficiency as the power source of the transistor starts to act as a gate itself. FinFET solves this problem by attempting to isolate the transistor from the bulk of the silicon wafer, wrapping the gate around the channel of the transistor to ensure that it retains strong control over the flow of current compared to a planar transistor design.
The effective voltage drop allowed by the process can be substantial. We can have a look at some voltage excerpts of common frequencies available on both the Exynos 5433 and 7420:
| Exynos 5433 vs Exynos 7420 Supply Voltages | ||||||
| Exynos 5433 | Exynos 7420 | Difference | ||||
| A57 1.9GHz (ASV2) | 1287.50mV | 1056.25mV | -234.25mV | |||
| A57 1.9GHz (ASV9) | 1200.00mV | 975.00mV | -225.00mV | |||
| A57 1.9GHz (ASV15) | 1125.00mV | 912.50mV | -212.50mV | |||
| A57 800MHz (ASV2) | 950.00mV | 768.75mV | -181.25mV | |||
| A57 800MHz (ASV9) | 900.00mV | 687.50mV | -224.50mV | |||
| A57 800MHz (ASV15) | 900.00mV | 625.00mV | -275.00mV | |||
| A53 1.3GHz (ASV2) | 1200.00mV | 1037.50mV | -162.50mV | |||
| A53 1.3GHz (ASV9) | 1112.50mV | 950.00mV | -162.50mV | |||
| A53 1.3GHz (ASV15) | 1062.50mV | 900.00mV | -162.50mV | |||
| A53 400MHz (ASV2) | 862.00mV | 743.75mV | -118.25mV | |||
| A53 400MHz (ASV9) | 787.50mV | 656.25mV | -131.25mV | |||
| A53 400MHz (ASV15) | 750.00mV | 606.25mV | -143.75mV | |||
| GPU 700MHz (ASV2) | 1125.00mV | 881.25mV | -243.75mV | |||
| GPU 700MHz (ASV9) | 1050.00mV | 800.00mV | -250.00mV | |||
| GPU 700MHz (ASV15) | 1012.50mV | 750.00mV | -262.50mV | |||
| GPU 266MHz (ASV2) | 875.00mV | 750.00mV | -125.00mV | |||
| GPU 266MHz (ASV9) | 800.00mV | 668.75mV | -131.25mV | |||
| GPU 266MHz (ASV15) | 762.50mV | 606.25mV | -156.25mV | |||
The ASV (Adaptive Scaling Voltage) numbers represent the different type of chip bins, a lower value representing a worse quality bin and a higher one a better quality one. Group 2 should be the lowest that is found in the wild, with group 15 representing the best possible bin and group 9 the median that should be found in most devices. As one can see in the table, we can achieve well up to -250mV voltage drop on some frequencies on the A57s and the GPU. As a reminder, power scales quadratically with voltage, so a drop from 1287.50mV to 1056.25mV as seen in the worst bin 1.9GHz A57 frequency should for example result in a considerable 33% drop in dynamic power. The Exynos 7420 uses this headroom to go slightly higher in clocks compared to the 5433 - but we expect the end power to still be quite lower than what we've seen on the Note 4.
On the design side, Systems LSI has also done a great deal to differentiate the Exynos 7420 from the 5433. Although the CPU architectures are shared, the A53 cluster is now clocked at 1.5 GHz instead of 1.3 GHz, and the A57 cluster at 2.1 GHz rather than 1.9 GHz. The memory controller is new and supports LPDDR4 running at 1555MHz. This means that the Galaxy S6 has almost double the theoretical memory bandwidth when compared to the Galaxy Note 4 Exynos variant, as we get a boost up to 24.88GB/s over the 5433's 13.20GB/s. We still need to test this to see how these claims translate to practical performance in a deep dive article in the future, as effective bandwidth and latency can often vary depending on vendor's memory settings and SoC's bus architecture.
