The first production chip to roll off Samsung's recently-opened 10-nanometer FinFET production line is the Exynos 9 Series 8895, and it will come embedded with a gigabit LTE modem, Samsung announced on Thursday.
The chip, which is currently in mass production and destined for smartphones and other mobile devices in the near future, is among the vanguard of processors that will help mobile phone networks realize their goal of dramatically boosting LTE speeds.
The new Exynos 9 chip supports five-carrier aggregation, a technology that increases data rates when more spectrum is available and makes gigabit speeds over LTE possible. Multiple carriers are preparing their networks for such speeds, including T-Mobile, which recently announced plans to deliver gigabit LTE over unused 5GHz Wi-Fi channels.
The new Exynos 9 doesn't just pave the way for screaming data speeds, though. It also packs an octa-core processor and an integrated GPU, which Samsung says will deliver a "realistic and immersive VR video experience at 4K resolution."
Its production process is revolutionary, too. Compared to its 14nm predecessor, the 10nm FinFET process promises up to 30 percent increase in area efficiency with 27 percent higher performance or 40 percent lower power consumption, Samsung says.
The unveiling of the new Exynos 9 comes just days after Qualcomm announced its own gigabit LTE chip, the Snapdragon X20. It can can push speeds of up to 1.2Gbps on the spectrum that every US carrier has, Qualcomm says. Those speeds are theoretical, of course, and they'll be limited by network conditions and older devices on the network.