Outside of the memory controller, LSI has also updated the 7420 to use a more powerful Mali T760MP8 GPU. Although the Exynos 5433 had a Mali T760 GPU as well, it had two fewer shader cores which means that achieving a given level of performance requires higher clock speeds and higher voltages to overcome circuit delay. This new GPU is clocked a bit higher as well, at 772 MHz compared to the 700 MHz of the GPU in the Exynos 5433. We see the same two-stage maximum frequency scaling mechanism as discovered in our Note 4 Exynos review, with less ALU biased loads being limited to 700MHz as opposed to the 5433's 600MHz. There's also a suspicion that Samsung was ready to go higher to compete with other vendors though, as we can see evidence of an 852 MHz clock state that is unused. Unfortunately deeply testing this SoC isn’t possible at this time as doing so would require disassembling the phone.
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Drumsticks - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
Thanks for the review! I've been waiting on the Anandtech review before looking at a new phone; y'alls simply can't be beat.The major concern for me with the S6 was battery life, but you seem to have put that concern to rest here. I fall under the "drawn by the new design" camp as well - I'm a pretty heavy user, but removable storage has never really mattered to me as I don't like keeping too much data on my phone. A removable battery is nice, but I'm already used to having a power pack with me so that's not a huge deal. I'm still waiting to see what the LG G4 brings though. If performance is good enough with the rumored SD 808 (really concerned about GPU driving the QuadHD Display), then the larger battery could make it worth it to go to LG. I'm also hoping that Samsung releases a custom theme tool, and somebody makes a relatively close stock Android icon/color set, as the default TouchWiz UI is kind of gaudy for me (teal? seriously?)
soccerballtux - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
wow, I'm pretty impressed with the low-light performance of the camera.Novacius - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
The first Android smartphone of recent dates that gets everything right imho. I'm considering buying it, but only when the price drops below 500 euros here.generalako - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
I'm sorry, but I can't take Anandtech seriously anymore. I mean, just look at the the review of this phone's display. Somehow the iPhone 6 beats it in nearly every aspect, and there are key areas where the S6 is even worse than many other phones (like White Point). Compare this to DisplayMates shootout of the S6 (which is much more broad and of course has more legitimacy), who came to the conclusion that the S6 is the best phone display they have ever tested on almost every aspect. The same conclusion they had with the Note 4. Based on this review, however, the AMOLED on the S6 is still not better than the best LCD phone (iPhone 6).Let me give an example of how much these two tests vary, and how serious you should take Anandtech's test:
DisplayMate: "When Automatic Brightness is turned On, the Galaxy S6 reaches an impressive 784 cd/m2 (nits) "
Anandtech: Samsung Galaxy S6 reaches 610 nits.
That's a whole difference of 174 nits from the two tests!
Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
DisplayMate derives that figure from a 1% APL pattern, which is pretty non-representative of any real-world use-case. The 610 nit figure here comes from a 100% APL image, meaning pure white. Also, if you read the bottom part of the display section, you will see the APL chart where we indeed show how brightness increases with lowering APL, reaching near the very figures that you are quoting.magreen - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
You can't take Anandtech seriously because its data is (arguably) contradicted by one other review site's data?lesbaer45 - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
As has been said repeatedly for a variety of reasons. No SD, not buying. No removable battery, not buying.I either hang on to the S5 until it dies or buy something else that meets my needs. Plain and simple.
Chaser - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
Everyone has different phone usage preferences. I have no need for a 64-128GB SD card on top of the native storage. I have modest music stored and although I take a lot of photos I use One Drive's "camera roll" feature that immediately uploads new shots to my cloud when a usable wifi connection is made and they land on my PC in seconds.This removable battery/SD card "must have" mantra is getting old. I have absolutely no interest in carrying around an extra battery. Hopefully as native storage becomes more affordable and batteries even more efficient it will fade away forever.
Shadowmaster625 - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
Its a shame they had to add all those wasted pixels. This phone would have much bettery performance and battery life at 1080p. I really dont get this need to drive so many pixels. The market needs to start penalizing this stupidity.Novacius - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
I clearly see a difference because of the pentile matrix. For every green subpixel there are one bigger red and one blue subpixel. So the "effective resolution" is 1/3rd lower, which places the S5 at 288 dpi and the S6 at 384ppi respectively. Where I can see some sort of individual pixels or pentile "grain" on the S5's display, thats nearly impossible with the S6.